“Taking Back Our Content” From Third-Party Aggregators Want to book a flight on Southwest Airlines? You won’t find Southwest’s flights for sale on Travelocity, Expedia, Orbitz, Kayak or any number of so-called third-party aggregators “serving” the travel industry. That’s because Southwest Airlines understands — correctly — that these companies are ultimately competitors, and threaten its business model....Read More
Edina Realty Pulls the Plug on Trulia.com, Other “Third Party Aggregators” In a post earlier this Fall (“Selling Realtors’ Listings Back to Them“), I discussed the dubious practice of Trulia.com and other so-called “Third Party Aggregators” of vacuuming up all the listings in a market, then charging the listing agents (representing Sellers) a fee if...Read More
Omitting Seller-Paid Points Want to know why many real estate Web sites — never good at estimating home prices — are off by at least another 3% now? Because Seller-paid points are a fixture of many house deals these days, yet the government data that many real estate sites rely on don’t report that. Instead, Hennepin County and...Read More
Appraisers vs. Realtors vs. Trulia “257-0”. That’s the number of times — including twice just this morning — that I’ve been called by appraisers wanting the “scoop” on a property I’ve sold, vs. the number of times I’ve called an appraiser to find out the same. Which makes sense: as the listing agent, I’m thoroughly acquainted...Read More
The Limits of Statisticsin Valuing HomesIt’s only Wednesday, and I’ve already fielded three calls this week from appraisers wanting “scoop” on recent, closed sales that I’ve handled. A year-end pick-up in deals? Well, that, too. However, in each case the appraiser was working on a refinancing application. To approve the new loan, the lender needed...Read More
Lack of Information & Objectivity Not all Home Sellers misprice — or would if their Realtor didn’t convince them not to — but enough do that it begs the question: why? From my perspective, it’s usually a combination of three factors (none of which involve vanity or ego). One. Lack of information (about the Comp’s,...Read More
