I Hate to Say I Told You So

Warning! Warning!

Many of us saw it coming and they just said it wasn't true. You may remember a post I wrote about Trulia and other third party real estate website listing services and how it will end up being nothing but bad news for the consumer in the long run. well, you may be interested in an email I just received from Trulia about PAID ADVERTISING. Here is an excerpt from that email:

Greetings Ryan Ward,

Thank you all for your hard work and participation on Trulia Voices! Trulia has been hard at work the past month putting together our first ever agent advertising product and we want to make sure Voices users get something special. In the holiday spirit, we would like to gift all the dedicated Voices users a $100 coupon for our Agent Featured Listings Product!

All you need to do is enter a valid credit card and the coupon below and you're done!

Now what do you have to say about giving these people your intellectual property so that they can sell it back to you?

I can't charge my seller directly for me to list their home on Trulia and give them that premium exposure so it comes out of my pocket, right? Wrong. At some point we are all in business to make what we call a profit. Homes.com will charge you $100 a month and Trulia and the rest and at the end of the day there will be nothing left for me. What happens next as the cost of marketing goes up is that we charge sellers more money to list and market their homes.

Hmm, that doesn't smell to good to me and I still don't see how consumers are helped by that. Couple that with our own organization charging top producers thousands of dollars for that same "premium" exposure and what you have is an industry and third party websites hellbent on making it cost consumers more to sell a home.

It's time we wise up in our industry and do what we can to take control of our listings again. In the end, that is the best way we can help consumers.

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