Troy you can advertise anywhere you want. You can even commit a crime anywhere you want. But you are licensed in your state so thus shouldn't you be advertising only in your state?

This is not a COE issue this is about agency in your state and every other state in the union.



What if it is? So What? You don't want your sellers to know what the market really thinks about their property?

What if the comments were all positive? Would that make you feel more at peace?

If anything, Zillow to reveal how incompetent some of the agents are in this business. When people comment they will say both negative and postive things. Isn't that what do when they comment on things?

The problem with all this "new way of thinking" is that the people who are doing the thinking don't think.

Off-base indeed.

I also believe that when an agent enters into an exclusive listing agreement with a seller, the agent has absolute sole marketing rights to that property. Some of you may not see Zillow as a property marketing site, but I do. They want to advertise as many properties as possible for their own benefit.

An agent advertising someone else's listing is unacceptable to some of us.

For example: Let's say I am the listing agent of a $20 million home. I would not want this property advertised by other agents with their contact info under it unless I were to give them my permission.

It may seem like it would be advantageous to your seller to have as many people as possible advertising their home, but this can also become very confusing to many buyers. They see a home advertised by 5 agents, how do they know who the actual listing agent is? I know it seems similar to IDX, but advertising for sole beneficial purposes for the advertiser needs permission from the listing agent.

What really gets me is that some of you actually believe that Zillow is doing this to "talk" about properties! They are doing it "advertise" these properties along with the person's contact info that put them on there. It is an advertising idea. Even iff people did comment on these properties on the Zillow site, how many of you would really want just anyone being able to comment on your listing? What if the comments were all negative? How would it make your listings look if people wrote negative comments about it to the general public? It would interfere with your marketing abilities and possibly turn away buyers from your property.

It seems that Zillow has not taken hold in my back woods community of Evansville, IN. I posted one of my ten listings on Zillow and noticed that I was the only local Realtor taking advantage. There were also a total of five: 2 FSBO's and three others that were "Make Me Move". (maybe potential listings)

I guess it is getting more hits and if I were to add my other nine listings it would get me exposure, but would I also be opening the door to more competition. I am still not sure if being a pioneer will help or hurt. I am going to watch and see for a short while. With the limited amount of listings and the lack of Realtor interest would I also be smart or unwise to advertise in the upper right hand corner for .01 a hit and commit $100 bucks a month (10,000 hits) or would that open the flood gates and I get bought out by someone willing to pay $1.00 a hit. At that point I would rather do Google adwords.

I have also bought a FSBO site (www.EvansvilleHomesByOwner.com ) that I got sponsors to pay for and am trying to figure the best marketing idea to get participation from FSBO's and potential buyers.

Maybe Zillow will overrun these FSBO stealth sites including mine since posting on them is free.

What do you think Realthing?

Blog is a web log. For you internet illiterates it's like a catalog of what's on the web. Very similar to the search engine as weblogs can be setup to be searchable. It's very similar to this discussion forum actually. It's searchable.

If you people are afraid that weblogs will ruin your business stay at home and don't use the web. Things are going to get rough on the internet because weblogs are just beginning.