Crescent City Real Estate News: Are REALTOR.COM Enhancements Worth the Money?

Fran:  I have several friends who are in an office where the enhanced Realtor.com listings were "mandated."  Every agent in the office was charged a fee to cover the cost.  I would have been furious if it were me...but thanks for an excellent post on the enhanced Realtor.com listings.  Very thorough, and for me, very timely.  And... that seminar that you have to drive two hours to... and then to have them totally skate over what the seminar subject was supposed to be... and then turn the darn thing into a Realtor.com sales promotion... I would have been furious about that as well.  Again... thanks for sharing...

Thanks for sharing your stats.  I have had Realtor.com enhancements for a long time and have not had many direct leads from them.  I know the money would be better spent somewhere else.   

I think it all depends upon where you are.  I moved from Providence, RI, where realtor.com was the king.  When I moved out west to Utah, the MLS-owned website is much more popular for realtors and buyers/

Fran, we had several agents in our area, get sucked into this seminar for FREE.

I knew it was just a sales pitch. I will not use them ever again, and haven't for 3 years.

Realtor.com is not about the Realtors regardless of what they mission statement is. It is a third party vendor making their money off our listings.

If NAR really cared about realtor. com and the agents and brokers who get the listings we would ALL have enhanced listings.

I agree. A few years ago I paid for this and never got anything at all from it. Did my client get better exposure? Debatable. Probably not. Save your money for something else.

They sucked thousands of dollars out of us for several years.  We dumped them a couple of years ago.  Didn't see any benefits while paying and haven't seen any loss since dumping.  Why they get the stamp of approval from NAR is beyond me.  They aren't serving our interests, that's for sure!

First let me say I have been prejudiced againsr realtor.com from the beginning. If amazon.com was the best example of a web 1.0 web site, realtor.com was the worst. Banner ads that took you out of the system, finding me 7 clicks deep after you scrolled down just to name a few of the cynical attempt to get your money. After that it has been one scheme after another. What they want is to create a sense of dependence when in reality the blend of blogging and social networking is freeing. I predict Active Rrain will surpass realtor.com in three years at the current rate as the No. 1 portal in the industry, and we can do it organically.

There are folks among us that would say AR is a waste of time, can not find the good that comes out. We know different. Realtor.com if used correctly works. Not everyone can afford to, or sees the need to have it in their marketing mix.  When you send a link to the 25 images, video, extra write up and sign writer, headline animation to an owner, to a buyer it is impressive. When buyers and sellers for that matter are on realtor.com the largest real estate site, and your listing jumps out, all branded...think of which one you remember. The first insertion of feature property is clicked on, and then directed to your home site, your other listings.  You got them first. Also, think branding the broker, promoting the area the property is in with the video and extra 17 images spaces. More images, video...not just the standard dog and pony splash like everyone else gets you customers, makes an impression, makes you stand out. You don't just pay for the enhancement, you expand on it, take it to the maximum.

Fran..I'm on the fence right now.  My Showcase package was $39.00 monthly last year based on 6 to 7 listings and this year it went up to $130.00 monthly based on 40 listings.  I have the package that allows you the 25 pics, the added banner and additional text.  I am primarily a Listing Agent.  I have kept the service up to now (remember I'm on the fence) because I use the banner and added text to promote MY WEBSITE.

I have listings in areas were there are 300, 500, even up to 800 homes in a specific zip code and 99% of the time my listing will appear on the first page of Realtor.com and usually, in the top 3 spots when consumers sort by pictures.  I know it's a Realtor.com gimmick.  Bold lettering encourages consumers to sort by pictures and then they charge us Realtors for placing more pictures.

My banner promotes my website address exclusively.  I receive 5 to 6 Buyer leads monthly directly from Realtor.com.  As long as I convert a couple per year my expense is covered.  For me it's a self-promoting vehicle as most of my listings are sold by other Realtors.

On the fence as I'm not sure if it's worth more than $100 or so for me right now and next year it'll go up again.

Fran - ROI and NAR enhanced tools seem mutually exclusive. I don't use them but thanks for the heads up

Fran, thank you for sharing your thoughts on the REALTOR.COM enhancements. I have not tried them. Looking at all of the comments on this I am glad I am not taking the sales calls from the REALTOR.com sale people.

Bettina

Our office pays for the Realtor.com enhancement, which helps us stand out from other office in our marketplace.  I find it's a good tool to use, at a listing presentation... sellers like the idea.

But I agree, that I haven't seen a single transaction that I can point to, where I've gotten a single lead from Realtor.com.

Fran - I have never paid a dime to Realtor.com, yet we get the vast majority of our business from the internet.  Most of it comes from my primary company website, and the rest comes from my participation at ActiveRain.  Nice post!

I too was sucked into attending that free workshop.  Their sales techniques were great as they had people buying left and right.  I will admit that they got us too.  When I attended this workshop I was still wet behind the ears in regards to my real estate career. 

I had about the same results you got, but I did get one referral that came directly from Realtor.com.  I have had some sellers that love realtor.com- and saying I had these features probably did secure the listing- the latest was a $519,900 listing.

However, that being said- I thnk I may have been able to secure the $519,900 w/o Realtor.com features.

My subscription is up and they have been calling me non-stop and I am been politely ignoring their renewal phone calls...

When REALTOR.com first came out, I was a subscriber and found it to be a waste of money.  Perhaps it has improved since then, but the cost is absurd.  I've yet to hear any user in my SOI say anything about REALTOR.com other than "it is a waste of money."  This NAR perk is NOT really a perk for members (how gullible do they think we are?), it is a source of revenue for NAR.

Yeaaaaah! I also have tried the Realtor.com packages and am down to the same upgrades you have chosen. No sales attributed to Realtor.com, either. I have been ignoring their attempts to get me to upgrade again. It's the same question as advertising in a newspaper where you know that less than 3% of the sales come from that source. So, how do you quit all this "necessary evil" stuff??? Lisa

I'm on the same band wagon with you.  I dumped Realtor.com like a hot potato a few years ago and they will never get me back.  I too cannot account from one sale over the 5 years I did business with them. 

I can honestly say I have NEVER lost a listing because I didn't have enhanced Realtor.com.  Never.  I can't even remember when a seller asked me if I did.  Just because others "do it" doesn't mean we have to.  Someone commented above, wanting to know how we quit all this "necessary evil" stuff.....I say JUST DO IT! 

Shame on NAR for raping all of us, or trying :)  Could they kiss us first?

A few years back I signed up for the featured listings on Realtor.com and then never renewed.  I don't plan on ever renewing.  I don't see the value.

I am with you and the others, Fran.  I subscribe to Realtor.com with enhancements for more pictures, and the rigth to be on the more visible pages.  Allo for my clients.  Will this help the sale?  Not sure, but I am doing it to be just another venue for my clients.

Me too Fran.  Realtor.com gets a little too much from me each year, like you said, it's a necessary evil.  I will say I have picked up a few buyer leads from my show cased listings but I can't attribute a sale to them yet although I do have a sale pending thanks to them.  If I'm lucky, that sale pays for the year on realtor.com.

Great post. I love this stuff. I stopped enhancing my listings a long time ago and, like many responders here, never felt the difference (except in my bank account). However, a few sellers complained. Here's how I answered them:

"I want to sell your house just as badly as you do. If I don't sell your house, I don't get paid. If I thought that having an enhanced listing on Realtor.com would increase the chances of selling your house, I'd do it in a heartbeat. I'm not being cheap, I'm being fiscally responsible. I use marketing techniques that work, and don't waste my (and indirectly your) money on ones that don't."

On Realtor.com for your area you're one of how ever many other Realtors are on there.

On your personal website you're one of one. I like my odds of being chosen as someone's Realtor of choice much better there.

Good on you Fran.

Tell it like it is! To often we just go along with the crap that is poured down our throats.

I have often said that Real Estate Agents are the easiest marks.

Had the enhanced package for one year and I got nothing. It is not worht the money.

Wow. Thanks for that info.

THANK YOU FOR THIS POST! I sat in the "2009 Marketing Survival Guide" that Realtor.com hosted. They did dig deeper for social networking but most of the folks around me had no clue what the speaker was talking about (from the convos I overheard). they did pitch the enhancement package and i was wondering what the results are.

I hate to recommend something to an agent without proof of it successes. I try to create marketing plans are cheap/cost effective to implement and while this is something I don't build in for them (because of no proof) I now know a little more about it.

Hope the answers keep coming!!! I want more info.

I used Realtor.com about 7 years ago when I got this low offered price.. Can only say I got one sale from it in month 12. The next year the wanted to DOUBLE my cost based on my listing count. I have yet to jump on board again.

Rently I was contacted by Realtor.com after a comment on a post simular to this and they wanted to show me the benefits of their system.  Yes the 25 photos are great until some companies as a who totally ABUSE the system placing photos of everything except the home ( maybe 1 or 2 if they were lucky ) only to get top spot in Clarksville TN.  Even the sales rep stated that was ABUSE, yet nothing has been done about it.

I feel the cost is absured.... Should be no more than the cost of hosting a regular website at best. But again.. don't we already pay fees to NAR ?

I totally agree that Realtor.com enhancements are a rip off. I signed up for the banner ads and had to compete with Avis Rental Car, Home Depot, etc. Their ads were comming up more frequently than realtors! Makes you wonder...

Fran....right on.  Waste of money for sure. I had the enhancement part for two years for the whole office at my expense and it created nothing.  I was every so glad when the contract was over.  And we did go to a seminar last year and it was a waste of time and totally about selling their overpriced stuff.

Thanks for stepping up and saying something.......maybe when they (realtor.com) folks here this loud enough they'll make some changes. 

Not a fan of Realtor.com either.

NAR/Realtor.com are still living in an ancient business model, and I believe they are losing money hand over fist by being so near-sighted by not offering the tools/training that create real value!

The membership is talking, anyone listening?

- Harrison Painter

Argh, the frustration of bait and switch!  Sorry you had to endure that and we get leads from r.com on a normal basis but the quality isn't that great.  You aren't missing anything and thanks for informing us of the bait and switch!

Yikes! I would NOT be a happy camper. For $3000.00 a year we operate 50 websites, it's a no brainer as to money better spent...

I also have heard Realtor.com is a waste and I do not spend my ad. money there.

I can't trace enough dollars back to Realtor.com in a year to show produced more than 1 sale - not worth the expense and the time you have to spend to enhance a site that could just be done by taking it directly from where they are already getting info - your mls - all doesn't add up - not user friendly and not enough ROI......the NAR really has a long way to go

Fran~ I have to agree with the others that it isn't worth the fees.  But, I  guess it just depends on the area ?  Will be back to see what everyone says! 

- Harrison Painter said,

The membership is talking, anyone listening?

No, they are not listening and probably won't.  We pay good money to be called REALTOR® and I think we should get more benefit from REALTOR® dot com for that money.  That they can use the word in their url without it being attached to a person's legal name and we cannot is wrong, in my opinion.

I think that if REALTOR® is the name of the site then all dues paying members should benefit from it without having to pay extra.  But, of course, pigs will probably fly before that happens.

Fran, The 'ole bait and switch is never fun to be a part of. I have used www.Realtor.com for a while and have sold homes as a result. I am rather lucky though in that my company pays for it for me. Doesn't cost me a dime, that is the best kind of enhancement.

These comments are fascinating to me because I have a very different experience. I have been a subscriber for years of several of Realtor.com's enhancements, including showcase listing enhancements, a Featured Home spot for 07726, featured CMA (Market Snapshot), banner & skyscraper ads. Let's just say, I spend thousands a year.

Before you say, "She's really a sucker to spend all that money on Realtor.com!", please know these facts: My county's MLS has 6,500 members serving a population of about 650,000. Several of the expensive services on Realtor.com are limited to 8 or 10 realtors for my section of the county (Western Monmouth County, NJ). The realtors in this area spend lavishly on advertising online and in local print. There is a waiting list at Realtor.com for some of the advertising slots that I currently own. (If you'd like to see what I'm talking about, search for homes in Manalapan, NJ 07726, as one example).

I'm considering whether or not to renew when my contract is up for each subscription, and it's a tough choice. It is excellent branding, and I have closed transactions from it. . . enough to cover my expenses, but not enough to make it really profitable. However, when I'm on a listing appointment, I find that the seller is often already aware of my extensive advertising. Also, many buyers have found my listings on Realtor.com even if they were working with another agent.

However, As Active Rain, Trulia, and others gain more attention from the public, Realtor.com's importance will fade. My goal is to develop on Active Rain and other less expensive websites, and phase Realtor.com out over time. Just not yet!

I've been a subscriber to the Realtor.com Showcase listings for the few short years I've been an agent.  I HAVE gotten leads from the service, and I know of many other people that use Realtor.com for their searches.  I can probably only attribute 1-2 sales per year, though.  But, while that may seem like a low number, since I know a lot of people use that website, there is probably a number that I can NOT count where other agents' buyers are searching the site and coming across my listings.  So, when they see my listings, they make a note and send them to their own agent to schedule showings. 

I do put as many photos as I can justify posting, but try not to be "abusive".  I'm around 20+ photos on each, as far as I remember.  I like the idea of using the scrolling banner to promote my own website, as mentioned above.  I'll have to put that to use, too!  :-)

Thanks Fran, for posting this!  I too wondered if it's worth paying for the extra bells and whistles from them.  For me, I decided it was not.  I use www.realestateshows.com which is $125/yr.  (I can sign up people for $100)  It allows me to make a little video from my pictures, add all the info I want, all the pictures I want, and I can upload it to practically any site I can think of.  To add it to realtor.com, it does cost $25 per listing.  So you may not get "featured" listings and it doesn't show your branding on the first realtor.com page, but if they click onto the red "featured tour" link, all your info is there.  This has worked well for me but I don't have that many listings.  Depending on the number of listings, $25 for each may not be a good idea.  I do get a good amount of hits from realtor.com (the shows have tracking) so for me it is worth it.  Sellers really like it and they can easily email it to their friends and family-- all with your branding on it. 

Thanks for that information.  I have some people in my office who swear by enhanced realtor.com.  But I think ActiveRain is the only way to go.  Along with all the free blogspots and my own website, I think I get more without spending all this money needlessly. Its been very tedious getting everything set up. But once its done it should be easy to maintain AND FREE! (PS - they offered the same seminar in my state - I would have had a 4-5 hour one-way trip to take that thing in Raleigh!!!)

Fran,

I  was told by 2 listings if I did not use the enchanced vesion of REALTOR.COM, I would lose the lsiting.  So I did it this past year for one year, it cost me 2,500 for this.  I ahve not gotten one lead from doing this.  However I did this past year join Active Rain and I have had 2 referrals that have produced a listing and a sale.  Also a buyer from my blogging.  This is productive.

REALTOR.COM is not worth the money!  I belong to 4 MLS and my listings goes to REALTOR.COM 4 times.  Last the reps form REALTOR.COM calls me every day at least 1 to 2 times a day for the past 4 weeks to renew!.  I do not answer their calls!

This is a great blog!

Fran, Our office just opted into the Realtor.com listing enhancements as an office. I have had 3 leads in the last 45 days from Realtor.com, but it's too early to tell if any of them will become anything. In contrast, I have one GrowthLeader deal under contract now, and another deal under contract because the buyer read my blog and liked me.

I am reserving judgement on the Realtor.com enhancements, but at this juncture, I feel like what I'm doing outside of the listing enhancements is much more meaningful.

What's R.com?  hehehehe

Hi Fran,

We do use the realtor.com enhancement features for our whole office.  Our company actually pays for it.  We do find it to be a huge value.  We do get  a lot of lbuyer eads from the system, and agents have been contacted and recieved sellers leads as a direct result.  I do believe it's an important part of our aresenal.  The key is to doing it right.  Our listings are updated by a key admin daily, and we update every feature.

Now, I also do a lot of trainings at our company and I recently did a computer training.  Not only did I go over Facebook and ActiveRain, I did go over Twitter, MySpace (which also helps if used correclty), and showed them how to use different things on their computers (some of them didn't know how to mail merge or create postcards, etc.)  I do believe that we need to be on these systems.  I also recommend agents to designate a specific time of the day and a specific amount of time allotted to the internet sites per day, because it can get overwhelming and time can fly by.

Great post... it definitely does remind each of us that we need to be constantly evaluating where our dollars are spent.  And, what works for one person, may not work for another.

Enjoy!

Melissa Gomez
VP of Operations
ERA Top Service Realty, Inc.
www.ERASuccess.com

A few agents in my office tried Realtor.com...we dropped it. It is not worth it in this area.  Good post and thanks for this info, as I will pass this on to my office.

I talked with an agent who pays $3000 a year for REALTOR.com enhancements.  She strongly felt that they were not increasing her business, but that enhancing listings on REALTOR.com is one of the necessary evils of being an agent.

Hi Fran,

I know there are agents who agree with that position.  On the other hand, REALTOR.com is an effective internet marketing tool for some listing agents.

P.S.  Move, Inc. owns the REALTOR.com website.  Having the Move salepeople talk about ActiveRain at their seminar would be like you going to a Ford dealership and having the salesperson tell you about the great new Chevy.  It's not going to happen!!!  :)

Are REALTOR.com enhancements worth the money?

NO!

In my opinion, it is less an issue whether there is benefit or not from the enhancements.  I just don't like that all members pay for the name REALTOR® but only those willing and/or able to pay extra get full benefit from the use of the name on that website. 

If it were called by the website owner's name rather than the name REALTOR® I would be okay with that.  As it is now, I think it is similar to double taxation... or worse.  We pay for the name, they use the name and then sell it back to us at an astronomically high rate.

Fran, the basic realtor.com listings have the leads go to the broker and not the agent. I think we should get more from the basic dues. 

We have done the REALTOR.com thing and dropped it when they changed their billing system to one that in our opinion was a penalty to listing agents (we had 150 listings at that time).  We dropped the service and get far more leads from our website than we ever did on R.com...Don't even get me started on the NAR connection to them!  Grrrrr....have a happy Memorial Day! :o)

I'm letting mine lapse this June. I have enhanced listings with my office, but I was paying for it with my other broker. I was also paying to have a zip code, but really, it's not worth it. $1200/yr can be better spent elsewhere.

@ Gary:  I have the perfect solution for any office where the broker gets all the leads (if any) from Realtor.com., and not the agents directly.  If the broker gets the leads... the broker should be paying your Realtor fees for you.  That sounds fair, doesn't it ?   :)

I totally  agree with Fran Gatti. As one of the top Kansas City listing agents, I saw my expenses for the enhancements double over the past 3 years to almost $5000 a year. I also have 1/10 exposure on a top/bottom Kansas side banner ad.  I am not sure there is much value in this. Has anyone tracked the click through rate? I am debating on cutting way back Realtor.com expenses. Now that so many Realtors have"caught on" to Realtor.com they are trying to sell thru "time limited" price reductions.

Sharon Sigman in Kansas City

I don't think so.  I was on Realtor.com for years and never go anything out of it.

I do agree with Karen Anne Stone on her comments above.

Patricia Aulson/Portsmouth NH Real estate

I'm glad you posted this.  Now I can see that there really is not a benefit.  I will keep my money in my pocket.

I have the enhanced package and am underwhelmed. The problem is that sellers expect it the way they used to expect print advertising. 

I don't have time to read all of the comments but I would like to add that I do like having the 20 photos and showcase property features because it helps me during a listing presentation.  I have never found Realtor.com sales reps or their presentations at all worthwhile!

I know some agents who swear by Realtor.com and their enhancements, I personally dont use them but to each their own. The NAR actually doesnt own REALTOR.com it is owned by another company that is partially owned by the NAR, something i just found out recently

Hi Fran - I want you to know that I read your blog and all of the above comments. My renewal date is this coming week. I have been contacted by Realtor.com and they are offering me a low price, same as last year, which was reduced greatly when I questioned the value of the service. After 13 years of using Realtor.com and its enhancements, I may be able to credit them for 1-2 sales....and those are questionable.

I haven't utilized ActiveRain as a listing tool, but after reading the above comments, I am going to check it out.

I absolutely love ActiveRain and the wonderful new friends and contacts I have made.

Thank you for your post. I look forward to hearing more from you.

Hey, they forgot my photo....want other members to know who I am and think of me when they think of Denver.....sorry

Fran

I used it for years just as a listing tool. The results were mediocre.

So glad I found this post, Fran. I and three other agents from my office just attended a free seminar like you described a couple of weeks ago. One of the agents does use an enhancement program from realtor.com and has said she's gotten her money back on it. Just this morning I pulled out the information they gave us on the different options available, but after reading your post and some of the comments, I'll be putting it in the trash. Excellent information you've provided. And I couldn't agree more with your thoughts of ActiveRain.

I do pay to be on realtor.com with enhanced listings.  I know that people are searching there and will pull up the ones with more pictures first.  They may never contact you personally but will make their buyer's agent show them the house or send them more info.  There is no way to tract the results with absolute results.  If I plan to refer to an agent in another city I search realtor.com to find an agent.  I also note that the most successful agents in my small town pay for enhancements.  I guess it depends on how much I have to pay but I have paid for several years and find it has improved over the years.

Barbaras comments were well put and similar to what I feel. I pay for the enhancements and have actually seen my ROI with sales and listings. I really think it does depend on your location and how much you pay. I like what I've experienced so far.

Feel like you got suckered in! I can tell, you most likely did. Someone else is just trying to make a buck off your hard work and listings. My sellers have never asked about it. I used it for a year 7-8 years ago and dropped it. Feel free to vent.  At least they did not sell you on effects global warming by not using realtor.com.

Hello Fran,

I went to the seminar for Realtor.com. I got sucked in to buying advertising space for the web site

(alot of money). Well, I never got my information on Realtor.com and I never got my money back. All I have to say is, our Brokers say watch out for the thefts that want to separate us from our money, and I say the biggest one is Realtor.com

Hi Fran...Many of us have found this post to be very accurate.  I certainly do.  I believe, as many others here, that we should not have to pay for enhancements.  Realtor.com should be a tool for us without all the added expense to add additional photos, etc. 

Thanks for posting (and thanks AR for giving this a gold star) as this may well help a number of REALTORS save their money by saying no to NAR.

Kate 

Great blog Fran. I too am paying for the inhancements but have not had one sale I can attribute to it. I pay for the pic etc. Does seem like a waste of money. I am going to put more into my website...

I don't know if it has been mentioned, but NAR actually leases out the Realtor.com name to a for profit entity, Move, Inc.  And they charge way to much to be a back-burner site. 

Hats off to you for telling it like it is!  I got suckered into attending one of those wonderful seminars last year by R.com and kicked myself for days for being so stupid as to waste my time to attend.  I don't see the benefit, but watched many jump in line to pay big bucks for listing enhancements and buy zip codes.  There is one broker in my area that already owns R.com as for as I'm concerned and I wouldn't give them a dime.  To me it's not worth the money!

As nearly everyone else has said...thanks Fran!  It really is great to hear that so many people are frustrated with the extra fees and it's wonderful to hear that you have gotten a majority of your business from free websites.  I've had alot of luck with facebook, and am getting more active in trulia and active rain.  It's a shame that keeping up with other agents requires us to have those enhancements. Thanks again!

Thanks so much for sharing the post & all the comments.  I've also been debating on the renewal of the enhancement package coming due next week & I feel certain it's going to be higher than our last year's rate of $1,500/year because of our increased number of listings.  We actually get about 4 referrals a week from them. ... but still debating on if it's worth it.

Fran - I am in complete agreement with your observations on Realtor.com enhanced listings.  Our office has the enhanced feature package and as agents we pay per month based on the number of listings we had the prior year.  I CANNOT attribute one ounce of business from Realtor.com with all their platitudes on how it's the place to be for those elusive buyer leads.

It amazes me when I get their marketing report on my listings and see the thousands of "views" and not one inquiry that I can relate to it.

Active Rain and my personal website have brought me more business for far less money than I've spent on Realtor.com.

with a bit of research I find many products that don't make a difference yet agents keep buying them and they keep paying for those enhanced listings too.

Fran - you are absolutely right on the money.  I have had enhanced listings for 3 years now and cannot attribute 1 sale to it.  I work with an Asset company that requires us to have enhanced listings on Realtor.com.  My website and my blog provide me with so many more leads and sales! 

Fran,  

Great article.  I agree with you on this post.  I paid for enhancements in the past and now pay for it through my broker.  We have seen nothing from Realtor.com in 3 years.  I find that craigslist provides the most hits for FREE!!!  Also, WATCH out for the contracts that Realtor.com locks people into.  I had a double bill for 10 months because I was in a contract then went to a broker that had a office licence.  They will NOT let you out of those contracts.  Watch out with how many listings you carry too.  The prices really jump up FAST if you carry some listings.  REO agents need to watch out for that.  Nothing is worth 3 grand a year, pay me 500 bucks and I will show you how to use social media and get your own leads.

Fran where did you get the buttons made up?

If my new broker was not offering it for free I would have dropped it.  Those fees will buy a lot of AdWords.

I agree with you! I signed up my first year in real estate thinking I needed to do this for business. It's worthless for leads. I dropped them after my year was up.

Our company signed up for the enhanced services for a market where Realtor.com claimed to be getting 8 million searches and a lot more visits than was believable. The Stats Realtor.com mentions include the search engine robots indexing their site not just humans. As  result, you as an agent think they have far more people than they actually do. in addition, Realtor.com is ran and controlled by Homestore.com not NAR. Homestore lost their MLS feed contracts across the board several years back. The NWMLS is an example of a large MLS that does not send it's listings to Realtor.com. The sales staff for Realtor.com continue to claim all MLS send to them even though they know for a fact it is not the case. None of our agents can claim good leads for Realtor.com, hits yes, but thats sort of like telling someone to go fishing and and never catch a fish, but they think the bites are worth it, never knowing if those hits are actual people or just search indexing robots from search engines.

I've hated realtor.com from day one. ALL CRAP in my opinon. I sure wish we could make them pay us to use our listings instead they charge us to advertise our listings on their site....HUH how did this happen? More importantly why are we letting them do this? It's all BS and I wish they would go away. I'm proud to say that in my 10 years I've never paid them a dime for extras. I was lucky enough to smell that RAT from day one.

Aaron - 

One point of clarification, from the NAR's "History of Realtor.com" - 

1. The National Association of REALTORS® owns and controls REALTOR.com. NAR’s subsidiary, RIN, also owns approximately 4% of Homestore’s stock, and maintains two seats on the Real Select board, and one seat on the Homestore board. In addition to their fiduciary responsibilities to those entities, the NAR appointees also:

I agree with those that say they haven't seen a good ROI from Realtor.com. My contract expired a month ago April after having them for the last 3 years and I can't say I've gotten 1 sale from all the money spent on the enhanced listings.

It is a good feature to present at a listing appointment, but lately I've noticed that sellers are beginning to care more for results than all the fluff that we try to offer. Especially with so much info available to a seller I think some can see that having the home on Realtor.com is NOT the magic bullet.

I've also seen many of the replys to this post mention that they've gotten more clients for AR then anywhere else and was wondering what they are doing to acheive that. I haven't been part of the community too long and could use a little help if anyone doesn't mind...

Thanks

Dustin Miller

I have bought in to the enhanced REALTOR.com as well in the past and did not find it to be worth the money.  Thanks for the great blog on this.  Both our money and our time are better spent elsewhere.

I have never paid for Realtor.com until last year, when I decided it would be a good strong incoming link to my website, so I forked over the $800 or so for it.  Well, I have only a couple of click throughs, which was no big deal as I did it for the link anyway.  I couldn't figure out why it never showed up as an incoming link,  and then I found out that it is a no follow!   So my  $800 was down the drain.  Of course, I got several calls asking me to renew, at the outrageous rate of $1300 this time, but I won't send any more money down that rat hole.  I have learned my lesson. 

Fran - I don't blame you for being annoyed. My websites and blogs bring in most of my business. I have never spent any money on these bad ROI schemes that rarely seem to deliver and I never will. NAR should distance itself from this bunch. 

Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to comment on my post. 

I attended the seminar to learn more about incorporating Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites into my business.  I have had enhanced listings with realtor.com for four years and had already come to the conclusion that it is not worth the money, so I was not sucked into further purchases as one comment suggested. 

My boss considers realtor.com as a necessary evil, but I do not agree.  I am not going to renew my enhanced listings and I am going to invest the money I save into my website, which has paid for itself and then some. 

I have NEVER had a client ask about realtor.com and enhanced listings. Many of my clients are highly aware of my internet presence and have checked out my website and blog and that is why many call me to list their property.  I feel I need to be more prudent than ever before with every dollar I spend and realtor.com just does not pencil out as a good investment of my marketing dollars. 

About 5% of the comments on this post had anything positive to say about realtor.com enhanced listings.  That's not much of an endorsement is it?  I am happy for those of you that said it is working for you, especially if you paid up-front as I do!

Thank you again for your comments,

I am pretty sure Realtor.com is NOT owned by N.A.R.

Realtor.com pays a fee each year to be the "official site" of the NAR however they are a private owned, for-profit site.

Thank you for sharing! I feel the same way about it. My coleague has all the enhancement and featured agent, featured listings and spends thousands of dollars on it  a year. I find it to be a scam, our company gave all their agents a year free of the enhanced listings, and yes it looks good, more pictures, you can add video, but also there are so many other free sites who offer the same features for free, and you can add so much more to their listings. I do not feel like my yearly/quarterly REALTOR dues are of any value to me, I do think buyers go to realtor.com for listings, but I don't think it is worth $1000 of dollars. Other free sites offer the same service for free, and also give you the free stats and all. Blogging (for free) seems like a better idea to me.

Fran,

This is a great article. 

You have basically said "the king has no clothes"

We have used the Realtor.com products for a couple of years with no measured results.

Last year we tried the featured home product to find out after the fact that our listing would be featured on the BOTTOM of the page.

Of course, no refunds!

Also I'm getting tired of being viewed as a profit center for NAR.

The majority of us are struggling to stay in business while fees stay the same or increase each year.

Had the enhanced listings last year for the lowest rate and was told this year that it would cost me almost FIVE TIMES as much to renew. Really???

I told the sales rep who called me endlessly to stop calling -- that I got nothing from it and was planning to spend my marketing dollars more wisely this year.  I suspect from his unhappy reaction that he was hearing that a lot.

(Off topic, but I also told him I found it odd that an Internet service won't allow you to renew in a simple, online transaction. Wonder why that is? Possibly they're worried no one will renew without the hard sell arm twisting?)

Thanks for starting this discussion and saving others from possibly making the same bad choice I made last year.

One of the first rules in marketing is to track your results - and know what advertising, in what place, brings you the greatest ROI. Then do more of that.

You need to know if an ad placed in a homes magazine, an ad in the Sunday newspaper, or something you've done on the web brings you the most leads. And if no leads are forthcoming from a form of advertising, you need to take a big deep breath and drop it - even if all of your competitors are still using it.

Before I left real estate sales to write full-time for others who were still in the trenches, NAR had started charging extra for things like a click-through. I thought it was a rip-off then, and I still do.

The best thing you can do for you is to make your own website the best that it can be. Show why YOU are the agent to choose in your niche market and showcase each of your listings as if it were your only listing. Write descriptions that make buyers drool when they read them, and add enough good information to your site to optimize it to the top of the search engines.

Of course, don't completely ignore off-line marketing, but do track results and put your money where you get the best return.

Remember - Following the crowd is NOT always the best use of your money.

I have to agree with fellow activerain members that r.com is really just theft. While a few do have had some sucess with it the truth is you might as well throw them a few thousand dollars before anything close happens. Personally, for my marketing and branding Im using several microsites (growthleader,etc) and my blog, my company website,twitter and most important is my active rain account.

I thought the content of the seminar was a waste of time especially since it didn't deliver on the agenda that they sent out on the invitation.

I also track click-throughs and lead sources and only had one buyer that came from the Enhanced Listings and the Featured House upgrades last year. 

I didn't renew the serivce in March when it expired and have no plans to renew it in the future.

Russ,

My website provider, Top Producer made the buttons for me.  I have them on the home page of my website.  You have my permission to copy them and put your own links to them if you like. 

My foreclosure button brings up a lead capture form before the client can access the foreclosure/short sale listings. It has proved to be a very good way to get good leads.  I incorporated that into my website after reading Shift, by Gary Keller.  I highly encourage everyone to read that book. Even if you only incorporate one of his ideas, the time spent reading the book will pay for itself. Here is a link to a review I wrote on the book. 

Fran

I just started out and only see it as a way to help sell my services for listing properties.  I am a discount Realtor and do not work for a large name broker so I need whatever I can to set my self apart.  However I can see your concerns and I spend a menial amount right now and probably wouldnt do much more than that. Plus it always sucks to get suckered into going to a sales pitch especially under false pretenses.

Great question.  I also got sucked in to the marketing and have my one year contract coming up for cancellation.  What a waste.  Thanks for beinging it to everyone's attention.

Marte is ABSOLUTELY correct - - - if you don't track your results, you might as well be tossing all your marketing money out the window. And, everything else he said - - - well, put!

Realtor.com is WAY OVERPRICED.  I have enhanced listings on Realtor.com, but for only one reasone:  To show the number of views each of my listings is getting.  Othewise it is a waste of time.

I just purchased a banner add to promote my website that displays when visitors search for homes in my city.  It has been live for 3 weeks now, and there has been only one click... from me when I set it up to make sure it worked.  A TOTAL WASTE OF MONEY. 

Learn SEO or hire an expert to position your web site and generate traffic that way.

I WAS SUCKED INTO THAT ALSO AND I WAS SOOOOO MAD WHEN I LEFT THERE.

THEY ARE PREYING ON US AND THE MARKET WE ARE FACING NOW. I THINK IT WAS A BAIT AND SWITCH FOR SURE.

I AGREE WITH YOU FOR SURE............

TRACEY COLE

296-4667

If it has not been said already in many different ways, please allow me to say this. Dump Realtor.com. I did 3 years ago, and I have not regretted.

Realtor.com is oh, so turn of the century.

OKAY, IT APPEARS THAT THE MAJORITY OF US REALTORS ALL FEEL THE SAME.....LET'S DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!!!CAN WE FORWARD THIS POLL TO NAR!!!!

FOR MY PART.....I HATE REALTOR.COM.....THEY TOOK UNAUTHORIZED MONEY FROM MY ACCOUNT FOR ENHANCEMENTS OF A BILLBOARD AD FOR FORECLOSURES....SAID IT WAS A MISTAKE...TOOK FOUR TIMES MORE THAN WAS AUTHORIZED AND IT TOOK ME SIX WEEKS TO GET IT RETURNED TO MY ACCOUNT.

THEY SUCK AND SHOULD BE RUN OUT OF BUSINESS!!!!!!   Who do we contact.   Let's raise hell......

I knew from the beginning the seminar was going to be all about Realtor.com, but attended anyway. There was some good information to glean from the presentation, if you are not savvy with the Internet or the computer. I am, therefore, I actually found the 4 hours to be somewhat, a waste of my time.

I have had enhancement features which did absolutely nothing for me in terms of sales. My business comes from my two real estate web sites (one personal and one provided by the company), my dedicated real estate page on Facebook  and referrals from friends on the social side of Facebook. 

My listing presentation only makes mention of Realtor.com as one of the many web sites a seller's listing will be on.  Not one seller has ever made a point about having all the bells and whistles on Realtor.com, as they are impressed with all the video sites I make use of as well as approximately 40 realty based sites their home will get prime exposure on.  My enhancement contract with Realtor.com expired a month ago, and I see no reason to renew it.

Thank you for this excellent post that gets everyone talking.

I never saw leads or any increase in calls or website visits when I had the realtor.com enhancements.  And the stats they post have to be inflated.  At any rate, they do not describe how they are derived.  None of my clients use realtor.com because of the excessive advertising and cumbersome navigation.

Just another embarrassment brought to us by our "professional" trade organization.

And Fran, did you REALLY think anyone affiliated with realtor.com would know anything about social media?

I have used the Realtor.com enhanced listing services for about 4 years with no results to date. I now have it thru my office. 

I would not recommend it to anyone.  I get a lead once in awhile, so infrequently that it's insignificant.

Their reporting has been way off for months now.

Thanks for the heads up on the seminar, I won't bother to attend if one comes to my area.

I completely agree, and it doesn't end there....it really amazes me to see how other companies do the same as REALTOR.COM. I have been to so many of these "free seminars" just so the whole thing can turn into some sales pitch to you buying their product that doesn't even work to increase your business at ALL. To top it off, to see the line of agents actually going to purchase this so called top of the line technology, it just reminds me when I was a new agent and would purchase anything anyone threw at me. I guess thats part of the business, and as agents, we need to weed seminars like that out when we spot them. 

I left 20 years of climbing the corporate ladder so that "evil" would never be "necessary" again! I LOVE real estate! Choose the life you love.

I have paid for the Realtor.com enhanced listings for about 3 years now, and although I can't attribute a huge amount of business to it, I can definitely say that I have gotten at least one sale and one listing because of this tool.  The Buyer told me that the reason he called me over many other agents was because my listings gave him more information than the average listing and included so many pictures.  One seller contacted me through Realtor.com because he had seen my enhanced listings.  I agree with most of you on many, many points, but I've spend about $2100 in three years, and can honestly say that I've made about $7000 in comissions from those two sales, so was it worth it?  I guess it was!

I have enjoyed a positive ROI for the enhanced advertising on realtor.com, which I've had since 2003. The contacts and resulting transactions made through realtor.com more than paid for the service, in MY experience.

That being said, I am annoyed that realtor.com is allowing FSBOs to purchase advertising. Also, I'm fairly new to ActiveRain and am not yet using it to its full potential.  So, I may become a convert soon!

I think it does give you additional exposure.  But, in no way would I ever pay more than $300 per year for it.  It did not give me any leads when I used it, but obviously some peopel use the site.  I stopped the enhancements because our market is fast right now, and they have a delay in picking up listings, so many times I wasn't getting one day of exposure!  Also, contingent listings don't show up, so again I wasn't getting any exposure in our market which is currently dominated by short sale listings that go contingent in a couple of days.

They have a monopoly sure but I can honestly say that I have gotten at least 5 listings because I proved to sellers that many agents in our market do not have the enhanced package and those who do do not even use it to the best of their ability. Say what you want about the branding of Realtor.com but when someone is searching for homes outside the area they look there first. There are many free sites that offer similar amenities but this one has the name. I think it is like anything else if you do not utilize a product to the best of its ability it will not work for you.  If you are not placing all 25 photos on there as well as your virtual tour, and uploading your virtual tour to a video..then you may not see the benefits.  I have seen the benefits but really wish it was not so darn expensive.

Thanks for your insight Fran!  I have not used Realtor.com before.  I have read several blogs about them, and ALL come to the same conclusion.....they suck!!!  I am glad that others like yourself can save me the grief. 

I agree strongly w/ Missy Caulk, that it is a shame that NAR goes along with this!  If they use our name, they should be paying US to use our listings. 

I joined the showcase program as an independent broker for a reasonable monthly amount.  After several months I upgraded my account for the benefit of the other brokers in my office.  I have been paying over $130 monthly with absolutely no return on my investment.  Nothing!!  I am the only real estate office that appears under 'office' in a good-sized metropolitan area and have received NOT ONE call as a result of that appearance.  Hence, I decided to end my affiliation after the TWO year commitment I had made.  In spite of being told that I was merely upgrading, NOT extending my contract with Realtor.com...I was automatically billed for an additional year.  Nothing I have done has succeeded in terminating this total waste of money.  I have cancelled the charge on my credit card, only to have it appear the next month.  Beware of false promises and lack of customer service.  Apparently www.move.com is the subcontractor and they are predatory to say the least.  I can't believe I pay dues to be subjected to this type of scam.  It's almost impossible for a client to find the 'realtor yellow pages' and use them efficiently.  I am very close to reporting their activities to the BBB.

I tried the realtor.com enhancement and banner for one year and by mistake got one sale out of it.

I decided to count my money and run.It was  like hitting a jack pot in Vegas ,I got my money back, learned from it and quit. 

I am open minded and try many things ,but if it does not bring me what I am sold ,I get out.

However I can immagine  realtor.com  might work for those realtors  in areas where potential buyers /sellers are using realtor.com a lot.

We all understand that print advertising is on the way out and are looking for alternatives, like the social networks .I have not found the Holy Grail ,but keep trying ,searching and learning.

There are still lots of customers  out there who don't particpate in Face book,Twitter  and don't have the time or interest to spend on the computer to read blogs or advertising sites like Graigs list.

About 10 months ago I advised our agents(100+) to buy the Realtor.com enhancements and it has pleased them all(see current stats chart*generated by Compete.com below with Trulia.com*+5.37%*,Activerain.com*-14.24%* & Realtor.com*+24.40%* compares). Just look at the chart and also pay close attention to the # of Referral Sites and the Search terms that get people to each of those sites....."Homes for sale" is the most common used on Google and others to find a listing site and Realtor.com in this list is the only 1 of the 3 that has it as a top way that consumers find their site.   In other words Realtor.com's SEO guys are doing their job well.

In Nov. I think it was Realtor.com made a big change and that change as you can see from the chart disrupted their traffic a bit but the changes all now in place are skyrocketing Realtor.com's traffic.  I am though no fan of Realtor.com just type my name into Google with REALTOR.COM and you will see that several years ago I got refunds for ALL our agents directly from Allan Dalton......BUT now because of their changes and changes in the marketplace it has become essential in our market to gain market share on our competitors who are very predictably dropping it in order to save a few $'s :). 

Few here seem to mention but the sellers first stop to find their listing is Realtor.com.  There is also no better listing tool than to show a potential listing our listing on Realtor.com(embedded video tour, featured tour, 20 pics and a special headline that I teach our agents to use that gets them calls on others listings as well as our own).  We can sink the naysayers on a competitive listing situaltion everytime. 

HOW IS REALTOR.COM GETTING THESE HUGE GAINS?  Much of the increase in these stats is an increase by Realtor.com in getting individual listings indexed by Google and other search engines more effectively than ever.

CO-MINGLING - There is also one more thing that plays in to these stats more an more especially as it relates to listings on the internet.  Realtor.com operates with a different set of rules than an MLS IDX site in that they can "co-mingle" listings and aren't limited in the # of listings they can return on a search.  Sure a consumer doesn't know what co-mingling is but what they do know is that if they go to Realtor.com they will often times get more "results" on the same search.  The reason is because Realtor.com can mix 2 different MLS's listings together in the same search result whereas unless the MLS is datasharing with another MLS the results are limited on the IDX site to that particular Boards listings.  This will play out big time in Realtor.com's favor as you can so plainly see from the chart below.  Consumers are becoming more savvy and aware. 

If I moved out of area I would use Realtor.com.....2 years ago I wouldn't have. 

The chart below shows a very obvious trend of consumers that unless some other site does something radically better I would expect by this time next year that Realtor.com's share of the markets traffic will be huge and Trulia, IDX sites, Activerain etc. will be nothing more than faint lights far below. 

Mark Passerby

Hi Fran-

I have to agree with the mass majority.  I have been a subscriber to the enhanced listings for about 4 or 5 years.  Have I ever gotten a sale from it?  NO!  Matter of fact, I only average 1-2 hits from realtor.com to my website.  While I agree that it is not worth the money in terms of closed deals, I will tell you that I feel it has helped me land the number of listings over the years.  I use it in my listing presentation and most sellers respond favorably.

I am considering letting it lapse this September when I am up for renewal, not sure yet.  In the meantime I have taken Sergio's idea of promoting my own website in the notes and on the title banner.  I will be curious to see if that increases my referral links to my site.

great post!

Realtor.com is a listing tool, simple as that.  They are overpriced yet as said above it is an evil albeit a possible necessary one.  And it's way too expensive.  They could easily bring the prices down which in turn would allow more agents to use their services.  I wish they would offer an ala carte service which would allow us to pay for the listing we want and not pay for the ones we don't.

There are numerous things I like about Realtor.com but there are many more that I don't.  Maybe just maybe one of these days they will figure it out and we'll all be better off because of it.

Always trying to seperate myself from everyone else, I signed up for the complete package and ordered everything that was possible.  After several months, I dropped everything except for the enhanced listing option.  I spent countless hours studying and learning the systems.  The only thing that worked was the ability to show on listing appointments, the enhanced listing option.  I did not have one decent lead from all my efforts and time spent on the system.

I produced far better results from following the advice of instructors such as Craig Proctor, Craig Forte and spending the money on direct mail postcards.

R.Com should be much, much less expensive and should not be able to use the name that WE PAY to keep in business.  The best thing about using the service from realtor.com is that it makes you look at your ad budget and track your results. 

R.com never again at those prices.

Realtor.com has always been a ripoff! They used to pay our MLS as a third party vendor but because a majority of the  public uses there site they have now gotten away with not paying for the information they receive from the MLSs. It is a shame that Realtors are charged so much for enhancements since we do belong to NAR. They will cut a deal with brokerages so the agents do not pay much to have their photos and information on their listings. We pay $90 a year plus $20 at the close of every listings. I know some agents are charged $200 or more for the same enhancement.

I've had both featured and showcase listings at one time or another and can attribute one deal to the additional cost.

I'm amazed with all the dislike towards realtor.com and NAR that nothing seems to be done about it.

Mike made some very good points. My success is driven by personal referrals and web sites. I have two well positioned personal sites. I don't regret a penny that I spend for them. I CAN also attribute sales to my enhanced listings on Realtor.com. The most interesting one was from a couple relocating from Boston. They had been extremely pleased with their agent there and the presentation of their home on Realtor.com.--so pleased that, when they looked for an agent here they went first to Realtor.com to find the agents who did for sellers what had been done for them when they sold their house. Their reasoning was that an agent who promotes properties well for sellers would probably work hard for buyers. Maybe not always sound reasoning, but they emailed me and then gave me my first conference call interview( in 24 years!) before they committed to me. They are happy in their new home and we consider ourselves friends.

Marilyn Robertson, Town & Country, Realty

When I first read the blog, I was in total agreement with you.  Thankfully I missed the meeting last week on "the social networking" that Realtor.com put on in our area.  I have been using the enhancement for several years and can't say I have ever gotten a lead.  But, I do have seller's who look for their home to be marketed there.  I have just recently drop the enhancements, but after the comments by Mark Passerby, I might re-think my decision.

Mary Lou Cherry

All in all, it all comes down to the ROI, doesn't it?  If R.com's high-priced enhancements provide an acceptable return, then it is worth it.  If it doesn't...dump it.  We are all business owners here - and the bottom line is the true indicator of value.

I don't believe R.com provides me an acceptable return for my investment, so I don't use it.  It really is that simple in my mind.

I agree -

They bill it as making yourself stand out.

The best way to do that is through your own website, and spend money on your listings there, so the few click throughs you get from REALTOR.com are worthwhile.

SEO, social networking (FaceBook, Twitter, Del.icio.us, YouTube) ALL outrank REALTOR.com enhancements, and they are free, other than time spent utilizing them!!

WOW!!! I have never seen such passion and consensus among REALTORS. Thanks Fran for midwifing it. :)

I guess between ActiveRain and REBarCamp.com, the real estate business WILL change for the better. First for the client, next for the agent, and of course brokers will make decent amount of money.

I signed up for enhanced listings on Realtor.com a few years ago for a few different reasons.  I know many consumers are (or were) using to search for homes, so I wanted more than just my office phone number and 1 picture on my listings!  It's almost blackmail, isn't it?  I also wanted to be able to show my sellers that my listings will stand out.  Anyway, a few months later our local mls included enhanced realtor.com for ALL listings.  So much for standing out on Realtor.com, but that's ok, I've got other ways of standing out.

Hi,

  I too, fell victim to R dot com in hopes of getting more exposure for my listings and as a result, getting leads.  The first year it cost me $125 a month.  This last year, it jumped to $300!!  The cost is based on the number of listings you carry for the year.  I only got two leads (which didn't turn into anything).  I think money is better spent on personal websites. Yes, websites.  More exposure...

    Back about 7 or 8 years ago it didn't cost anything to subscribe and they had a way to "reverse prospect" on the site.  You could go on and see different search results by areas searched, type up a short note and when the consumer logged on next, a pop-up who come up with your note.  I used to get a LOT of leads like that!  Funny what greed does...

After creating a realtor chat website located at www.americanagentonline.com  which is for realtors only, which allows the public to find and chat with realtors who are logged on at the time. I contacted realtor.com and NAR. I offered the service for freein the beginning and needed the help to allow all agents across american to learn about it. After being a realtor for over 21 years I figured that I would give something back to the industry for free. The NAR did not even want to help. They wanted me to give them $4,000 to place a link on their website. What kind of association is the NAR. Where were they when our industry ran amuck with unscrupulous lenders. I decided to cancel my membership after 21 years. To me, it is a waste of money altogether to be a member of the NAR. I have made millions in real estate through the years and none of it has ever been atributed to being a member of the NAR. They have become a joke!! 

If they cannot help a member of over 21 years give something to the industry for free then they are not worth being in existence. They are a waste of our money!!

Because of them, the only way to get the word out for American Agent Onlne was to charge per zip code. Like I said, it would have been free if not for the NAR. Please visit www.americanagentonlie.com and see if it will work for you! Thank you.

THATS   WWW.AMERICANAGENTONLINE.COM

SORRY!!

I completely disagree. Here's why Realtor.com's enhancements are necessary: They enable you to add more pictures and additional copy to your listings. When your listing is showcased, it stands out.  As long as the public uses Realtor.com to search for properties, it benefits your sellers to be there in a big way. I'm not talking about buying zip codes or anything. But, I really like the weekly tracking reports which I can forward to sellers.  In fact, I can use it to reduce the price of listings when they aren't selling. I can show them that, for example, 600 people viewed their home on Realtor.com but we had no showings for the week. It is compelling evidence that their listing might be overpriced.  I use the tracking reports on a regular basis.  However, in my neck of the woods, it is not customary to carry a huge load of listings so it isn't as expensive for me as it might be for others.  My biggest complaint is that Realtor.com fails to tell people they have an international site. In fact, I stumbled on it by accident!  Now, they promise to always include my listings on the site, but it took a bit of prodding. It doesn't cost anymore and I don't know why they don't promote it. The site is : www.worldproperties.com.

As a REALTOR and former REALTOR.COM account executive ( sales guy ) I can only say that its not the paintbrush its the hand that holds it. I've sold millions of dollars ( no joke ) worth of enhancements, featured homes, CMA, websites, banners and what every else was new and hot at the time to REALTORS all over the country and I've found that those that ACTIVLY use the tools get the wow factor from potential listing clients and are able to differentiate and build brand awareness on the site. Unfortunatly for most REALTORs there is not enough time in the day to do everything that they can with the products and systems. The secret to REALTOR.com is the rep that you're assigned to. Some of the Reps are highly skilled professional marketing hired guns who will show you every trick in the book just to get your business. There are 2 key factors. First is the audience and the eyeballs that they attract, This audience tends to be starting their search on the site and are not yet real estate educated, motivated and loyal enough to depend on as a potential lead unless they are calling on one of your listings and dont have an agent yet. Second is that MOST REALTORs do not want to buy WORK which is what is required to get the full benefits from their systems. If you are a big listing agents with tons of homes on the market the leads will naturally flow in off your properties and the price is well worth it otherwise your listinbgs and 20 photos are just lost in the crowd and the leads will be few and far between

My opinion only - I have several listings that are enhanced fully and my office participates in the office plan. My pesonal leads come mostly from search engines and new home buyer registrations on my website and blog.

Mary Lou that is a wise choice and here is some points to maximize the benefit.

1. Go to COMPETE.COM and enter 3 sites say Remax.com, C21.com and Realtor.com then "print" 
2. Print a Search Results Page from Realtor.com with one of your listings as one of the Ten results but be sure to do the points below first.
   
3. Use Realtor.com's FREE video upload system which by the way is encoded using a great company called Vidego....a top tier video provider/encoder.  This will put a "video" icon on the Search Results page.  Consumers over the coming months and year will pick those listings with videos out of the bunch.  The "video" is also very sticky and if done right can capture a buyer for 3-5 minutes.  
   
4. If possible do a regular tour or have your video tour company link up the video tour also as Featured Tour.  This will give your listing 2 icons on the Search Results Page.....1) A featured tour icon  2) A video tour Icon
5. Upload 20+ Pictures....the new Realtor.com rewards the great photographer grandly and your seller will love and refer you to friends
6. In the Headline put "Contact (your name) at (your phone#)  stay away from cheesy headlines like "this immaculate home is blah blah blah.....what you want is a phone call from that Search Results Page even if they are calling on another listing from that page :)
7. Also be sure to explain on a listing presentation how the recent downturn has driven many agents in your area to save money by neglecting to market their listings properly on the #1 Real Estate Search site in the world and oh by the way here is my listing on Realtor.com and some others in the area..."here I will leave this on top with you".  You are there not only to win but also to leave a serious impression that you know your local market and that you can get their home sold in a very tough market. 
8. Remember most importantly time is money.  In business and especially in Blogging circles opportunity cost(the cost of what you do verses what that same amount of time could yield do something else) is the most unspoken, understated and expensive cost of them all.  Those agents that leverage their time effectively and use tools that work and that require less of "their" direct effort and time will have the "truest" and best ROI. ......so find a tour company that can do the video tour and featured tour thing on Realtor.com as part of their service........find an assistant or job it out so that someone else can upload your pictures and update your headline on Realtor.com $4 or $7 per listing.  Because 20 minutes of a $100k or $150k agents time has a very large opportunity cost.  If your listing load is smaller you may have the time to do some of the Realtor.com updates yourself but don't do it during normal business hours instead use that time to contact new business, and past clients.
9. other than time spent utilizing them!! - this is from an earlier post above...and is example of the inability or unwillingness of agents to calculate "oppotunity cost". 
   

An understanding and instinctive nature of opportunity cost is what sets apart a Top Producer from the legions of low producers.

Realtor.com a year ago was not a good investment.......now it is. 

Things change and leaders emerge.....statistics like my chart above in an earlier post to this blog reveal the leaders and the changes in the market.  They represent true "behind the curtain" facts about traffic and consumer trends. 

Mark Passerby
Founder of HDhat.com & RE/MAX Real Estate Professionals tech/marketing person for 8+ years

I'm sorry to hear about the waste of time, but thanks for sharing with us and saving us money and time.  At one point, I was going to sign us as well but now I'm glad that I haven't.  I think the common census in Jacksonville is that it does not increase your chances of capturing a buyer or selling a listing quicker.  I just stick to my website and sell an extra 2-3 buyers a year. Good luck!

Thank you to all of you who have commented.  We are running at less than 5% who think realtor.com has any merit. 

I am happy for those of you who feel it is worth the expense.  As in all things, there are differing opinions.  FOR THE AMOUNT OF MONEY it takes to enhance listings, realtor.com does not seem to make sense to over 95% of respondees to this blog.  Put that same amount of money in your own website and see what happens... you will be glad you did.

I have consistently been one of the top five agents in my market and can not attribute ANY of that business to realtor.com. As I stated in the post, I spent more on enhancing realtor.com listings than I do on my website and for IDX, which is ludicrous considering I belong and pay dues to N.A.R. My website pays for itself and therein deserves the money that is being wasted at realtor.com. 

As for the comment that we may not get the results because we do not properly enhance, I don't think that 130+ agents (respondees to this post) ALL DO NOT KNOW HOW TO PROPERLY ENHANCE THEIR LISTINGS.  It ain't rocket science.

Thank you again for stopping by,

Like many others in earlier posts, I subscribed to Realtor.com's enhanced listing service to placate a specific seller with a pricey property.  (I didn't have much success with the service several years before and was reluctant to try it again.)  There were very few e.mail or phone responses received by me. When it came time to renew the service, I didn't (renew it).  Too costly for the meager results.

Three years ago I subscribed to a membership with Realtor.com.  The leads were so unrealistic I had to use an attorney on my Pre-Paid Legal Services membership to get out of their contract. They continued to debit my checking account twice each month (paying double) and it was a big fight to get a refund.  Once I engaged the attorney at Pre-Paid Legal Services they ran scared and tried to hide behind their legal counsel. It took weeks to get paid back and they only paid my partailly with an excuse.   I would never use them again.

Hi Fran, Unless you have big bucks to throw out the window, there are many Free or near free sites that get just as good or better results. I have recently built a National lead generation website for Realtors that allows Free advertising for brokers and their listings, Free Referral Network, and for as low as only $5.95 per month Agents could own the MLS search link for their town exclusively! Check it out at http://www.HomeSeekerUSA.com   Good Luck!

Hi Fran,

The bait and switch seminar came to the east coast too. I did not attend. They have a habit of doing this. I hate love seminars where they tell you "you should blog" with no further explanation.

As far as Realtor.com, I can directly attribute a pretty significant portion of leads generated by certain types of properties to leads that came from Realtor.com. It depends on what types of listings you have.

Good for you for encouraging people to rethink how advertising money is spent. It took more than 5 years of discussion about newspaper advertising to really see people start to change old habits and stop wasting money. It seems to be happening faster in the online world. I guess the key is to analyze the money you spend and make sure you're getting a return from it.

Fran,
Of course the irony is that greater success and ROI to the 5% comes from the increasing pullback of the 95%.  That irony will be ever so more magnified by the increased traffic that Realtor.com is now getting.  We absolutely love the 95%......in the marketing world you are the marker of where to move the marketing dollar......i.e. to sites with rapidly growing traffic and less or diminishing competition.  :)

However, with that said I also have exceptions I can quote of agents who I work for who have never used or ever will use Realtor.com and they do fine....in fact these same agents don't blog, don't care about their website nor even know if they have one, nor do they do tours and seldom put more than 1 picture in the MLS.  In fact one didn't even own a computer literally till 3 weeks ago and outsells 90% of our MLS.  These same agents are in the Top 10% in Dollar Volume in our entire 1000+ member Board.    

More importantly.......these "exceptions" because of their "style" of building their business through the years has given these "no tech" agents a higher NET PROFIT than every agent in our MLS.  Net of course being what buys their boat and the 2nd home. This "style" won't work for most agents but it does for them.

Not every agent though can be these "exceptions" nor is Realtor.com or blogging(if everyone blogged heavily the law of diminishing returns would reveal its ugly head as well there)  etc. for everyone.....but Realtor.com in my opinion because of the pullback of others, and an increase in Realtor.com's traffic does represent a great place to put ad dollars.    

Mark
www.hdhat.com

Fran, I agree with you. I also suckered into attending this sell presentation under the guise of a "Social Networking Tools" presentation. There are a lot of ways that we all can get more exposure for our listings or satisfy the most demanding sellers and I don't think the Realtor.com option is either the best or the most cost effective.

Thanks for sharing this information with all of us. It appears that the subject definitely touched a nerve.

A couple years ago I decided to try the featured homes position on realtor.com and within a week, a tech savvy young man called me off it to list his TWO homes for sale at the same time just because I occupied that position on realtor.com I sold one of his homes and he decided to keep the other, I got a sign call off the home to list another on the same street, I sold that home, garnered at least 5 or more buyers from that home being marketed, got ANOTHER seller calling me because of the realtor.com featured home, got about 3 or 4 more buyers off that marketing. I have now been in that neighborhood for over 18 months.

I'd say that it IS expensive to have, but my listings have had MORE than 200,000 CLICK thrus just last month on the featured homes spot.

I'd say that my expenditure garnered me about 30fold profit on what I spent on it in the past 2 years.

YOU DO have to do more work, you do have to insert the photos and captions and all the other whistles, but I do get 1-3 calls or emails per month off the thousands of impressions, I'd say my face got out there.

BUT I also disagree with the fact that Realtor.com IS the reason why WE as Realtors cannot use the word Realtor anywhere but after our name...and Homestore IS owned by the NAR, they SAY that Homestore owns the copyright to OUR title, we DO pay dues and I AM tired of the riffraffy stuff they say and make Realtors think they ARE crooks if they thought about using the Realtor word with a geographic connotation even though we are one........YIKES! slap my mouth...

Hi Fran

Thank  you for your post!
We use realtor.com and don't quantify the results. We use market snapshots for listing leads and get lots of them. I am sure the service more than pays for itself. However I will keep track of it in the future.

Kieran

Fran,

Thanks for the thought provoking post!  Last year, I was sold a banner ad on REALTOR.com which cost me dearly.  It was suppose to give me a big edge in Davenport, IA Real Estate.  As with many marketing venues, it's difficult to tell where people get your name.  Since starting the ad, the only real difference that I have seen is the void in my checking account. 

Last week, my first call came as a direct result of that banner ad.  These people are moving to Davenport, Iowa with a job at John Deere.  They got on REALTOR.com to search for listings and clicked on my ad.  After an hour long phone call, they have decided to use me as their Buyer's Agent.

I'm sure that the increased exposure has helped solidify other clients of mine but this is the first documented direct lead that I have received from it.

Thanks again for the post!

Lucky :)   

Fran,

As "Meatloaf" said, "You took the words right out of my mouth!" I have had this debate in my head for over 5 years. I strongly feel Realtor.com should be a benefit to NAR not an added expense. I do pay for enhanced listings and my costs doubled this year because listing inventory is up. Crazy cause most of us are not making double the money. My sellers expect to see their homes on Realtor.com or I would SO not pay for it. You said you get about 1 lead a month. I get about 1 a quarter. I find that interesting because I get plenty of hits. Thank you so much for posting this and reaffirming what I have been thinking.

By the way, I am now following you on twitter. I am @oohDonna. If you looking for a great Social Media event check out Real Estate Bar Camps (#rebcphl this week.) I just attended one in Charlotte. Zillow, Altos, Seo, Active Rain and a lot of other amazing people were there. www.REBarCamp.com

Most of the Social Networking phenomenon is free and a lot of fun. I feel it is kind of like 5 years ago when hardly any agent had websites and now most do. This is where the business is going.

Thanks again for your post.

~Donna

I too believe that NAR and Realtor.com abuse their members and customers like they are animals in a factory farm. Besides the ludicrous fees, they are constantly dreaming up new designations that everyone must have (and pay pay pay for) in order to be 'succesful'. The Realtor.com enhancements are only useful as a listing tool - for an agent to show that they 'do more' for their Seller. Fact is - it makes no difference - and Realtor.com knows it and still plays this for all it is worth.

I have found Realtor.com works less and less each year. I had a website four featured homes at $1,000 each showcase and enhanced listings and made no sales from it for three years. I was paying them almost $6,000 per year. The featured home started off with four spots in my zip code.  You could by two at less than $200 each. The next year they were $1,000 each. Then they went from four to eight featured homes in my zip at $1,000 each you could buy four. I found that if someone is searching for a $150,000 home it does not help you to have a $400,000 home on the page for them to look at.

They constantly dilute your exposure. The featured agent program seems the worst. I checked in on it it cost a fortune. You are put in a rotation to come up first when someone does a search. The problem is that they give you a large area, so large that I do not even know how to drive to some of the towns that I would show up as the local expert. Just think you get a call from a customer about a listing in a town you have never been to. How are you going to have a intelligent conversation with the buyer?

My broker now has the enhanced listing package for the office. I add a virtual tour for each of my listings. I can track where my tours are viewed they are hardly ever looked at on Realtor.com.

We finally gave up Realtor.com this year when they wanted us to renew. Paid them lots of money over the years. Felt that you HAD to be part of it. Then the light went on...they were not increasing our business, and the fees just continue to go up. Better to spend our money in other areas...thanks for being honest about Realtor.com...

Thanks Fran and very well written. It's nice to see somebody who measures so well! I totally agree with you on the $ spent versus return received with REALTOR.com. I'd rather save the enhancement budget for blog sites that really deliver traffic.

I'm so glad that I'm not the ONLY one who feels this way about Realtor.com! 

We purchased Realtor.com as a company and each agent payed his share and it was less than $100 a year for each agent.  As a solo agent I was paying almost $40 a month,  so this was a big savings and it allowed the agent who has very few listings to participate and the agent who  carries alot of listings to belong at a very low price.

To me the money, $100 a year is absolute peanuts!  That's a 2inch by 3 inch ad in our local paper. 

Like so many agents in these comments,  Realtor.com is a listing tool.  Sellers like it and it helps to justify our listing fees. 

I was supposed to go to one of those seminars just last week.  The emails were just as you said and sounded really interesting.  At last minute, I was tipped off that it would just be a sales pitch for realtor.com and opted not to go.  Glad to hear that I didn't waste my time.

Great post, great opinions, great information shared by all.

I was also contacted by realtor.com to become one of 20 agents in my locality. They wanted $20,000 per year to appear on the banners that popped up around the listings in my small city. I called an agent in Lake Tahoe to ask him how his experience was going. He told me that he wasted $20,000!  He had signed a contract for the locality and never received one call in 6 months. I am glad I researched the deal before signing the contract and giving realtor.com $20,000!!!

You hit on a very hot topic. How to spend your marketing dollar?

I haven't seen any results from Realtor.com.

At least someone is profiting from all the money us agents are spending.

I too used to subscribe to the enhanced features at realtor.com however have decided to alter my advertising dollars elsewhere. I used the feature properties options which I was told would increase traffic dramatically. I never saw any increase in business in the entire 4 years we used their system.

We too attended the workshop as they called it andit was nothing more than a pitch session for their products. The prices have increased dramatically over the years and we have never not once could track back a client or anything that closed to realtor.com.

We decided in the beginning to use their systems because we THOUGHT it would make a difference in our listings or to be more direct perhaps offer it in our listing presentation as yet another feature we do. What we thought and what was reality was that people didn't care. They were more focused on the entire picture rather than whether or not we were paying HUGE amounts of money to showcase or offer enhanced visibility of their properties. All we ever received from our clients after showing them the reports were questions asking why hasn't it sold then?

All in all, realtor.com isn't a bad thing, just way over priced. I can say this simply, from a results oriented perspective, it isn't worth it. There are many other applications / means to enhance our own listings that have shown results.

I have the showcase enhancement package.  I received about 4 to 8 leads a month from it and they are not that great.  Most of them are already working with an agent and just want more info from you.  However a seller did call me because she saw that I had a listing in her area.  I listed two Condo's for her and one of them sold in the first week and we are closing the next one on June 8th. Its Time for me to renew with Realtor.com and last time I talked to my AE with realtor.com she was telling me I had to pay $2800 for the year.  I'm not to sure if I will renew that crazy amount.  That's over $200 dollars a month.. I think not!!

I have used them with zero results........Consumers have a "misguided" notion that Realtor.com is the exposure to have.....Myspace was once king.....Now facebook is the new thing.   Realtor.com's day in the sun may be over and no longer the best method for marketing.  As agents become more and  more tech saavy, other agent communities will evolve and do it better, just like having a "National" MLS is needed versus all the local "rice bowl" MLS throughout the country - then we will really serve the consumer/client.   NAR needs to provide this stuff for free.....or they will go the route of Woolworths and Kmart.  

Realtor.com has been a creepy company since the beginning when they chose to do the automatic billing of credit cards for annual billing.  They never had faith enough in their service people would want to pay for more than once.  At one point our entire board banned them from our data because they made our directors so mad with the inaccuracies in their data. It's a shame they're still able to stay in business.

Dear Fran and Group,

I was just looking into enhancing some listings.  I guess I will hold off for now and look to another avenue.

Kathy

I have been using both the enhanced listings and featured homes spots on Realtor.com for several years.  Whether it works for you depends on what your expectations are.  If you are expecting thousands of phone calls from unrepresented buyers that you can convert to clients or sellers who call you and say come list my home because I want to be in a featured home spot on this site, don't waste your money.  However, if you care about your client's listing exposure sincerely and really want to maximize the exposure of their property on the most heavily used consumer web site then it is well worth the money.  When I decide whether to do any paid advertising for my listings on a particular site, I look at the volume of traffic that the site receives.  Agents too often focus on the benefits to them rather than the benefits to their clients and the two are not always in sync.  Many agents view a listing simply as a great buyer lead generator for them and focus most of their attentions on maximizing the amount of buyer leads they get from the listing and if the house sells before the listing expires that is a bonus.  Others sincerely want to sell their clients home.  So, before you decide whether a particular form of advertising is worth the money, decide what your expectations are for the outcome.

York County Pennsylvania here!

I have never paid a dime to Realtor.com, yet I get most of my business from the internet as well as  my primary website, and the rest comes from my participation at ActiveRain and good old fashion networking.

Realtor.com has got to be the highest ration vs leads compare to all the other ones. . This is not a national study. .this is mine one. . after $1200 of yearly fees. . the number of leads I got form them for the whole year is equal to what I get in ONE WEEK using FREE Craiglist 

I have used realtor.com products for over ten years.  I use the Showcase listing enhancements and Featured Home as listing tools to show sellers what I do that others in the marketplace do not do.  My marketplace has always been a huge relocation destination so I have gotten buyer leads from out-of-towners who start their home search with realtor.com because they know the brand.  In fact, I just sold a home to out-of-towners who called me about one of my featured listings.  I rarely find locals who use realtor.com in my marketplace.  But then, we have a regional MLS with all the listings so local company websites will give locals all the information they want.

All in all, I would say that realtor.com has been worthwhile to me over the years, helping me get listings and bringing me some buyers.  Pricing can be a problem if you carry a lot of listings.  That is one thing that realtor.com should work on so that the pricing doesn't drive the heavy listing agents off the site.

Hi Fran,

I just sent this communication to REALTOR.com: 

Greetings!

I am a member of a Real Estate team that participates in enhanced listings with REALTOR.COM.  We have been discussing, recently, due to the financial climate in our industry right now, which of our marketing efforts are producing the most leads for us and which are not... comparing of course to the cost involved and ROI.  We feel, as a team, that our leads from REALTOR.COM have decreased substantially in the past year since we have been doing these enhancements that were supposed to increase visibility and leads.

I ran across this blog post on Active Rain.... looks like we definitely are not alone in our assessment of REALTOR.COM.  I thought I would share it with you in hopes that it might effect some changes in your company ... to put the REALTOR back in REALTOR.com!


Here is a link to the blog post:

 http://activerain.com/blogsview/1088988/are-realtor-com-enhancements-worth-the-money-

Not sure if REALTOR.com will respond, but will let all of you know if they do!

My subscription just expired on my enhanced listings. I am getting calls everyday to renew. While they do make your listings stand out on their site, I cannot atribute one sale or even lead from them while my listings were enhanced. I am not rushing to return their call.

Fran, you are right!

In the past 10 years I have (still do) paid for Realtor.com enhancements as well as advanced showcase and it did not pay off.

I get a lot of internet calls and emails, bit they come from advertising my listings in 15-20 Real Estate sites. Most of my business comes from repeat clients & personal referrals. We all forget that our listings will ALWAYS be on Realtor.com even without paying extra. I am considering using that $$ on other avenues to market my listings.

What I find disturbing is when REALTORS say " I got my money back". If all you want to do is get your money back I have a better plan. Put your money in a drawer, wait a year, then take it out again. You then have your money back.

I will say one more time, there is more money made selling TO REALTORS than there is selling real estate.

Wow, a great discussion here. 

My office provides enhanced listings for all our listings.  Since I don't pay for it directly, I haven't done the cost benefit.  I do like the enhanced listings because I do a lot of photos and individual property websites, and there is no additional charge for the links, etc.  I know that consumers troll Realtor.com heavily so I do believe that I need all the photos there.  Hopefully, they then have their Buyer Agent call for a showing. But I don't really have stats on that.

What concerns me more is allowing FSBO's on Realtor.com.  I am just startiong to see this.  If NAR undercuts us members on this point (and they are if they allow FSBO's on Realtor.com), they will ultimately put themselves out of business.   They are taking away a major reason to join NAR.  They just don't know it yet.

I think it is more of a listing tool than anything else. Sellers always want to see more more more when it comes to their homes. Most listing agents will push Realtor.com hard in my area because they arte still #1 in traffic.

Fran Great post.  You stirred a hornets nest.  Many Realtors seem to hide and refuse to make adverse comments about the hallowed Realtor name and trdemar,  I for one am somewhat of a non conformists.  I have read most of the comments and find that I agree that Reltor.com is a sham organization backed by another sham organization NAR.  I made a post a while back questioning the value of NAR, and received one response which was to rebuke me and tell me how great NAR iis.

If you think about it, NAR is much like the teamsters union or the auto workers union, where the union takes the dues from the workers and spends it on whatever agenda they have, in many cases supporting politicians that I sometimes disagree with, but we as Realtors have no say in how our dues are spent. 

Just read the NAR newsletters and the monthly magazine.  Look at all the advertising.  Most of the advertising is for gimmicks and rip-off's.  Craig Proctor is among the most advertised.  Talk about an expensive seminar, with dubious ROI.  If programs like this are so good, why not stick to selling real estate and forget the seminar.  Not just Craig Proctor, but all these people who are willing to give you their secrets in exchange for your money.

Even with the Internet and other high tech innovations, selling can still be boiled down to the basics, Good service, Personality, Friendliness, Referalls, etc. 

Stan Cobb Savannah GA

From day one, I have always wondered why the #1 real estate website in thw world needs to use telemarketing to push their product.  The fact that I have to pick up a TELEPHONE to order a WEB-BASED service tells me just how clueless the powers that be at Realtor.com are.  Their presence on Facebook and Twitter is virtually non-existent.  Bottom line.......Realtor.com does not have a clue how to engage with agents; only how give them the sales-pitch.

Tina in Virginia

Please excuse the spelling errors in my previous post.  I thought I would have a chance to review it prior to actually posting it.  Henceforth I will be more precise and also use the spell checker.

Stan Cobb Savannah, GA

I have to agree, Realtor.com's interests are definatly not in line with members interests. The prices charged are not in proportion to the activity delivered. I have also noticed their courses really are tailored to what the hot button topic is of the time, although delived 6 months late. Their charges for courses if they came with a money back guarantee would not make any money. Perhaps I'm tech savvy enough to see the truth about the emperor's new clothes.

I really would like to see their justification (hard data) on what they call leads, hits & views. My company pays for the Realtor.com enhanced package, so I don't feel the pinch of paying it's costs as directly as those who pay month to month directly. I'd really like to see NAR seek out bids from competitors to run the Realtor.com site to see if they could really deliver a value added product over the current Move.com's offerings.

Personally I think Realtor.com needs a ground up re-work. Re-evaluate everything. From blogging, to social networking integration, syndication, mobile apps., online tools etc. Remove all ads from re-sellers/lead generation companies and companies that truly aren't assisting or inline even with NAR policies.

The leadership of NAR seems to also be out of step with the fundamental idea of what an association is supposed to be. Our ability to market our services & properties for our principals. Realtor.com truly has the potential to be a one stop shopping experience but it isn't now and without major revisions will continue to not be.

Realtor.com is a parasite in our industry.

Realtor.com is owned by Home store

Google the phrase

Home Store Executives sentenced

Fran Thanks for your post.  I hope NAR will read your post.  I can understand there would be some features that should be paid extra for but a picture and a telephone number when you pay your dues should be a no brainer.

Karen Harrison, Remax of Orange Beach

Dear Fran,

I can honestly say that the enhanced version of Realtor.com is definitely money well spent!  I have had this enhancement for the past 5 years and I can attribute much business from both buyers and sellers from the site. 

80% of buyers and sellers look on the Internet first.  This is fact!  Without the enhancement, you have minimal pictures, perhaps one, someones name/brokerage next to your listing and in small letters, perhaps your brokers information and yours.  Not the way that I want my listings to be seen.

But, there are many other factors in terms of marketing.  There is blogging on sites like Active Rain or social networking on sites such as LinkedIn, Trulia, Zillow, and more.  Many of the testimonials that are written on my LinkedIn site are past clients, some of which I first met on Realtor.com.  So, it is the whole package and for me, the enhancement on Realtor.com is only one aspect of my aggressive marketing campaign.

Please contact me if you have any questions reagrding my success stories about Realtor.com

Sincerely,

Frank Dolski

Coldwell Banker Hearthside Realtors Lahaska, PA

I am very glad to know the "FREE Seminar" was what I expected it to be.

Fran,

Just submitted this email to NAR:

Following is a link to a blog post on Active Rain regarding REALTOR.com and how a large percentage of REALTORS  feel about the company and NAR's involvement with it.  After reading it, I'm sure that you will agree.... improvements and reorganization can and should be made!  REALTORS  are calling on NAR for support with this issue.

Post link:

http://activerain.com/blogsview/1088988/are-realtor-com-enhancements-worth-the-money-

If NAR really cared about the agents and brokers who get the listings we would ALL have enhanced listings on their (our) product Realtor.com.

Fran,

Good post.  I like how you tell how it is.  I agree with you and the others regarding the lack of value in Realtor.com.  They have been trying to sell me for a long time now.  I'm glad I never let them sell me on it.  On a similar note, I think designations are a scam as well.  You know, the ones you have to pay yearly for.  Do you pay yearly to be able to say you have a college degree?  I took the courses necessary to get my ABR, before I realized that there was a yearly fee associated with it.  Once I found that out, I was instantly turned off by it.  Sadly, I think that greed controls most of our associations as well.  Thanks for the post.

Thanks so much for your post and speaking out about Realtor.com. I totally agree with your comments. We should get more from Realtor.com via NAR but we don't. The cost for Realtor.com does not justify itself. Like you, I learned the hard way.

I had Realtor.com showcase enhancements for a year during 2007.  Cost was just over $3000.  What a rip off.  Like you, I could not attribute even one buyer or seller lead directly to Realtor.com.  And I maintained no less than 50 active listings at any given time during that period. 

When it came time to renew, the sales rep called me no less than 10 times begging me to renew.  I had my assistant politely tell them no several times, but they wouldn't give up.  Finally I took the phone call from the sales rep and asked him to justify why I should pay Realtor.com so much money for basically zero solid leads.  He tried quoting me all these statistics about how many hits my listings get on their website, how shocked he was that I didn't get at least a few good leads from it, etc.  It really sounded to me like the sales rep was trying to justify the existence of NAR as opposed to how he could get me more real leads from his website.

The amazing thing is that by just doing a little blogging on Activerain and few times a week, I get more solid leads in a 2 week period than I did in a whole year with Realtor.com. 

I have used Realtor.com since its inception.  I have the basic enhancements.  In the early years I had 3 or 4 Featured homes spots.  The price at the time was minimal because they were in "outlying" areas of my state and no one else had them.  The price of these Feature home spots skyrocketed a few years ago.  Since it was impossible to track if these spots brought buyers to my listings, I dropped them.  Recently, I have been approached by Realtor.com to pick up the Feature homes spots again.  I have politely told them that I felt the whole thing is extortion.  It seemed to me that if the popularity of this stuff went up and additional Feature home spots were added (there used to be only 4 spots...now there are 8 in one of the zip codes) the prices should come down.  I guess I was very wrong.  What once cost me $1400 had escalated to $3000!  And with no way to track the results!  I also did the Banner and Skyscraper with no trackable results.  When I first got involved with Realtor.com, there were no other sites to advertise listings on the internet.  Realtor.com was the only "kid on the block."  I did get a few leads every year back  then. Not anymore!  My own Mls has a great public site.  I find many of the potential buyers in my market area are there...not on Realtor.com.  My own website and other avenues that I use on the internet bring me more business than Realtor.com.  Since my company picks up the cost of having pictures and I only pay $99/year to have my photo and contact info on the site, I will at least keep that.  It's a Listing tool. The rest, as I said before, is complete extortion!

I get a couple of emails a year.  But, I have to say that I have a great Realtor.com representative, Arthur Melendez, who calls me from time to time to check in and give tips on how to make the enhancements work better.  Sarah Rummage in Nashville

The best "enhancement" the NAR could make is to fire its economists.  Addition by subtraction.  They do no favors for their members or the general public. The NAR threw fuel on the fires of irrational exuberance, and the lazy mainstream media bought it all.  The excellent post here and the related comments indicate that maybe it is time for an alternative trade association.

I also attended the seminar and saw several agents sign up for the programs. I need to call them to see how it has been working in our area. Thanks for you post it is great to have so many opinions.

Thank You Fran,

Realtor.com is nothing more than our own organization taking advantage of the opportunity to advertise a product for PROFIT to a select group of people, they call us members.  Oh golly gee!!!!  What a JOKE. 

I have also been victim of the FEATURED SPOT, and ENHANCED LISTINGS.  I can say, it did what the salesman told me.  All I needed was one sale to pay for it.  Well, I got that ONE sale, that barely covered my expense, but the ROI just isn't worth it. 

I ask:  How is it that a guy like me, with some understanding of internet sales and a really small advertising budget can outplace and posistion my website above REALTOR.com? 

Every time I hear that someone went to a FREE Seminar and found it to be a sales pitch I think DUH.  Most free events are worth exactly what we pay for them.  I for one would like to see REALTOR.com and NAR spend some of our money actually advertising the site.  I have yet to see a print or TV ad for REALTOR.com Here's my suggestion, let's all try this for a month, ask how many of the people that call you email you if they have visited REALTOR.com then we will see if there is any brand recognition for the site at all.

Pressure, we need pressure.

Pressure your local Board to tell NAR that we want this as part of our dues.

Let them cut the fat, have virtual conventions, reprioritize.

I would like to see NAR do more lobbying, increase web presence for members and sell the fancy building.  That is NOT what is important to our members.

Agree?  Disagree?  Please comment.

Fran:

Excellent, well-reasoned post...and I agree with your views.

I cover "what works & what doesn't" in my national tech seminars and in the CRS 206 technology courses I teach.  When covering the three types of Web sites available to agents, I do a survey in every class asking two questions:

• How many of you have a Realtor.com site?
• How many of you who have a Realtor.com site are making money with it?

Fran - very interesting post. I've been using the listing enhancement at R.com for years, also had(ve) few featured spots. After one of the similar "seminars" couple years ago I was sold to banner Ad and Featured CMA, which I was wise enough to cancel. I don't complaint about listing enhancement at all. Having a very good working relationship with my account manager and being a multiple-product user helped me a lot in negotiating the prices and conditions. However more likely, I will keep listing enhancement and get rid of featured spot as ROI of feature is ridiculous. I see a very decent traffic driven to my web site from my enhanced listings though.

Regarding NAR's position on Realtor.com I would suggest granting listing enhancement to all REALTORS(R). The reason is simple. Fran, you are right that all listings from MLS go directly to R.com. Thanks to DOJ all licensees regardless membership in NAR can become the members of MLS today. Unfortunately, we do not have exact statistics about how many non-REALTORS(R) are in our MLS. Wouldn't it be the best promotion of REALTORS(R) by NAR if our members' listings were enhanced free of charge and non-member listings were regular by default and being able to enhance for fee?

Fran - thanks for the great blog on this subject.  I was with Coldwell Banker and paid over $1000 a year to have my listings enhanced.  When I joined a brand new Keller Willaims office (White Plains, NY)  the Realtor.com people enticed us with a very low number for the office because we had few listings at a nice savings.  But we have grown rapidly and  this year we carry 350 listings and they wanted to charge us $13,000 - it came to about $30 per listing per month.  Our agent leadership council in the office is in this dilemma - do we not force the agents and charge them monthly or make it an individual decision (which will cost more)?  Our office philosophy is "lead with revenue" and many agents do not feel the leads we get from this site are any greater than the free sites like Zillow, Trulia, and active rain.  The office asked me to study realtor.com stats.  Does anyone know if there is a way to see what percentage of the market they have in my area, Westchester County NY?  Even the latest national stats would be helpful.  I used to have a slide in my listing presentation that said 86% of the traffic was realtor.com (of course, they gave me the slide!) I am sure it is significantly lower now.  PS I put a rental listing on the market and got several inquiries right away from realtor.com so I do believe on the lower end properties it works.

Ditto. Everything.  Realtor.com enhancements are like a complete waste of money...as are many other Enhamcement products out there. I have so stopped spending what a friend of mine calls "Stupid Money" completely! 

It's all about the signs, baby! 

aLSO, harpen your property descriptions, show tons of photos on your web site and MLS, be a bloggosaurus, network like a politician, and the leads will come.

Trust me.

And Happy Summer everyone!

Not only is Realtor.com too expensive for what you get......the salemen are overbearing

calling every week, even with a firm NO. 

I'm constantly considering my advertising costs and considerting "what works and what doesn't".  After two years advertising with Realtor.com, I'm still a fan.  I pay a little less than $100 a month for enhanced listings and two "Featured Home" listings.  Last year, I can atttribute 1.6 million dollars worth of sales from the "Featured Home/Showcase" leads (which are more expensive than the enhancements).  The leads produced two customers who purchased this amount of property.  For what I spend a year on realtor.com (approx $1200), the investment was absolutely worth it.  Not to mention, seller's feel great about having their listings featured and I'm able to send statistics to them so they can see how many "hits" their property has had. 

In my opinion, The Real Estate Book, which is the publication most often read and distributed in my town is not worth the money.  It's one of those advertising costs I can't seem to cut ($200-300 per month).  It seems to be "necessary" in my town.  But I sure wish I could get away from it. 

Dear Fram,

I totally agree with your commentary.

I had a very negative experience with one of their reps a couple years ago as I enquired about one of their programs. One of the questions I had was if he could give me the name of maybe two or three Realtors I could call to check how the service worked for them, how effective it was, etc. and he would not even give me one name!!! He simply told me that would not work.Unbelievable! As we spoke further, red flags were flying in front of my eyes, and I had started the process of signing up as we started our conversation, so at one poit I told him I didn't want to proceed, didn't want to subscribe to the program, only to learn he would not stop the process and cancel the request right away. This all happened during the same phone call!

It took me months to get them to cancel, numerous calls to the credit card company, numerous calls to them. The people I spoke with at Realtor.com sales department were testy, pushy, uncultured, rude...I'm running out of adjectives. I felt I didn't have anybody to complain to, anyone who would rectify the situation promptly. Certainly the Golden Rule we so much stand for, was not in their  minds, very disappointing and outright agravating. The only reason they exist at all is because we exist and thanks to us, they get the blood they require to live: our hard earned listings!

These days, with all that's happening on the market, all sorts of unnecessary services are constantly bombared and offered to us at a cost, of course.  I've developed a thick skin by now to disect and analyze anything that comes along and look at whether it makes business sense to subscribe, whether it would benefit my clients.

Thanks to the evolution of social networks like Activerain as well as so many other available portals where we can effectively market our properties and services, we have choices.

Hi Fran! 

You are absolutely right on!  I was actually going to blog about the same very thing after having received a call from a Realtor.com representative the other day.  However, you beat me to the punch! 

The representative actually asked me if I wanted to PAY to be the lead agent of ten in my area to receive ALL THE BUYER AND SELLER LEADS IN MY AREA.  I was floored! Pay for leads!  I already pay for an enhanced package and have for years!  At first, (about 10 years ago) we received a steady flow of good solid leads.  Some of which did turn into sales.  Somewhere along the line (about 2 years ago) they changed their format and our leads have dropped to next to nothing!!!!  It seems quite odd based on all the traffic they show each listing receiving each day/week. Now I think I know where they are going...they are now selling them!!!!

I am outraged! Now to find out that NAR has some affiliation with them.  I say we ALL BOYCOTT Realtor.com!!!!! What would they do then, if we all canceled our memberships?...Ha!

My team's office administrator Wendy Herdon sent your blog link and all the responses to Realtor.com.  Let's see when and if they even respond. I will make sure she sends it to NAR as well.

Mark my words, I will be contacting NAR about this matter with Realtor.com, as well as their lack of support and action regarding Short Sale Reform. Something definitely needs to be done. We pay more than enough in dues that we should have an association who looks out for our best interest.  They should also be providing us with the tools and support that we need in this ever changing and more difficult market.  Agents all over the country are floundering and the support just isn't there.

Sorry to have gone off on a tangent from Realtor.com to Short Sale Reform...but that is my big soap box these days which I feel needs some immediate attention and support from NAR! 

Excellent blog on Realtor.com and unless Realtor.com changes and we start seeing some leads, I would have to say that I DON"T THINK IT"S WORTH THE MONEY WE PAY! THEY BETTER START "SHOWING ME THE LEADS"...OR MY TEAM IS OUT! 

Gina M. Serena P.A. / Team Leader for The Serena Group at Keller Williams of Manatee / Florida

Totally agree...use Point2homes for your first and last website and watch the leads come in. I couldn't believe how hard sell the salesman was for Realtor.com when I didn't want to renew.

REALTOR.com is operated by Move.com, formerly homestore.com, and not actually by the National Association of Realtors, if I understand correctly. 

WOW. I SURE HOPE REALTOR.COM READS ALL OF THIS!!  CALIFORNIA IS MAKING A STATEWIDE MLS SERVICE. I REALLY HOPE THAT REALTOR.COM DOESNT HIGHJACK IT IN SOME WAY. I HAVE HEARD THAT THE CALIFORNIA ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS (CAR) DOES HAVE A HAND IN IT.

I do know a broker in the area that always belonged to the MLS but never belonged to the NAR or CAR. He has quite a market share here in ventura california. He just networks with people.

It was great to see someone post about this workshop - I think the name was something about "technical survival guide".  I drove about an hour to this seminar, knowing all along it would be one long advertising pitch for realtor.com.  Well, it was - no surprise. 

We pay for an enhanced listing package, but I have always felt that realtor.com is in DIRECT COMPETITION with my own website - MaineHomeConnection - but have continued to pay the annual fee.  Leads from realtor.com are few and far between.  NAR has sold us down the river with this product, but there is little we can do!

Going back to the seminar, the overview of Facebook was a joke - it could not have been more simplified.  And the big news - use a wide angle lens for pictures!.  It was suggested you could buy a $40 wide angle attachement to magnetically attach to your point-and-shoot camera.  Now there is some really big technical survival information.  What would I do without that tip!

I also thought it was very amusing how there was such a "rush" to sign-up for featured agent and featured something or other.  There was very much a lemming feeling that was depressing.

In the end, there will always be domeone whao can attribute some business here and there to realtor.com, but the fact is this entire program is aimed at making money off the backs of real estate agents.  NAR should be ashamed of this - but of course they are not.

I am waiting for the day (which probably won't happen) when local MLS boards will STOP providing listings to realtor.com (and other aggregators).  This does not help exposure for properties, but rather dilutes the efforts of independent real estate agents on the local level.

I was one of those agents that got sucked into the enhanced listing package and featured home several years ago while attending one of their sales meetings. I should've done my homework but they have you as they only have "4" spots and they go fast..... I looked at the statistics and the leads that I was receiving and it may have been about 1 a month and 1/2 were cold leads. Then last year I signed up for zipcode to attract sellers looking for a CMA, I've had 3 and they were just looking to see what their house was worth and not really looking to sell. So I didn't renew my enhanced listing package nor will I renew the other package a savings of over $1500. I'm going to concentrate on the new website that RE/MAX is providing along with the other "free websites" to advertise my listings. For those agents looking at realtor.com, look at the stats first and not what they are providing either. If this is supposed to be the official site of the NAR then why isn't every agent provided with at least the enhanced listing package. Did you notice all of the advertisements on the website and popups?

Thanks for your input on the enhancements from Realtor.com.  To date I have never spoken to a realtor who has found the enhancements to give a good ROI.  This confirms my previous decision to not purchase.

Dan

Ah too funny. I totally agree. I was on realtor.com a few years ago. I had the basic package just to upload muliple photos. I was paying 700 a year.  Then my listing inventory increased and they tried to charge me over $1500 a year for the same services.  My business didnt increase because of their site but because of my own websites.   I track all the leads, I have only closed one sale in 10 years from realtor.com  

I do agree with most of your regarding the Low ROI for R.com.  I also agree that it is market specific. I believe they spend a good deal of money in the larger metropolitan areas to con agents into using their services. When people type searches for homes in Houston, they have a strong presence.  They have however lost ground here in Houston since our MLS has given it a run for their money.   Every year I see less sellers who are familiar with R.com and think it will eventually fade out for lack of true service with the realtor community it should be serving.  I receive a few leads a year from my R.com advertising but their yearly increases are retarded.

Diego Jaramillo
Keller Williams Realty
Houston Metropolitan
www.HoustonHeritage.com

The trouble is R-com is charging the producing listing more than everyone else. If you only have a few listings its not bad, a few hundred bucks. But its not worth more than $300 or so.

Our company provides it FREE.

My 2 cents

Fran, thank you for your very candid assessment on this subject. We agree with you 100% about the lack of value from Realtor.com... After about 8 years of using it and then not renewing our account a couple of years ago, the rep who was strong arming us to "buy in" again was outright rude and basically said we were making a mistake... Well, we have put those funds to other forms of marketing and only wish we would have done so sooner..

Thanks,

Steve & Lorri Hose

www.HomesByHose.com

Littleton, CO

Fran, thank you for your very candid assessment on this subject. We agree with you 100% about the lack of value from Realtor.com... After about 8 years of using it and then not renewing our account a couple of years ago, the rep who was strong arming us to "buy in" again was outright rude and basically said we were making a mistake... Well, we have put those funds to other forms of marketing and only wish we would have done so sooner..

Thanks,

Steve & Lorri Hose

www.HomesByHose.com

Littleton, CO

I had no idea that Realtor.com was charging that much for their service! We have a very reasonably priced service if you happen to sell homes in the waterfront properties niche. My site launched last year and is called www.greatwaterfrontliving.com  It allows you to upload an unlimited number of listings, upload as many photos as you like for each house, post a free realtor profile about yourself, post a free link back to your website, listings remain on the site until they sell, and you can edit them anytime.  Plus, you can participate in an optional print advertising program in Dupont Registry and Unique Homes that is very cost effective....we buy a full page and split the cost among greatwaterfrontliving.com members.  This group co-op advertising program costs only $195 per house which is a great way to get national print exposure for very little money!

I guess I am in the minority, but I would like to say that Realtor.com enhancements are well worth the money..at least they are in my market.

My office pays for the "company showcase" enhancements for all office listings. I can't tell you how many transactions we have that can be attributed to realtor.com. I have found that many people in my area feel as you do because they are not fully utilizing the program. It takes a little time and effort to make sure you are on the top of the realtor.com searches, but it is well worth it.

Regardless of how many sales we get, it pales in comparison to using it to leverage against the competition in obtaining listings. I will sell SELL THE HECK out of the benefits of realtor.com enhancements. I hate to see agents stop using this program, even though it makes my job that much easier.

I stopped paying R.com along time ago. If I could I would stop paying the NAR, NJAR, the local board and the four MLS companies that have their hand in my pocket. If the broker wants to belong, then let them belong to them. I can post listings once and have them syndicated to all the other "me too" web sites. What part of the word "independent" really holds true in this business? We pay because we are told we must.

Dump Realtor.com's enhanced listing service.

Focus on your OWN website.

I agree! I stopped my subscription in March after not receiving any added value, specifically, more customers. The calls/emails for renewal were relentless!

I would have been angry wasting my time at the supposed Social Media Seminar. I did attend one sponsored by Keller Williams and in the hall of about 200 people, Active Rain was mentioned repeatedly as being very helpful.

Just my 2 cents

Fran;

Unfortunately over the past 10-12 years we all have fallen in the the "sales" trap of a company's "gotta Have It" next best marketing plan for us. These so called plans work great...for the company selling it to you. The missed point.. they were "sellingyou" the "it", their system; something most Realtors today do not know how or really want to do..so they buy someone elses "system" in hopes of equaling the success touted.  Some of these plans may very well work, but nothing works for everyone like the art of actually "Selling".

We are all supposed to be "Sales Professionals"   but the last real estate boom has eliminated most of the selling and left only order takers with wheel barrow loads of cash- prime targets for those companies seeking to relieve us of some of it.  And, like Sheep, most of us follow right down the path. Quite often into the wrong pen.

Apparently by your success, you are not in this category, congratulations!

Like you I have been very successful in this down market. I'm a professional salesman. I can sell anything in any economy. I spend money on improving my sales techniques and because I am not the "professional blogger", spend my advertising dollars on someone who does it for me. 

For most others, I'd consider spending my hard earned cash, (harder these days), on learning professional sales techniques from a professional sales coach. For some of you it will be the first time you have actually spent money furthering you professional knowledge, but it will be the best investment you ever spent on a marketing program.  That $3,000.00 would better spent on a monthly class on the fine art of blogging or with a face to face coach.

What may come out of this all; You'll become the person standing up in front of a  crowd selling your services from your own seminar and there will be a line at the back signing up for what you have to offer.

Novel concept?  Naw, just old fashioned selling with a modern twist!

Very good post, and I agree ... mostly.

Our industry is such a unique balance of competitive and complementary.  Sometimes those lines are vague, but here is an instance where the line is very pronounced.

Realtor.com, even 5 years ago at its seeming peak, I felt left a lot to be desired.  In my affiliation with the largest broker in Michigan, we can get the best package Realtor.com has to offer for a low monthly fee.  I do so, as it seems to be a Seller expectation (although could be easily argued why it isn't all that and a bag of chips), and get about 1 lead per month.  In my case, it does seem to pay for itself each year and I am up on my investment overall, but nothing more.

I would NOT recommend purchasing zip codes, etc., but do feel that listing exposure on there will be fruitful if one is carrying enough listings.

I haven't gotten anything from Realtor.com after 5 years....dropped it!

Portsmouth NH Real Estate

The real crime is we own the NAR! We pay dues to the NAR!  I have to compete against the NAR for traffic to my site and get no benefit from Realtor.com, unless I pay an additional fee.  Frequently associations forget who they work for and begin to work for themselves viewing us as clients (customers to make money from) not owners.  (Think of Government and tax payers.)

Let's get some pitch forks!

Like almost any marketing tool and system, it isn't what you get, it is what you do with what you have. The goal of ANY directory should be to get the visitor OUT of the directory and incubate them to your Web site. IMHO if you are using these tools in any other way, you are missing the boat. This should be considered a tool for traffic to your web site. What concerned me even more was the statement "If you are not blogging you should be.." This type of generalization implies that all agents are capable of successfully blogging. The reality is the larger percentage of agnets will never keep up with a blog and that will do as much harm as good. Picture a buyer clicking on a link that says "My Blog" and that last entry was 11 months ago and in a different market.

It is all about marketing and those costs. I have had the enhanced features for 18 months and paid for the service with one sale. However, my renewal comes up in Dec. and I expect that my costs will go up tremendously. My initial contract was based on a startup brokerage with few or no listings , I will have to evaluate the costs in Dec. to decide which way to go.

I totally agree with you.  I too, bought into the package about 6 months ago.  I have 6 months to go and then I'm done.  I will not renew.  But I did want to let you know something I found out a short while ago.  Realtor.com is NOT owned by NAR.  It is the "official" website, but not owned by NAR.  Move, INC is the actual owner.  This came up in a sales meeting in my office a couple of weeks ago.  Since I have only been in the business 4 years, I thought NAR owned it and always wondered why we paid dues, and then had to pay on top of that for minimal advertising.  Seems Move, INC bought it several years ago. 

I have had 1 phone call from my enhancements.  Not much of a ROI in my opinion, especially since she never returned my phone messages!

Thanks for bringing something to light that every agent should know!

Sherry

Nice blog.  Yes, what all does NAR do for the fees that we pay them?  I looked at the enhancements and was tricked into the FREE blog only to find out after reading the 20 pages of agreement that MOVE.com would be charging me.  I quickly declined.  They want us to blog so that they can use it.  Interesting.

I did the REALTOR.com branding to put my face on my listings, but, I don't know why because I get very few leads.  I did it under pressure.

Over the years I have gotten good leads off Realtor.com and have sold homes from those leads. Lately the leads are not many from Realtor.com on the selling side BUT I do have to say that many people find me on Realtor.com and list with me because of my presence there. I am primairly a listing agent so that works real weel for me.

From the very beginning of my business, I knew that Realtor.com would only be effective if you had many listings on there. You will not reap any leads, whether listing or buying, if you don't have a great number of listings on there. People seem to think if you are powerul on Realtor.com you are a dominant force in your market so they want to list with you.

Don't get me wrong, I believe that bloggin is essential too. I really believe in marketing that you need exposure in various avenues and not just concentrate on one. The old saying about putting your eggs in one basket is true. The cost of Realtor.com doesn't thrill me but my sellers attribute recogition with the name.

Blessings,

Celeste Chism, Choice Real Estate, LLC, Crossville TN.

I did the enhancement for 1 year and then dropped it because it did not make me money.  What they charge for it is ridiculous.  The guy at the seminar said that marketing is the main reason why a home doesn't sell.

I had an enhancement on a listing and it was not selling.  I dumped Realtor.com and dropped the price on the listing and then it sold.

Pricing it right is the most important marketing tool you can use.

Thanks for your post Fran. Very honest and true. I've paid for enhanced listings. I never got one lead from it. I still pay a monthly fee through my office and nothing from it. I've even gone on there as a buyer to locate my listings and they don't pop up! Mad as he-- about that! I've called them several times and gave up. I mean I can type in the address and it doesn't pop up several other homes in the area do. They blow up my phone constantly trying to sell me more saying my enhancements are not good enough. I am so sick of it. I hate wasting money. They look good when you are able to locate them. What is embarrassing is when a client calls me and says hey I can't find my home on there!

After about 5 attempts I finally located it. What is up Realtor.com?

I used the enhancements for a year and didn't see the benefit.  Our local Board of Realtors keeps the listings for 10 days before they are put on other sites.  Since we have that lag time, my sellers who know about Realtor.com get frustrated when their home isn't immediately posted there.  I get a lot of buyer leads from my own website and only had one lead from my year on Realtor.com.

Great blog; much to think about. I do know I have certainly enjoyed being a part of AR and all the info I have gleamed from others. As for the seminar, aren't most free seminars a means for the presenter to sale his wares?

Many years being on Realtor.com with all the enhancements, yes, I do post the 25 pictures, I have a complete virtual tour per each listing, I add the banner, and pretty much work the place... to no avail! My ROI is ZERO... like in NADA. About the only time I use the pages of Realtor.com is at the listing presentation, to simply show that I advertise "nationally" locally" and bla bla bla. The truth is for many years now, probably 15+ I have been on R.com enhancements I cannot recall one instance where it give me a lead, the numbers don't add up. REALTOR.COM DOES NOT WORK FOR ME!

Antonio

I can't believe this....where is REALTOR.com....they don't want to comment on all this bad press right here on this blog?  Are we to assume we've all just been suckers for paying for so long?  What's up with that?  I can't believe they wouldn't comment on this post.  Just saying!

After emailing a message about this issue and a link to this blog post... this is the email reply that I received from NAR:

Thank you for contacting NAR's InfoCentral.  I am forwarding your request to the appropriate department of NAR.


Thank you,
NAR InfoCentral
800-874-6500

SOUNDS LIKE THEY ARE JUMPING RIGHT ON THIS ONE, HUH?!                                                            

Great blog...I feel the same way! Advertising fees that I never get results. But the sellers know about it and want to make sure that is one of your marketing tools. Thanks for taking a stand. As Realtors we need to take a stand for a lot more!!! Our thoughts are we can't change anything but if we complain in NUMBERS maybe we can make a difference.

Thanks fran for being honest...I had Realtor.com enhaced listings 2 years ago for approx $800/- a year, I never received any leads from it. I used it as a Listing Tool. I am still learning how wonderful exxperience people have from AR and all other social media and now that's the way to go.

I agree with Darryl.

My sister and I were approached to do a Banner Ad for our "local" area.  We were very specific as to what counties we wanted coverage in.  The salesperson assured us that is what we would get.  We were also told we had to make a decision right then and there because there were only 10 ad spots available in my area and there were other salespeople on the phone so we had to lock this in.

Then came the horrible experience getting the ad copy correct.  Realtor.com does not do this directly.  They outsource to another company that has "stock" ads.  Well these ads did not comply with advertising rules and trying to have changes made was an act of Congress.  It took a month before we were able to launch the banner ad.

The hits trickled in.  99% of them were from out of our area.

We also were in competition with Netflix, and every other company other than other Realtors.

We called the salesman and he would never return our calls or our emails.  The next step was to call and insist on a supervisor.

Then came the revelations.  The coverage area was much broader than what we were told.  Counties and cities over an hour away.  As for the non-realtor advertisers, we were told if they could not sell to agents then they had to fill the spots with anyone they can.

I can honestly say that from using this Banner ad we did get one lead that got us a listing and the people also just closed on a home on Friday.

But if you look at the man hours that we put into this and then answering all the contacts from people we have no way of servicing, we broke even at this point.

As for the enhanced listings, so far our costs have been moderate.  I did get one lead for one of my listings.  They became my clients and they did buy another house.  So it has paid for itself this year.

I agree with other posts here as well, this is just another profit center for NAR.

I dont know where the $3000 dollar amount for enhanced came from, wow, last time I talked to my account rep. it was 800 for enhanced if you have over 10 listings. I know my agents get leads from Realtor.com. and leads they can work with. I guess if you think the money is better spent somewhere else then go for it. We all need to make money and have reliable sites like realtor.com where a listing that sells is no longer on the site frustrating the public with unavailble properties. (Who's Guilty?) We all have a choice. I choose to go with what works.

Wow!  I will not make that mistake again.  I was considering going back with the enhanced listings and could not track any leads back and thought it was just me.  I then asked to be notified of new comments!  Wow again!  How do I stop them?  I think I know what I need to do! 

I have never understood how NAR could give us a tool and then in order to be at the top of the search you had to purchase additional programs.  Maybe they need to stop building new buildings and looking out for the agents who are out in the field every day asking someone to hire us.  People complain that they are on unemployment and have to go look for a job to continue to qualify.  We look for a job everyday and do not get any compensation.

Hi Fran, I paid for the enhancements when they were first advertised about five or six years ago. I paid something like $400-$600 for the package. What a waste of money! I spend my marketing dollars elsewhere these days!

I used the enhancements for 1 year with 0 leads/calls.  I dropped it after that year.  I am an agent for a small company and wanted to share listings with other agents to promote zip codes I was not in.  I was told this was not allowed.  I never understood the reason.  Probably because they could charge each of us individually.

Great post!  Thanks for having the guts to say these things.

Fran:

Wow!!!  Not sure our comments will add anything knew but we do subscribe to enhanced listings at Realtor.com.  We have not had any leads from these listings, however, they do make the sellers happy don't they.  And that is really why we've chosen to continue at this point.

Fran

I to had Realtor.com for many years and never closed one deal. I gave it up a few years back and relied on a web site furnished by the company I was with. Now I am looking for another site to replace that one. They all say their site's the best. I have been thinking about going with Active Agent. If anyone has used it and thinks it is good or bad, please let me know.

Thanks

Skippy Giles

I agree, Realtor.com is taking advantage of agents to make more money. It makes me really upset going to their seminar and find out how they abuse agents' trust on making sales that produce nothing.

I'd say we need a movement to send a massive email to all agents and ask them if they want to start a new organization which is going to be a true represantation of all agents or vote to get ride of existing board of directors.

Fran,

Love your info about realtor.com, you and I feel the same. 

Jon

Hi Fran,  Late to the party, but here is my 2 cents worth. I supported Realtor.com for years, well before social networking became a buzz word.  I paid for the enhanced listings. That investment paid off for me in securing listings. I really liked the additional photos, scrolling banner, etc. As far as click throughs, little business resulted from it. I did drop the 'enhanced upgrade' last year. Lots of other places to get more bang for my buck!

In our small island market, I feel the 300 bucks or so you get for a placement in the search when people search for your zipcode is worth. It may indeed be that you get more for your effort with AR/Facebook/Twitter, etc. however with cyber marketing there appear's to be a value in casting a wide net. At least for more in Kauai, having a couple of towns in Realtor.com seems to be worth the less than $1k a year i pay. My. 02 and hey there lady, you're certainly getting your share of feedback points on this topic. Way to go!

Fran,

First let me say, your area is GOD's county I'm envious. My wife and both use enhanced listings, and while we do get a few leads I'm not sure if it's worth the money. I do think AR, and other electronic media is more effective. I will continue to use the enhanced listings for a marketing tool to keep my sellers happy, but I'm going to continue to explore other oppertunities as well.

This is the reason I have decided not to join NAR this year. I feel it's a waste of money.

Great post!  You really started quite a discussion on here.  I'm surprised that NAR and/or Realtor.com hasn't replied to this post yet! (or am I not surprised?)

Well, this has sure hit a nerve and been an eye opener for me.  I have read EVERY comment and the consensus is:

• Realtor.com is not worth the exorbitant rates they charge. 
• There have been several comments that say N.A.R. does own realtor.com and several that say N.A.R. doesn't. 
• Less than 5% of responses think realtor.com brings any value to their business. 
• Several comments talked of really scary stuff when it cames to getting a refund, getting any sort of decent customer service or getting realtor.com to stop automatically charging their credit card when the contract had expired.

If you ran your business this way, would you have any clients?

One respondee emailed this blog and it's comments to realtor.com. If I disappear, someone call realtor.com and ask them where they buried me (I'm not kidding). 

Many of you emailed me direct and I tried to respond to all of you. If I didn't, it's because I did not know the answer to your question and just like I would with a client, I will try to get the answer and get back to you. 

I received several of the same questions and I am planning on answering them with a post later today or tomorrow. 

Thank you to all of you for your comments.  Maybe N.A.R. and realtor.com will find this post and make some changes.  Stranger things have happened. 

I am so surprised about this information and the feelings of many Realtors.  I would have thought that that is the website buyers turn to when looking for homes in a certain area before contacting the agents.

I appreciate the blog; it was an eye opener.  I am sorry you had to take time out of your busy schedule to attend this "amazing" seminar.  I would be so disappointed too.

The name Realtor.com is owned by NAR and Homestore.com operates it.  Over the years it has had serious management issues and the quality has been up and down. 

In the meantime, many other choices had appeared to compete with Realtor.com (which should have been able to overwhelm any competition) and many realtor boards got fed up and pulled their data off of Realtor.com.

Realtor.com has been very slow to adopt innovations and consumers have tried other easier-to-use alternatives such as remax.com.

I will not be renewing my Enhanced package this year.

    --Dave--

Fran, I would have to totally disagree wiht you as to realtor.com being a useful tool. I think as long as you use it correctly it is very useful. There is something that most realtors are not bringing up, that is using realtor.com as a listing tool. As of now it is the #1 website in the world for real estate searches, what seller would not want to be on that website. It also has features that will reprt to your seller the amount of traffic they have recieved on their property. This is a very useful tool when it comes to price reductions (if needed). Most of the time when I show my clients the weekly report and it shows we have had over 300 hits a week and no offers, they agree that we need to reduce the price. Back to the marketing to sellers, I was interviwed by a builder that had 3 homes valued at 1 million dollars each that they needed to sell and after getting the listings, I asked where they got my name from and the woman told me she was searching realtor.com to see who was marketing in the area. I think marketing to the seller is as useful as marketing to the buyer!

 good luck,

Aaron

This is a timely post.  I just got an email today from Joe Sesso -- AN EXPERT ON REALTOR MARKETING.  I was about to ask a friend to drive 2.5 hours to South Bend to see the seminar.  I had gone to a "free marketing seminar" about 2 years ago and IT WAS ALL ABOUT REALTOR.COM and signing people up.  What an absolute waste of time/money/effort.  Thanks so much for giving me a day back.  Gina

Thanks Fran,

Was planning to go to the same presentation in our area until I noticed it was by REALTOR.com.  Can't track any closed transactions from them in the past 3 years.  Tried the enhanced listings and the featured listings, both were a waste of my money.  I happen to agree with the points you made and if enough agents would wake up and quit giving money to REALTOR.com it would probably be a good thing for our industry.

Sincerely,

Roger

Fran, thanks for the great post. It's like going to see the circus with no elephants - totally uneventful and maybe even bait & switch!  I don't know anyone that REALLY gets any business from this and somehow Realtor.com brainwashes agents into thinking they can't live without it!  Total nonsense!  It is way too costly for what is provided and on top of that what portion of our dues goes to fund Realtor.com? 

I have always 'blown the whistle' on these guys with their blatant RAPAGE of realtors with the $19.95 charge for uploading a virtual tour.  GIVE ME A BREAK!  That is standard procedure with a listing and enhances the site, I don't know what constitutes the extra charge!  It takes 3 seconds to upload if that. 

If they are going to plunder and pillage my bank account at least wear a pirate hat and hand me a cigarette afterward!

Sometimes the truth HURTS!

Amen, Fran! The list of companies that exist only to pick the pockets (which are pretty light these days) of real estate agents is extremely long! And on that note, here is antoher one to stay away from: Homes.com. $60/mth, I don't think so!!

I have yet to see any substantial number of agents who can prove they get results from Realtor.com and at the prices they charge, you'd have to get a pretty substantial amount of business directly from it to justify the cost.  I'll stick with my free and low-cost methods that are producing more business than I can handle, thanks.  Great post!

It's too bad you didn't write this post last year! LOL. I'm waiting for my anual subscription to expire so that I can cancel... BIG WASTE OF MONEY that produced not a single viable lead. Live and learn.

Thanks Fran!  My wallet and my brain have been debating about whether or not to sign up for the Realtor.COM enhancements. You have solved that concern.

Hi Fran-good job on telling it like it is. Actually, Realtor.com is owned by Move, Inc. a publicly traded company. Over the course of a ten year period, they lost an aggregated 2 billion dollars. Not very good business people if you ask me. They also tried to rip off AR. Congrats on the Feature.

I too have bought into the Realtor.com bit and accomplished nothing.  This is not in regards to the seminar that started this post but rather, the general idea of these "enhanced" listings.

Frankly, I'm not angry at Realtor.com  I'm a legal adult, paid my money, didn't work, time to move on.

I can speak with some authority as a few years ago, I purchased the featured listings zip codes.  To the tune of $900 per month and a 1 year contract.  Yes, you read it correctly, $10,800 for the year.

The result?

NO SALES.  Not one.  In addition, I spiced up my ads with tons of html driving them to lead capture pages etc.  Spent hours on that.  By the way, they don't offer the flexibility of doing that anymore.

I used to think it was a great tool to get listings.  I refuse to buy junk to impress a seller when the reality is, Realtor.com does not help them.  I have not had an ad in the Real Estate Book for 7 years now.  Not one.  I was nearly ousted out of the office a few years ago when I announced publically (office wise) that it was a dying book.  Guess what?  Our RE Book is less than half what it was 2 yrs ago.  ONE HALF.

By the way, the same year that I gave Realtor.com $10k, I spent about $15,000 on a stealth site using PPC and closed 22 transactions.

Others can do as they will but I will not contribute to them.

I read a quote somewhere the other day that was cool.  They said the Albatross has forgotten who built her nest.

John

Great post obviously, since you have a bundle of answers.

Have enhanced, up to 4 listings for $299/year. Never had a realtor.com lead.

Still I think it might be worth it as a listing tool. My sellers love the material and up dates I send them.

Other than that I think NAR stinks. In my opinion they do nothing to enhance the image of Realtors.

Most commonly I think we are considered to be on the level of used car salesmen (no insult intended).

We are supposed to deal with the biggest investment in people's life. How about raising the bar and demand a college degree or MBA, to become a Realtor. Sorry I probably stepped on a couple of toes there, but I am trying to find ways to enhance our image.

I too went to the seminar, and left feeling good about the products- I purchased the featured CMA and can attribute 2 listings to it and numerous snapshots and cmas,  but ultimately I cannot tell if it is worth it.  I have been debating it in my head.  My renewal is coming up and I am not sure what I will do

I made Realtor.com a bet. I said if you can get one of your websites to outrank any of mine using the keyword of your choice I'll buy one. The response was that would not be fair to our other agents. That says it all...it's not about us, its about them. I loved the chart showing Realtor as a major search term. Realtor is used in 3% of the searches, Realtors is 4% and homes for sale is even less. The most used search term is Real Estate (29%) and what good would that be without city and state as part of the search term? None.

In my opinion our association fails us badly allowing Realtor.com to be owned by an outsider. The person we need to write is not Realtor.com but the President of our association so we don't renew the contract when it expires. I have written to our association before and believe it or not they respond quickly.

Good post.

Cliff Roe

Good info.  I was planning on signing up soon, but now might go the fiscally responsible way...

Thanks for writing,

Ken

Fran,

You raise some valid questions and I have struggled with them myself.  I do receive hits from my realtor.com ads.  None have resulted in a sale yet.  I do not receive any hits from Zillow, Trulia or any other of the websites I am using.  However I use realtor.com for several reasons, it is still the number one searched real estate website in the country so whether or not I get hits - I do get great exposure for my listings.  Second, I can email or snail mail my clients a nice chart showing them how much Internet activity their listing received.  In this market this tool is invaluable to me.  In my county only 13 homes sold from January to the end of April. I retain my clients and they re-list with me I feel in part to this one piece of communication.  And third, how do you or anyone of us know how many times someone has viewed our listing online then contacted another agency and used another agent  to view the home and ultimately buy it.

Maybe in a very people dense area you can get by without realtor.com but here on the east coast in podunk- ville it's valuable.

You make a good argument - thanks!

Tom McClaren

Fran, I stopped Realtor.com two years ago.  I carry a high volume of listings and when I had to pay over $5000 to use their website, I said NO WAY!  Active Rain is better than paying that much for a website.

Thanks so much for the great information, for those of us trying to decide where our dollars are best spent in a tough economy, this is good to know!

You are 100% correct. Realtor.com used to be the only game in town. The competition has provided better products. Realtor.com sales staff still acts like they are the only game in town. Be very careful with your dealings with the sales staff. Pricing should be stated the web site. My pricing for enhancements doubled in price from one year to the next. It felt like my listings were being held hostage. That is when I felt like I had to be on Realtor.com. The pricing seemed arbitrary. I could go on and on with my experiences and for others in my office. There are much better products out there.

This must be some kind of record for responses.  I read almost all of the answers and  there seems to be an overwhelming theme of dislike for the enhanced featrues on Realtor.com.  Everyone knows there's over a million Realtors - right?  I don't think 200 dis-satisfied Realtors is going to have a huge impact on Realtor.com policy.  I have never been a big fan of banner ads, click through, paid positioning, etc.  I do use the featured properties feature on Realtor.com.  The sales people that call Realtors to sign them are are just that SALES PEOPLE.  I am also a SALES PERSON skilled in the art of negotiation.  If I do not see the value I don't pay the advertised price - I negotiate.  If they are not willing to negotiate there is no sale.  I get calls several times a day from companies trying to sell me Internet placing, leads etc.  We get talked into buying this stuff becuase we don't know what works best.  Used to be there was only print ads to pay for.  A full color page in the Sunday paper was $8000.00!!!!!! That's a one time ad for one day.  A three line ad in the Saturday pape cost $55.00.  Again, that was a one time post that maybe a dozen people would see.  Today I can put an ad on the Internet for $55.00 per month and thousands of people see it.  Advertising is like buying anything else - the cost has to justify the perceived value.

Great post Fran,

It should be obvious to all of us that we are in the wrong business.  The place to make the money is selling anything and everything to Realtors!  When you make the sales call you get through to the decision maker immediately.  They have no sales resistance.  Until that past few years, they have more money to spend than brains and will fall for any gimick you can think of.

The same bozo who started this big push on Realtor.com is now on ResMedia selling Realtors a place in the TOP 5 agents of their area!  He is smart enough to know where the low hanging fruit is:  Realtors!

If you want to get exposure for your listings Postlets.com will do it for my favorate price: FREE.  Better yet,

or in addition to, CraigsList.com gets more action than any of these sites.  Again: FREE.

Great comments. How about doing something to change getting ripped off by our own trade association. C'mon people! I only tout my local MLS. Face it that is where a buyer and seller should go to search the most up to date information. STOP buying all that garbage and Realtor.com will be forced to actually work for us with the dues money we provide. STOP promoting Realtor.com! 

The newest RIP OFF is Rismedia's " Top 5 in Real Estate "  Alan Dalton looking for a new way to make money off Realtors. He is no longer employed at Realtor.com so now he wants to sell you some other garbage. Wake up! Stop paying for this hype. This is a spinoff on the CRS designation. Hey wait I thought we were the 4% of all Realtors. We are the ones with the "most experience" and "skilled real estate professionals". Please!

As far as seminars are concerned. You must know they are all about selling you something to increase their bottom line not yours, however, yes you are right to be cynical and disappointed when it is your own trade association looking to rip you off.  So once again I ask all Realtors..let's stop complaining and start changing this industry.

For those of you who are a bit confused, BASIC listings are FREE. So when you don't buy the enhanced listings, you ARE STILL on Realtor.com.

It would be stupid for Realtor.com to dump the free listings because then they would be in the same category as Homes.com, another waste of money website.

What they sell the agents on is that the agents will have their personal phone numbers listed so that they can get calls directly.

Work with brokers who are more interested in selling houses than generating buyer leads out of your listings. Another interesting debate is going on about that issue here and here .

Ultimately, the practice of skimming the REALTORS by the brokers and all these service providers has to end.

Power to the clients and those who service them: The hard-working REALTORS. :)

Note: Don't praise ActiveRain too much. They will then start charging. LOL!

Fran,

We spend about $2800 a year for Showcase Enhanced listings, and go back and forth about whether or not its worth it.  We do get about 5 to 10 buyer leads a month.  Maybe it just works because we get a lot of good well-priced short sale listings, maybe because we try to always take 25 great pictures and do a nice tour.  I'm not sure.  But the $2800 a year is killing me!  And it really gets my goat that I feel like I have a gun to my head about it.  A necessary evil for sure.  I do know that my blog is what converts them after the initial introduction!

~ Julia 

Fran,

I attended the same Realtor.com seminar last week here in NJ. I feel the same way you do regarding the billing and later the content of the seminar. I have had over the last year or so used several of Realtor.com enhancements,. I currently have the enhancement package which I pay $76.00 per month. I feel that this expense is necessary for the area of the country I sell real esate in. It gives me an edge over other agents who do not offer this enhancement.  My company does not offer this package to the associates.  Other companies in my area give it to their agents as part of their package. I have had the market snapshot and featured CMA. While these did get me names and other contact information these buyers/sellers were just curious. Nice marketing plan though.  While I was at the seminar I did take a featured home spot for my office area. I is costing me $9.00 per month. Again, I feel that this expense is well worth the money since I can control which homes are featured.  There are only 10 spots per zip code. The top is organic, but the bottom is where I can place which ever listing I have in the search criteria regardless of zip code. For $96.00 I felt this was a no brainer.

As for Realtor.com not mentioning ActiveRain, I had the very same thought and wondered why. I did get a better sense of the social network thing since I don't really participate. Now I know what comsumers and fellow members DON'T want to be bombarded with. That helped me.

I have secured listings because I offer "exta" marketing services that have sold. So I guess I am sort of a success story.  I've only lost 1 listing to another agency in 4 years. That property still hasn't sold. I guess you get what you pay for.

I would be interested to know what you think are driving people to your website and what makes it so successful.

P.S. your website is not availble from your blog page.

Your blog showed up on my activerain newsletter withperfect timing! I happen to have an invitation in my inbox right now to hear Joe Sesso speak next week on the topics of online advertising and marketing. Although being offered at two locations, I would have to drive 2-3 hours to attend either one. Thanks to your review in this blog, I will save my time. I find activerain to be the best resource on the web for Realtors period. The information shared here is truly invaluable. Thanks for sharing!

Hi Fran, FINALLY GOT A RESPONSE TO MY EMAIL TO REALTOR.COM WITH YOUR POST ATTACHED:

Dear Wendy:

Thank you for contacting Move.com Contact Us. I will be happy to assist you. Your comments and suggestions are greatly appreciated. We are happy to assist you in directing your suggestion to the appropriate department. While you may not hear back from us, please know that we are committed to responding to the needs of our customers and continually review our products and services in an effort to further improve REALTOR.com®. Your suggestions enable us to enhance our site and continue to provide users of REALTOR.com® with the #1 Online Real Estate experience. If you have any further questions, please contact our Customer Care department at 800-878-4166. We are available between the hours of 6am to 5pm PST, Monday - Friday. We look forward to assisting you. Sincerely, Nicky Navarrette Customer Care Representative http://REALTOR.com(R)

I DON'T THINK WE SHOULD HOLD OUR BREATH... DO YOU?  

I am a newbie to the real estate business.  Today, I interviewed with a firm that was touting realty.com.  I would have never known it was a consumer website by the title.  If I go with that firm, at least I won't have to pay for it since the company would pick up the cost.

So I wrote this about a year ago to vent and then saw your wonderful write up.  Im not the best writer so I never posted it, but here is the grit.

Is Realtor.com ripping you off?

Ok, so at the moment I am mad as heck and thought about writing this blog months ago but I just got off the phone with Realtor.com and now I am venting.

So, I signed up with Realtor.com for the upgraded package thinking that by doing so (like most of you think) that by doing so I could add more photos of my listings, give more detail but MOST IMPORTANT have my number listed on the Realtor.com listing. 

So for over 3 years I pay and pay and every year my fees go up.  My response is minimal at best with Realtor.com.  When things in the Market went south I decided to not renew my contract with them.  (IMPORTANT READ THIS) I come to find that when a buyer who has looked at your listing PRINTS IT, your name and number do not show up.  So thanks to me (someone who I'll not name) got the only two leads that became actual buyers and got a nice commission check from it.  So when Realtor.com calls me to renew, I bring this up.  Their response; oh well if the buyer sets their print to print horizontal before they print you listing (most printers are set to print vertical) then they will see your phone number.  My response "you have got to be kidding me"  How is any buyer going to know that they need to print horizontal?  I said maybe you guys need to fix the problem.  He laughed and said nothing.  So, I get a call from Realtor.com today and months after I have not renewed.  "Hi, I noticed you were a Realtor.com member but you are no longer, would you like to renew?'  Ahhhhh NO!  Why may I ask?  I explain and the guy has the nerve to tell me maybe I should switch offices.  I told him, look Mr.  I guarantee that every office slips or a floor person gets a lead that they should not.  However, I did not know your ridiculous procedure to have my name which I pay a hefty price to you to have on Realtor.com show up.  The guy hangs up on me. 

So there you are.  So the issue?  Why the heck are we paying these ridiculous fees to Realtor.com for the very listings that we worked/advertised/spent money/spent time to get.  Without our listings, Realtor.com would be NOTHING.  If we all became buyer's agents Realtor.com would be NOTHING.  Look don't get me wrong I am all for paying  a fair fee for a great product, but REALTOR.COM HAS GOTTEN OUT OF CONTROL!  Did you know that Realtor.com was owned by NAR?  NAR is supposed to help realtors not rip them off.  Did you know that our fees help pay for NAR new building.  Just for NAR, a brand new building.  We should pat ourselves all on the back.  I think they could have used that money to more advertising on behalf of Realtor's then the pathetic amount they have been.  Realtors used to be the keepers of information, the professionals of a market or industry.  Realtor.com has turned our business in to feeding frenzy of Realtors. More importantly Realtor.com has turned buyer's and seller's in to NON-LOYAL CONSUMERS.    I cant tell you how many times a buyer has gone directly to a listing agent or even seller, thinking they will have some sort of advantage by doing so.  For those of you who will say "get the buyer to sign a buyers agreement"  Come on people, we live in the real world, buyer's don't want to sign a brokers transactional agreement let alone a buyer agreement. 

We need to send Realtor.com a clear message.  No more outrageous fees for our listings!!

Don't renew or send me an email to petition against the so called association who is supposed to help us and our industry.  And for those of you who are going to tell me to switch offices.  If you actually think that all calls for you listings or advertising go to you... you are dreaming.  It's a reality folks.  I will remain with my office because of all the other things it does offer me, even leads.  So I think it is a fair exchange but Realtor.com has mislead me and all of you.  Click no when you post your listing on your MLS  and it ask's "do you want to post on internet."  This is what gives them and all those other crappy sites to post your listings and most of the time post them with incorrect information.  I'm tired of paying higher fees to my board and get little in return.  Why doesn't the board offer a free mass website for its agents.  Why does NAR get to make a profit on our hard work.  They should pay us for every listing we post. 

I have found that point2agent web site to be reasonable and effective. I use it for the office web site with sub sites for agents. The NLS (National Listing Service) is the way of the future for real estate. The handshake platform gives additional effective exposure with free syndications to multiple search engines. Even better, NAR makes NO profit from it!

You can view an example www.exitrealty-group.com

I received this comment in my personal email.  Since wideloan@aol.com mentions all of you who have commented, it's only right to let you know what he has to say about you.  Remember, these are not my comments, these are from a "Very successful realtor.com customer and REALTOR."

Fran,

"There are two ways to have the tallest building in town.  One way...is to build the tallest building in town.  The other way...is to tear down all the other buildings."  

I had the unfortunate opportunity to run across your blog this morning and read your gibberish about REALTOR.com, which by the way...is the official web site for the National Association of Realtors (NAR).   Why would you focus on the lame comments of 280 "unsuccessful" realtors that still haven't figured out that they don't have what it takes to make it in the real estate industry?  Sounds like sour grapes to me. Did they expect REALTOR.com to negotiate the sales contract and close the deal...or...just provide additional exposure of their listings through the Internet?  Hhhmmm...let's talk about value for a minute.   

Where's the value in a dingbat realtor that makes 3% commission on a $1,000,000 property?  $30,000 commission for what?  To be late on appointments, to not understand a property inspection, to screw up the escrow from start to finish, to find lousy appraisers and lousy mortgage broker, etc.  I'm sure you see my point now.  Where is the value there?  How about a flat fee of $500 for selling a house whether it's a $1M or $100K?  The work is the same.  The paperwork is the same.  I don't see the value!   Most realtors don't have a clue how to market themselves or build their business.  REALTOR.com is the #1 real estate web site in the world and the most cost effective form of advertising on the market for realtors.  They received over 11 million unique users this month.  For most realtors...this is their best bet.  Paying for calendars to hand out at a Chamber of Commerce networking breakfast is the not he best use of their advertising dollars.  Using methods from the 70's to sell homes in the high tech society of 2009 is a joke. (By the way, I have a calendar on my cell phone.)   I imagine if you talked to 100,000 Mercedes owners, you would find 280 that were not happy with their vehicle and didn't see the value.  The best car on the road...and yet 280 people don't see the value after owning one.  Yet the other 99,720 do see the value and keep buying a Mercedes year after year.  D'oh!   So...in conclusion...you have no credibility and are far from being any kind of an expert in real estate based on your decision to write and promote the impressions of a small group of unsuccessful realtors as fact. The 100's of thousands of successful realtors that continue to renew their contracts with REALTOR.com year after year...you don't write about them.  Interesting.  Actually...silly.  Just like your web site and blog.  

Sincerely,

Very Satisfied REALTOR.com Customer & Successful Realtor

I think wideloan@aol.com hurt my feelings.  What do you think about his comments?  I'd love to hear.

On a personal note: Since I have written this post and it has been submitted by a colleague to realtor.com and N.A.R., I have received my first realtor.com lead in at least 6 months.  Is that a coincidence? 

Thanks Fran,

wideloan@aol.com  needs to rephrase. The correct spelling is REALTOR not realtor.

If he can show us the path to a pro REALTOR.COM activerain blog, I would more than happy learn from it too.

Great Post Fran.

Fran:  Just read the mean guys email you posted.  WOW...Mr. Wideloan sounds like a very cynical person with a very narrow outlook.  I think he's "silly".... Wideloan claims to be a "Very Sucessful Realtor"...hmmm, who knows and who cares?  

Fran,

Since when REALTORS became responsible for finding appraisers, ESPECIALLY after May 1, 2009? We could be in deep doo doo if we started meddling with great or lousy appraisers.

wideloan@aol.com is a fake email address. :)

Mercedes is better than Lexus?  When did that happen?

Wow, this post has made me think!  I get most of my business online but can't say I've directly gotten a closing from Realtor.com.  I do know it allows me to obtain listings which sell so in an indirect way I am getting a ROI.  I will track this closer and see if it is worth the $1100 I had to pay this year.  Thank you for making me think harder about this issue.

I like my AUDI much better than any MERCEDES I have ever driven.  I am a successful REALTOR.  I believe it is because I do not waste my money or use realtor.com enhanced versions.  In fact, last night when I checked the hours of 3:01am to 3:03am, I was the Number 1 Real Estate website used!

Just saying, check the realtor.com fine print, their claim to being number 1 real estate website with the most unique visitors is from a date in December 2008. 

Thanks for the strong advice. I have been paying around $2000 per year for REALTOR.com enhancements. I am sure to cancel as soon as my contract is up in July!

Thanks for the strong advice. I have been paying around $2000 per year for REALTOR.com enhancements. I am sure to cancel as soon as my contract is up in July!

I've often wondered why I'm paying for the enhanced Realtor.com.

But after reading this, I'm giving serious consideration as to whether to renew.

Fran, thanks for your post.  I've heard that the money commitment to REALTOR.com isn't worth it.  Another unsuccessful way to spend your advertising dollars unless you have that type of budget I guess.  Have a nice evening.

Wow!  Look at all of these responses!  I have siliently suffered with my dislike for REALTOR.com for years.  I  think all of my issues have been covered in the above posts by successful REALTORS.  My advertising and marketing is 'results' driven.  And I can honestly say that I have never closed a lead from REALTOR.com nor have I received a phone call from a listing on REALTOR.com in the past 8 or 9 years.  There are too many FREE real estate websites to market your listings and are more effective.  I have had results from Trulia and I pay them how much? Oh, nothing!  I've had more results from a local TV station's real estate website then I have had on REALTOR.com.  Oh, and that site is free too! 

In the past few years, clients have mentioned various website that they utilize for real estate searches.  And all have name local real estate company sites.  No one ever mentions REALTOR.com anymore.  The market has become so fragmented when searching for real estate.  I wish everyone the best in their personal choices.  But don't over-look the free and in-expensive sites---they do work!

Fran,

We agree completely 150%.  If anyone has any questions, please call us.  We were unfortunately victims and spent in excess of 8 grand this year, only to find out that realtor.com, or should I say move.com, are as crooked as they come.  And then once the error is discovered, they don't make up for it.  As fellow realtors, if you make a mistake, what do you do???  We will no longer  be dealing with move.com aka realtor.com. 

I too, feel that I paid way to much for not too much with realtor.com

I was not impressed.

Thanks for your comments on this.

~Alisa

I agree with you totally!!  I have told newer agents in my office this, but I don't think they believed me because they have seen more seasoned agents do it, so they think they must be making money from it.  I used some of realtor.com's services for several years and never got any closings or even a call because of it.  I think it's a total rip off and I know they are very convincing, but I say beware - unless you have x-tra money you want to throw away.  Thanks for posting the truth!!

i too went to the seminar.. i gathered more info from people around me in conversation than i  did from the seminar.. i left early before the BIG PITCH that i knew was coming.. It is great to know that i was right not to sign up for this!!.. i have gotten leads from active rain and my facebook page.. my website also brings in several per day... if realtor.com was so great, they would give us more for free!!

First of all I am not defending Realtor.com.  They have made many many mistakes in the past.  As a branch manager I don't have an enhanced page but many or my agent do.  I do think it is necessary for a strong listing agent.  Fran - do you plan on dropping it at renewal time?  I do find that many of the bigger lisitng agents in my market do enhance their listings and do complain about the service yet do not drop it.

We subscribe to Realtor.com to enhance our listings (about $700/yr) and have also purchased the showcase listing feature ($168/month). Is it worth it? We don't think so, and don't know of any listings we have gotten from this source. But as Listing Agents, we are cutting down on print advertising and feel we need to provide this to our Sellers. We also attended a similar session with the same results. But what really bothered us was finding out the Realtor.com is selling leads from the CMA feature to one agent or broker per zip code for about $300/month. And of course all the zip codes in our area were taken. Does anyone think this give one agent/broker in each area an unfair advantage? And this is supported by NAR?

John,

I just wrote this post in answer to your question, am I going to renew with realtor.com.

That's amazing you get that much traffic from AR!  You put a lot effort into it, and I am glad to hear it is paying off.

Sorry you wasted your time at such a seminar.  If you really want to go to a good social media learning event, may I suggest the RE BAR CAMPS.  They are free, so you don't have to worry about any of the messages being sponsored and the attendees make up the agenda, content and direction of the day.  There are a couple coming up in CA, http://rebarcamp.com/, don't know what is closest to you. 

the seminars were a high pressure waste of time and money.  But, that being said I do pay for the enhanced listings feature on Realtor.com and am very happy with the results from that.

Thank goodness our office picks up the Realtor.com tab, because it sure IS NOT Worth it.  5 leads a year and no sales from it and we have all of the enhancements.  I say Thank goodness, because regardless of the sites we send our sellers to...they still look for themselves on Realtor.com

Hello Everyone,

I've been a realtor for 3 years and have had to watch my expenses.  If my investment in a product does not pay for itself in a year or two I terminate them.  Realtor.com enhancements, YOUR FIRED!

Scott Haigh

Going back after some long while away from AR, I noticed the message from "wideloan".

The reader having taken issue with the post, reacted in a rash and emotional fashion rather than just sticking to his/her facts.

Assuming the group of REALTORS that were less than satisfied with the product/value from REALTOR.com were unsuccessful leads me to believe that this is personal and not business to that individual. SOMEONE is successful with any lasting program out there. The question is: Is this providing the value for my marketing dollar that I need to justify continuing?

If the answer is no, than they will either discontiue or find another way to use that venue. They also have a right to voice their opinions or experiences. That doesn't mean it is the same for everyone.

Remember:

It isn't always what you have but how you use it that matters.

If there is a REALTOR that is experiencing success with the product or a Representative that takes issue with the post, they should be happy to be seeing success and not making generalizations about those who are not satisfied with the experience. This isn't going to win any opinions over but further alienate the blogger here and really causes a loss of credibility.

What works for one may not be a fit for another. This goes for all venues of marketing, especially if it requires specific actions or strategies on the part of the Agent themselves.

Give 15 people an identical hammer and a nail and tell them to drive it into an identical 2x4 and you will get 15 different results.

My wife Kari (and fellow REALTOR) tried the skyscraper ad through realtor.com (think it's called Featured Agent or something like that).  You choose an available area and your ad is shown at a rate of 1 out of every 10 or something along those lines.  At the time (about a year ago), they made you lock in to it for 12 months for like $230/mo (or close to that at the time) but looks like you can choose to do it for less time now.  She only got one lead from it but luckily it was a good one and we ended up making money from it - but we wouldn't try it again.  Unfortunately, realtor.com still receives the most visits for real estate related web sites - far surpassing the others.  What's really disappointing to me is that you have to contact them to get pricing on the products and endure the "hard sell".  Since we're REALTORS, why can't we at least have access to the pricing details upfront so we can determine if we want to pursue the products before talking to a salesperson?  Granted, the pricing varies based on location, etc., but all of that can be easily displayed through an automated system online.

And if you agree to pay monthly rather than all at once, don't be fooled into thinking you dont't have a years contract cause you DO!

I was moving from Fl to SC so I asked if I paid the higher amount by the month if I could cancel anytime when I moved and got back into business later and over and over they said yes.

But not so....finally after 6 months they let me out and said well we will do so because our policy is that you have to complete 6 months. Wherever all that is written?

The Realtor.com traffic reports that I have viewed are a joke.  Next time you look at one of your reports pay special attention to the current week and the graph.  Generally your report will show you and your clients a partial week traffic / views but it lists the report as an entire week.  This tends to make your current weekly graph appear as if the market and your web traffic is dropping off.  

Most agents who truly track their business will tell you that Realtor.com is not much more than a listing tool and it does a very poor job of generating buyer sales.  Agents would be better served to take their annual Realtor.com budget and invest it into other online marketing where the business comes directly to you and you are not competing with all the other vendors.  If you just took your money and invested it into Pay Per Clicks for your personal site you would be better off than dumping your money off at Realtor.com.  

I will say that the original Realtor.com that allowed HTML posting was a tool we were able to leverage and convert buyers from.  Once they killed the HTML they weakened their own product and it seems like at that time they no longer viewed us as clients but as simply cash flow.  

Sam Miller

Brilliant Post.  I also like your call to action buttons

Awesome.  Thank you for re-affirming my thoughts.

I've been inundated with calls from the salesman at REALTOR.com, he is probably only calling to renew the service because our credit card changed.  If someone wants to see more than 4 photos they can just copy and paste the address.  $1,500 is way too much to pay for having extra pictures and your office logo in the upper right hand corner.  Why is Zillow free?  Why is Trulia free?  Realtor.com is around because they are funded by agents and other advertisers.  That's crap, they should be paying us for keeping their site in the ranks.

Great article and I love the comments!

Fran, I agree 100%. When my listings were featured they sent me monthly reports on the number of views each of my listings garnered. Over 3 months they reported several thousand views but all of this hoopla didn't produce one buyer. Lesson learned.

Gave up on Realtor.com advertising a long time ago. 

Hi Fran,

I enjoyed reading your post. I agree that the products Realtor.com has are not worth the money. I was initially searching for information on realtor.com's marketsnap shot to see if any Activerain users have had good success with the product and I ran across this post. About 4 months ago I did purchase through Realtor.com a banner ad in my area. I was explained that it would take about 7 to 10 days for design and then I would have traffic to my website. It actually took about 1 month for the design and 2 months along I had absolutely zero hits to my website or leads. I complained and threatened to call and submit a complaint to the Better Business Bureau and they finally cancelled my contract and was refunded my money. If anyone has any information on MARKET SNAPSHOT with realtor.com please let me know. 

I am in Minnesota and a large broker in our marketplace pulled ALL their listings from Realtor.com and Trulia to make a point they won't have third party sites sell back to them .I understand their viewpoint, but as a competitior, super easy to point out reason they should list with us. I agree, heavy blogging generates a ton of leads. I did find your artilce though because I was thinking of getting the market snapshot to enhance my website with data. Anyone else do this?

I know this is an old post but still very useful as I make decisions on where I am going to spend my advertising dollars for 2012. I will double my efforts on Active Rain after reading this post and comments.