I wanted to have a compelling title for a little experiment I recently did with my listing at 206 Palmita Place in Downtown Mountain View. It’s a newer construction home and I thought the location and price would appeal to couples or small families. Based on that demographic, I assumed more people would be searching for homes online, so I built a custom website for the house, and posted links to it on a number of real estate websites in addition to the ones like mlslistings.com that link to data on the MLS.

I also followed conventional wisdom and ran ads in the Palo Alto Weekly and Mountain View Voice newspapers, and an entry in the Open Homes Section of the San Jose Mercury News.

I then did some informal polling at the various open houses, asking visitors where they found out about the open house, leaving it as an open ended question. I also tracked hits to the website and looked at who the referring domains were. I found the results interesting and surprising.

Where did they come from?

Over the course of 4 days of open houses (Thurs and Fri evenings, Sat and Sun afternoons) we had 135 groups of visitors through. Of these, only 2 said they came based on the ad in the MV Voice, 1 from the Palo Alto Weekly and 1 from the SJ Merc. Another 11 groups had seen the open house directional signs (I blanketed the neighborhood) or the For Sale sign in the yard as they were passing by. That’s 14 out of 135 groups, or about 11%. The other 89% of visitors either found the listing online or were referred by their agents.

Online sources

I also tracked where hits to the website came from. There were over 2200 hits to the website, and initially 70% of those came from Movoto which is an online real estate information / referral site. After the first two days, mlslistings.com caught up, and after the first week was the source of about 70% of the hits. The house went under contract after a week, so I stopped tracking then.

While I admit that I am biased, I have had a theory for a while that newspaper ads for listings, especially in Palo Alto and surrounding communities, are more for advertising the agent and getting him or her more clients than getting potential Buyers into your home.

The National Association of Realtors estimates that 74% of home buyers begin their search for a home online, and the estimate for Silicon Valley is 92%. I’m still running an ad for my new listing in Redwood City, but it is only 1/4 page and that is because the sellers believe that potential buyers read the paper. I am also flooding the internet with placements and links, and I’m trying an experiment by posting the home on Zillow as well. It’s another experiment, and I’m partially doing it to get under Kevin’s skin as Zillow is a hot-button for him.

I’m tracking the marketing response on the Redwood City house as well, and I’ll do a post on the results from that when it goes under contract. In the meantime, I welcome your comments and hope for a bit of banter on online vs. print marketing.

Thanks for reading.

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With New Orleans already alive with NardiGras, I’m expecting some more choice outtakes of Realtor.com’s Alan Dalton criticizing Zillow to come out soon.

Why is he so against Zillow? Is it, in fact, out of some sort of principled commitment to the way online real estate should be conducted?

I think it has more to do with what Lloyd Frink of Zillow says in this clip from a recent CAR convention.

Quite simply, Realtor.com is running scared. In 6 short months, Zillow has made rapid gains and is now in contention to become the leading real estate destination on the Web, along with all the ad revenue that implies.

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You know why many Realtors feel so threatened by Zillow? Because at first glance, it looks like yet another attempt to cut us out of the business. In fact, second and third glances could lead you to the same conclusion:

• Second glance: Zillow’s founders cut their teeth at Expedia.com, one of several sites that let to the demise of the travel agent business.
• Third glance: Zillow initially considered pursuing that business model…until they figured out, and apparently pretty quickly, that the real estate business ain’t the travel agent business, and they could make far more money by becoming an advertising-driven media company instead.

Listen to Lloyd Frink, Zillow President, at a recent convention of the California Association of Realtors. [Note: For some reason during much of Lloyd's presentation, the camera showed a still of him instead of a live shot.]

Money quote for paranoid Realtors:

At Zillow, we quickly realized that you can’t replace Realtors with people over the phone…a much better business model for us is to NOT be part of the transaction, but to build something that is very, very compelling to consumers, and if we get enough of them to come to our web site, then we can attract people like you to come and advertise.

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After Alan Dalton’s Hugo-Chavez-esque attack, Zillow’s Lloyd Frink responded in a surprisingly low-key fashion, choosing substance over style. I’m not sure I would have been able to resist shooting back. No, wait a minute — I would have shot back, no question.

Unsolicited advice to Lloyd:

Never use the words “spreadsheet” and “valuation” with a Realtor audience. Coming from a consulting background, I made the same mistake when I got into the business. Instead of “valuation”, say “estimate.” Instead of “spreadsheet” — well, just don’t use that word. Period. “Spreadsheet” connotes too mathematical an approach to estimating the value of something as emotionally charged as a home. Never mind that a common quick-and-dirty approach to a first cut of home valuation used by Realtors is a simple price-per-sq-ft analysis — a great task for a spreadsheet if there ever was one.

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Responding to Alan Dalton’s Zillow-skewering at the recent convention of the California Association of Realtors, Brad Inman of Inman News had this to say:

Money quote to Realtor audience: “Don’t let anyone demean your value by suggesting that you should be threatened by new sources of information.”

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Lest I give the impression that Alan Dalton is all bombast and no substance, consider the following clips, also from his recent address to the home crowd at the California Association of Realtors.

Dalton gets the Internet in a way that many senior real estate executives don’t. He understands that the transparency promoted by the Internet is a good thing.

The problem is, his hands are tied. Without the suffocating restrictions on the display of online data recommended by the National Association of Realtors, and implemented by many MLS’s, I have no doubt that Realtor.com would have a much richer treasure trove of data with which to tempt the public — though it would probably still have a less-than-mediocre interface. Dalton is a capable executive, of that I have no doubt. It’s difficult for him to compete against the sites that aren’t beholden to NAR — like Zillow — so he cloaks his frustration by calling on red herring higher principles.

Classic. He challenges Zillow to do something, and then promises to implement it as well on Realtor.com. That “something”? Displaying “what homes have sold for” instead of “what homes are worth.”

The problem? Many MLS’s, including our own in Silicon Valley, REIL, prohibit the display of sold listings. Realtor.com has had access to sold data for eons but, bound by NAR’s paranoid “keep the data under lock and key” restrictions, it hasn’t been able to…until recently…and then only by disingenuous subterfuge.

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I finally had a chance to view the video of the Realtor.com (Alan Dalton) vs. Zillow (Lloyd Frink) confrontation a few weeks ago, and though Dalton is still a few credits short of graduating from the Hugo Chavez School of Rhetoric, it was clear he hadn’t taken his Ritalin that day.

You can see the whole thing for yourself here (Quicktime version) or here (Windows Media version) [CAR membership possibly required], or read my non-chronological review — starting in this post and continuing for several days — which is equal parts commentary, unsolicited advice for Alan Dalton and Lloyd Frink, and entertainment.

After a fairly lengthy talk by Joel Singer, Executive Vice President of the California Association of Realtors (CAR), Lloyd Frink gave a pretty low-key introduction to Zillow.

Then came Dalton’s turn at the podium, and he has, shall we say, a different personality. He started by pandering to his California audience…

…and then came out swinging at Zillow in general and Lloyd Frink in particular. [Several clips spliced together]

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At the recent convention of the California Association of Realtors, Brad Inman, President and CEO of Inman News Features, spoke about how technology has been changing the business of real estate. Inman’s a pretty sharp character, and he “gets” technology in real estate in a way that many industry leaders don’t.

Here’s what he had to say about electronic transactions:

Uh, Brad…next time you’re thinking of buying or selling a home, let me know…we’ll do all the paperwork electronically, and the first and only time you’ll have to put a pen to paper is when you sign the closing documents at the title company. Alas, California law still requires mortgage documents to be signed the old fashioned way.

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Thanks to RIS Media for pointing this out…

A video of the fabled dustup between Zillow’s Lloyd Frink and Realtor.com’s Alan Dalton is finally online at the web site of the California Association of Realtors.

I’m at a cafe with really slow Internet access right now, so I’m having a hard time viewing it. Is somebody going to upload this to Youtube?

Update:  It’s a 100MB+ file, and presumably copyrighted, so I’ll take a pass on uploading it to you Tube.  Why CAR hasn’t done so is completely beyond me.

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The National Association of Realtors and its state and local affiliates are masters of the rile-up-the-troops-and-get-out-the-vote routine.  Two years ago I trekked up to Sacramento for the California Association of Realtor’s annual Legislative Day and had my eyes opened to the world of lobbying, politics, and how legislative decisions are made.  2000 Realtors from around the state descended on the capital and met with their local state representatives, “educating” them about upcoming real-estate related legislative issues and “how they should vote.”  Our local NAR affiliate, the Silicon Valley Assocation of Realtors, is equally effective on local issues — with a day’s notice, it can mobilize several dozen, perhaps even a few hundred, local Realtors to show up at a city council meeting to voice their opposition to some new measure.
Don’t get me wrong — every trade association in the country lobbies, and the Realtor lobby just happens to be better funded, organized, and influential than most.  NAR’s express purpose is, and should be, to protect the interests of its members as it perceives them.

I’m often troubled, however, by issues on which the interests of “citizen Kevin Boer” and “Realtor Kevin Boer” might conflict.  If there’s a ballot initiative in which I as a Realtor benefit, but I as a citizen don’t, which way do I vote?  Personally, the answer is clear:  when it comes to elections, I’m a citizen first, and a Realtor second.

Measure A is an upcoming county-level Land Use ballot initiative (see Smartvoter for more information).  SILVAR wants us to vote “No” on this issue (see here and here).  I don’t know enough about this particular measure yet to figure out which way I’m going to vote, but I’m willing to bet that most Realtors who do go to the polls on November 7 will toe the party line.

Not all of them, though.  Ray Schuster, a fellow Alain Pinel-er, sent out a refreshing, independent-minded email this morning.  Ray takes issue with SILVAR’s recommendation on Measure A, and does so in a very level-headed way.  Hats to Ray for taking a stand and letting us know that not all Realtors necessarily vote per the dictates from above!

As a member of SILVAR, I rely on the association for information and recommendations related to political and legislative issues. So it is appropriate that SILVAR provide voting advice on Santa Clara County Measure A.

However, It is not appropriate that this advice be based on incomplete and misleading information. I disagree with SILVAR’s “no on A” recommendation. I will vote “Yes,” and urge other SILVAR Realtors to consider doing the same—or at least looking beyond the SILVAR arguments to make an informed decision.

SILVAR recommends a visit to the No on Measure A website. Fair enough. For balance, you should also check out www.openspace2006.org., the pro-Measure A website. Here are just a few facts that you’ll find there:

Measure A was not written “behind closed doors,” without public input, as the SILVAR email alleges. Measure A was written carefully with input from community leaders and organizations throughout Santa Clara County, including farmers and ranchers. Endorsers include 41 organizations, 44 community leaders, and 106 state, federal and local elected or formerly elected officials. See for yourself at http://www.openspace2006.org/endorsements.htm.

The Santa Clara County Land Conservation Initiative (Measure A) will preserve our region as a desirable place to live and work. It amends the County General Plan to help protect hillsides, ranchlands, watersheds and agricultural lands by reducing the number of developable parcels permitted in rural areas. Nothing more.

The Measure will not harm family farms. All existing legal parcels and uses remain valid. The Initiative WOULD reduce the number of new developable parcels by limiting them to 160-acre minimums, actually encouraging farming development. Importantly, the Initiative leaves many thousands of acres under County authority available for housing in and nearer to existing built-up areas and public services.

In summary, and without making a book out of this, Measure A will protect Santa Clara County’s remaining valuable natural resources from being paved over and lost forever.

I think these goals coincide with the goals of Realtors in Santa Clara County.

Ray Schuster

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