{"id":450,"date":"2006-09-26T13:02:08","date_gmt":"2006-09-26T20:02:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/?p=450"},"modified":"2006-09-26T13:02:11","modified_gmt":"2006-09-26T20:02:11","slug":"blogoff-post-73-using-web-to-buy-home-a-bad-idea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/450\/blogoff-post-73-using-web-to-buy-home-a-bad-idea\/","title":{"rendered":"Blogoff Post #73: Using Web to buy home a bad idea . . ."},"content":{"rendered":"

This is a sweet one from my Arizona Republic<\/i> column<\/a>:<\/p>\n

“Save thousands buying surgery online!”<\/p>\n

It may be a while before you see this headline. But you can’t open a magazine or a Web site lately without hearing that Realtors are about to be “disintermediated” by the Internet.<\/p>\n

“Disintermediation” is a 50-cent word that means cutting out the middleman. It has happened at the low end of the travel agency and the stock brokerage businesses, among others. Some Internet start-ups plan to automate or streamline the functions performed by Realtors, in anticipation of the glorious day when you will sell one home and buy another online.<\/p>\n

There are problems with this idea. For example, although the book-selling business allegedly has been disintermediated, you will have plenty of time to read about that as you bide your time in the checkout line at Borders or Barnes & Noble.<\/p>\n

Then there are these considerations: Would you say that a Realtor is more like a sales clerk at Target or Wal-Mart or more like a surgeon?<\/p>\n

Is your home, or the one you hope to buy, more like a DVD at Best Buy or Fry’s Electronics or more like a unique work of art?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m not sure this column is holding up that well. I can’t imagine buying a house as though it were buying a book at Amazon, but I have sold plenty of houses that the buyers have never seen.<\/p>\n

In the first instance, we are taking note of the consultative expertise of Realtors, full-time professionals who know how to market homes and how to effect transactions against a sea of troubles. Surely some Realtors are better than others, but it would take a pretty lousy surgeon to be worse at surgery than an amateur.<\/p>\n

In the second instance, we are talking about the idea of fungibility — substituting one item for another with no concern for differences in value. DVDs are highly fungible, as are books, items of apparel, travel arrangements or shares of stock.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’ve read that radiological diagnostic work is being farmed out by broadband to India. This is a very interesting time to be in the real estate Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is a sweet one from my Arizona Republic column: “Save thousands buying surgery online!” It may be a while before you see this headline. But you can’t open a magazine or a Web site lately without hearing that Realtors are about to be “disintermediated” by the Internet. “Disintermediation” is a 50-cent word that means […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4,6,5],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-450","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"category-blogging","7":"category-disintermediation","8":"category-marketing","9":"category-real-estate","11":"no-featured-image"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2992,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/2992\/will-realtors-be-disintermediated-by-on-line-tools-probably-not-but-tech-savvy-realtors-will-supplant-those-who-do-not-adapt\/","url_meta":{"origin":450,"position":0},"title":"Will Realtors be disintermediated by on-line tools? Probably not, but tech-savvy Realtors will supplant those who do not adapt","author":"Greg Swann","date":"April 20, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"This is my column for this week from the Arizona Republic (permanent link): \u00a0Will Realtors be disintermediated by on-line tools? Probably not, but tech-savvy Realtors will supplant those who do not adapt The big news in real estate is the market, of course. My view is that the American economy\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Disintermediation"","block_context":{"text":"Disintermediation","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/disintermediation\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1870,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/1870\/burn-down-the-mission-elton-john-reads-the-tumbleweed-manifesto-to-the-national-association-of-realtors\/","url_meta":{"origin":450,"position":1},"title":"Burn Down the Mission: Elton John reads the Tumbleweed Manifesto to the National Association of Realtors","author":"Greg Swann","date":"August 30, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"I'll have more later, but of all the many reasons the NAR deserves to be disintermediated, perhaps the simplest and most obvious is that these congenital retards cannot catch the frolickin' Cluetrain. \u00a0More viewpoints, pro and con, on supplanting the NAR: < ?php c2c_get_recent_posts(9999, \"%post_URL%\", '30'); ?> Technorati Tags: disintermediation,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Marketing"","block_context":{"text":"Marketing","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/marketing\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2922,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/2922\/our-role-will-remain-strong-firm-indispensable-all-we-must-do-is-adapt-wanna-bet-the-dinosaurs-of-the-pre-web-world-of-business-will-be-supplanted-not-disintermediated\/","url_meta":{"origin":450,"position":2},"title":"“Our role will remain strong, firm, indispensable. All we must do is adapt.” Wanna bet? The dinosaurs of the pre-web world of business will be supplanted, not disintermediated","author":"Greg Swann","date":"April 9, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Richard Riccelli fingered this article on intimations of irrelevance in the advertising industry. Richard and I lived through the demise of professional typography, so I have a different take than some others here about the dreaded word \"disintermediation.\" If the triumphant yelp is that some travel agents and some stockbrokers\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Disintermediation"","block_context":{"text":"Disintermediation","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/disintermediation\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":611,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/611\/election-day-links-the-essence-of-liberty-now-is-out-running-those-who-would-enslave-us\/","url_meta":{"origin":450,"position":3},"title":"Election Day Links: The essence of liberty, now, is out-running those who would enslave us . . .","author":"Greg Swann","date":"November 7, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"I know a lot of people who don't vote. Not because they're lazy, but because they're philosophically opposed to the whole business. For my own part, I vote for just about the same reason I go to Mass, and about as often. Since 1848 or so, the main objective of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blogging\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":66,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/66\/mapping-a-full-service-real-estate-strategy\/","url_meta":{"origin":450,"position":4},"title":"Mapping a full-service real estate strategy…","author":"Greg Swann","date":"June 29, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"The map above is a tiny slice of my week. My clients are buying the home that sits on lot 387 of that plat map. Their insurance underwriter deemed it vital that they know where the fire hydrants are with respect to that house. This is a job that can\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Disintermediation"","block_context":{"text":"Disintermediation","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/disintermediation\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2151,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/2151\/who-is-not-whom-in-the-world-of-real-estate-web-20\/","url_meta":{"origin":450,"position":5},"title":"Who is not whom in the world of “Real Estate Web 2.0”?","author":"Greg Swann","date":"November 1, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"I caught this bit from the GeekEstate Blog in my feed reader. That's the list of weblogs in the suitable-for-framing map of \"Real Estate Web 2.0\" produced by the 1000Watt Consulting group, a consortium of people who make money by not understanding the difference between wattage and luminosity. Notice anyone\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blogging\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=450"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}