An open letter to the technological dinosaurs who presume to control our livelihoods

To: Ron LaMee
VP Information Services
Arizona Association of Realtors

Ron:

Russell Shaw argues to me that I have been unfair to you, or at least unnecessarily rude. I don’t concede the point, but I am willing to elaborate on the issues at contest. In all honesty, I don’t expect anyone in my slice of the NAR cartel — the Phoenix Association of Realtors, the Arizona Association of Realtors, the National Association of Realtors, or the Arizona Regional Multiple Listings Service — to exhibit anything I would regard as an improvement, but it’s possible other, less-entrenched entities in other parts of the country can benefit from this discussion.

Before we get started in earnest, I want you to take a look at this map-based MLS search interface. Estately.com is my current pet, in no small measure because it integrates all kinds of neighborhood and transit information into its visual representation of MLS data. There are other cool tools out there: Windermere has a very sexy map-based search. RE/Max has a national MLS system, and Keller-Williams can’t be far behind in that regard. Even so, the market leaders for all of these very cool tools are third-party start-ups like Zillow.com and Trulia.com.

I realize that much of the software I’m talking about is outside your immediate purview. The point is that traditional Realtors are sinking fast, technologically, and you, Ron LaMee, are shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic while you try to hustle us into buying even more of the same obsolete crap we’re already drowning in.

Criticism stings while you’re getting it, but, in fact, it is by addressing the specifics of criticism that we substantially improve our performance. Most people take what they get uncritically — they take crap because they expect crap — but a sincere, informed critic is the best goad a person or organization can have to get rid of the crap in their product or service. Of course, most people and most organizations change nothing, preferring instead to resent the critic for exposing their crappy offerings to the light. In the free market, these problems are eventually corrected by auctioneers. It remains to be seen what can be done about the NAR cartel. Sic semper tyrannosauris. Thus, always, to dinosaurs.

 
First: Delivering a product you know is broken is dumb

Here’s where we start: Yesterday, you emailed to me — and presumably to the entire AAR membership — a request to fill out a survey. This was my reply to you:

Yo, Ron!

Your gee-whiz techno-survey doesn’t load on Safari for the Macintosh.

Neither does the MLS system for the most part.

The PAR thinks the PDF format is state of the art publishing technology.

What y’all don’t know about technology approaches infinity.

Thanks for asking. Better luck next time.

You replied to me in a way that I thought was largely irrelevant. For example, that you “have Macs at home and use a variety of hardware platforms” doesn’t speak to the issue of why you sent me a form you knew in advance was broken. How do I know you knew it in advance? “I do realize that Zoomerang doesn’t play nicely with all browsers.”

Why you would send me a form you knew was broken is really only the second important question.

The first important question is why you would conduct a survey by email when a substantial portion of the AAR membership belongs to the pre-email generation. We’ll get to that question in the next section.

This was my reply to you:

> Not sure why you’d make such an unpleasant comment like “What y’all don’t know about technology approaches infinity.”

It was a summary of the statements preceding it: Your survey doesn’t work, the MLS doesn’t work, PAR lives in the dark ages, etc.

I am consistently stunned at how technologically backward is everything associated with the NAR.

I’ve had more than enough of being charged dues by cave men.

Sorry to throw up on your shoes, but you’re the cave man who sent me what I am certain is a very stupid survey that I can’t even open.

Here’s a hint: I’m the guy you — meaning the entire NAR cartel — need to be working to impress. I know everything you’re getting wrong now. If you want to actually earn my dues money, you need to get a whole lot better at your game.

This much is simple: If you’re going to do an email survey, find an email survey vendor that delivers a browser-independent product. Microsoft Internet Explorer is broken. Good developers support it even so. Bad developers don’t support all the other browsers, the ones that aren’t broken. As a matter of policy, every software product endorsed by the NAR cartel should be hardware-platform and internet-browser-independent. This is a simple action item you can implement today, with no need to re-examine your base premises. Even if you yourself use Windows and MSIE, you should not stand in the way of people who prefer other tools.

How simple is that?

 
Second: Hustling the membership to shaft the old-timers is morally-bankrupt

In fact, I have a lot of web browsers on my Macintosh. I opened your survey in Firefox. Guess what I found? An email appeal to email-using Realtors to see if they would like to have “free” transaction-management software, to be subsidized by the non-email-using Realtors.

This is exactly the same stunt the AAR pulled to ram ZipForms down everyone’s throats. ZipForms is ugly, buggy Windows-centric software, but, even so, I was a for-pay user before it became a “free” benefit of AAR membership.

So what’s the beef? A significant portion of the AAR’s membership are not avid computer users.

So we start with a gee-whiz email-only survey, just to make sure the old-timers have nothing at all to say about having their pockets picked.

Then we ask a bunch of enthusiastic leading questions, push-polling for exactly the results we want.

Then we go off and make a deal for even more crappy Window-centric software, this move having been “ratified” by the membership.

Then we “give” that buggy, obsolete software — produced by a subsidiary of Move, Inc., the NAR cartel’s best buddy? — to the membership as a “free” benefit in exchange for higher dues.

If you don’t work on a computer, you can’t use it. If you don’t work on a Windows computer, you can’t use it. But it’s “free,” having been rammed down the throats of the membership by this time-tested two-step hustle.

This is morally-bankrupt, sleaze in geek’s clothing.

 
Third: Monopoly vendors suck

Why does ZipForms stink as bad as it does? (And, Ron, if you can’t produce a list of at least ten serious bugs in ZipForms, you have lost all my respect.) Because it has no competition. By contracting to ram ZipForms down the throats of every member, the AAR robbed the free marketplace of any incentive to produce a better product.

This is exactly what’s wrong with the Tempo system we use as our MLS provider. It’s hideously ugly, hideously buggy Windows-centric crap, but Tempo is locked in. There might be thousands of users, but there is only one buyer, ARMLS. And even if ARMLS were to fire Tempo, it would only be to impose yet another crappy monopoly solution.

And: This same defect will afflict whatever transaction-management system the AAR elects to ram down our throats.

That is to say: Your method of doing this is sleazy, but, even ignoring that, doing it will have unhappy consequences for the membership. If ZipForms had competition, the competing vendors would bend over backwards to win market share. The same applies to vendors of transaction-management systems — already a vibrant free market.

 
Fourth: The NAR cartel is not a software vendor

Here’s the deal, Ron: I don’t trust you with my software — which is to say, I don’t trust you with my business. The Arizona Association of Realtors is a collection of very nice people — office gnomes who thoughtlessly send me MS-Word doc files because they know absolutely nothing about technology. I would expect that you’re a cut above the gnomes, but not so far above that you can pull off your sleazy hustle in my own preferred web browser. Certainly after years of AAR being “the boss” of Zipforms, you would expect someone to have bitched loudly enough about the bugs, but no one has.

As with ARMLS, you’re putting yourselves in the position of being the buyers of software you don’t use, creating monopoly markets for vendors who have no intention of responding to end-user complaints. What are they going to do, pull their business?

What you offer me, Ron, as a very serious user of productivity software, is the worst of both worlds: I will be compelled to pay for buggy, crappy Windows-centric software that I don’t want, and yet the vendor will not address my complaints.

Why would anyone want that? Put yourself in my place, Ron. Would you want that?

 
Fifth: “Get the hell out of my way!”

Here’s what I want, Ron: I want to be able to run my entire business on a smart-phone. I don’t mean that I would do things that way, primarily, but this is what we’re aiming for. I want for everything I use to be platform-independent and internet-browser-independent, so that anyone can do anything from anywhere with, at a minimum, the hardware and software of a smart-phone and a Bluetooth printer. For my own personal satisfaction, I want to pulverize every Windows machine in my office.

I don’t need this from you. I don’t want this from you. From my point of view, all you are doing — meaning you specifically and the NAR cartel in general — is making this goal more remote. I think the NAR cartel is clueless to begin with, but, even if it isn’t, its insistence on doing business with the worst of vendors serves no purpose but to hold the industry back.

If we manage to divorce the commissions, we’ll be rid of the whole bunch of you just like that. In the mean time, the best thing you can do for me is to get the hell out of my way. I don’t think you’re competent to make my technological decisions for me. But even if you were, any choice you make will be instantly and necessarily the wrong choice because it will supplant the creativity of free competition with a monopoly vendor.

So do please consider this as my response to your broken survey, Ron: I want the AAR to stay as far as it possibly can from any technology decisions.

Very sincerely,

Greg Swann, Designated Broker
BloodhoundRealty.com

 
More viewpoints, pro and con, on supplanting the NAR:

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