Imagine a company that combines all the satisfaction of a trip to the DMV, with the pricing, comfort, and customer service of the airline industry. That’s what Realtor.com is to us real estate agents.

Let me put it this way– a really, really bad day for me would include:

1. Waking up on December 23rd and realizing that I need to go stand in line at the Post Office to mail all of our gifts
2. Follow that with a trip to the DMV to register my car–long line, wet floor, perfectly timed lunch breaks…
3. Then, it’s off to the dentists office for a root canal
4. And just to make things perfect, my wife tells me we have tickets to the musical “Oklahoma!” that evening (Sorry, but I just don’t understand the concept of the musical- so this is a form of torture in my book)

I’d rather repeat this series of events like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day than deal with Realtor.com for one extra minute.

Why do I dislike this company so much? Well, for starters they charge way too much money to us Realtors for “enhanced” listings. The company teases us by offering to list our properties “for free”…but I can only upload one photo. Most brokerages worth anything choose to upgrade their listings on Realtor.com so that they can upload more pictures, change the text, add Virtual Tours, etc. And the fun part is that the more successful I am, the more Realtor.com will charge me for this service.

The folks at Realtor.com have had real estate agents over the proverbial barrel for many years due to the fact that their site draws soooo many visitors every month. It is (was?) considered by many to be the go-to site when it comes to finding real estate listings.

But all that is changing with the advent of sites like Zillow, Trulia, and local sites like Real-a-Save. I happen to think that our website here at Real-a-Save is better than Zillow, Trulia, or Realtor.com. We have all the listings, updated constantly, in an easy-to-use interface, and we don’t demand that you sign in to use our site. If you’re in the market for Denver real estate, or want to peruse Boulder real estate listings, then you will be hard pressed to find a better search feature than ours at realasave.com.

My point is that regional companies like Real-a-Save are making a play on the big dogs like Realtor.com. Our search feature is better, we’ve got more information, we’re nimble and able to add features that our customers want on very short notice–so we’ve got you covered locally. Sites like Zillow and Trulia have the national exposure and growing name recognition that Real-a-Save does not have (yet), and so they present a national alternative to Realtor.com.

As more and more people turn to websites like Real-a-Save locally, and Zillow, and Trulia nationally, Realtor.com becomes less and less of a must for us agents. There may come a day very soon when my clients really don’t care if their homes are on Realtor.com…as long as they’re on Googlebase, Yahoo Real Estate, Trulia, etc. The list of new, cool listings sites grows daily. How long can Realtor.com remain relevant? How long can they continue to charge such outrageous fees?

Stay tuned…

Or will it be Trulia? Or another, yet unnamed player? I don’t know. What I do know is that the local MLS providers here in Colorado leave a lot to be desired. Our company, realasave.com, deals with 4 different MLS providers currently and we’re planning on expanding to include another 4 or 5 very soon. Most small brokers don’t have to deal with multiple different MLS providers because they concentrate in just one area. So a broker dealing mainly in Denver real estate would have to deal with Metrolist (the Denver MLS provider), while a small broker dealing mainly with Boulder real estate would likely just deal with IRES (Northern Colorado’s MLS provider). So small brokerages don’t get the perspective that we have in dealing with all of them.

It’s hysterical, really, to look at the rules that these companies have. The MLS provider in Colorado Springs, for example, forbids brokers from giving out address information unless you force a person to sign in to your site. Seriously, they absolutely forbid it. They even forbid you to show pins on a map. Pins on a map! But go ahead and Google “Colorado Springs real estate” and see what you find. You see various companies that are in flagrant violation of these MLS rules. So not only are the rules silly, and in many cases senseless, but many companies simply don’t follow the rules at all.

In Grand Junction you are actually not allowed to speak to the MLS provider. I’m not kidding. You MUST go through the local board of Realtors. I spoke with a very nice lady at the local board of Realtors who was aghast when I asked her for the phone number for the local MLS provider, “Oh no! You can’t TALK to them. You can’t EVER talk to them! If you talk to them then they’ll call me and yell at me and say ‘Keep your people in order’!” I’m not kidding. This conversation actually took place.

Some of the MLS providers are a pleasure to deal with. IRES has a staff that is always helpful. The same cannot be said for some other local companies.

There are over 900 MLS providers in America. And they all operate in a vacuum. They all have their own rules, and each thinks that their rules are the right rules. They don’t communicate with each other…they often don’t even know that the other exists. Again, I’m being serious. Do a little experiment: try to find out how many MLS providers there are in the state of Colorado. Does the National Association of Realtors have this information? You’d think so, but they don’t. Does the Colorado Associate of Realtors have a list? You’d think so, but they don’t. Well, maybe you know a few of the local providers so you call them and ask for a list of their colleagues. They don’t have it. It’s a mystery. Total UFO time. Close Encounters of the MLS Kind. It’s freaking hysterical.

I hope that Trulia and/or Zillow either a) forces a national consolodation of MLS providers into one, giant national MLS, or b) replaces all of the current MLS providers.

You can’t even imagine the expense of dealing with 6-10 MLS providers. We’re talking around $10,000 in monthly fees, local board fees, and upgrades. I’d much rather deal with one provider who doesn’t want to screw me over by selling MY information BACK to me at an exorbitant rate. Yes, they actually sell me back information that I technically own. Let’s leave that for another day. And next time I’ll get on my soap box about what an evil, vile, monster Realtor.com is. Trust me. They are.

The title of this post is taken directly from the US Department of Justice’s new website which focuses on competition in real estate.  Needless to say, we were very happy to see that the Department of Justice supports companies like Real-a-Save, going so far as to say: “Offering rebates and incentives is one way that real estate brokers can compete for consumers’ business, leading to lower prices to consumers.”

The bottom line is that consumers benefit whenever companies compete for their business.  We know for a fact that our own efforts have saved consumers hundreds of thousands of dollars in commission expenses.

Here’s another interesting quote from the FAQ section of the Department of Justice website:

“Do refunds and incentives pose any risk to consumers?

Some have argued that refunds and incentives can tempt consumers into closing on real estate transactions against their best interests. The Antitrust Division has found no evidence that refunds and incentives harm consumers. On the contrary, they can dramatically lower the price that consumers pay for brokerage services.”