OT re HOMS: Methinks thou doth protest too much!
You misquoted me. Not very cool.
It was posting #255. Please reread. I never wrote that real estate agents "add no tangible value". Nor did I write that buyers or sellers "need no buffer". This is exactly what I wrote.
<<Hopefully the internet will make it possible for folks to buy homes without paying 5 or 10 thousand dollars to a real estate agent, who will add less and less value for home buyers in the future.>>
As I see from your bio that you are in real estate, I suppose your conscience is bothering you. Here are a few excerpts from the August 6 WSJ's searing indictment of HomeStore's relationship with the real estate industry. It is what convinced me to decline to invest in HOMS, no matter how financially profitable it might be.
What does it profit a man if he gains the world and loses his soul in the process?
(I am not pasting all of the WSJ out of respect for its copyright. It is well worth the purchase of the entire article, if you don't already subscribe).
In a race that has left
Microsoft Corp. and others in the dust,
homestore.com, based in Thousand Oaks,
Calif., has grabbed more
residential-real-estate listings for its Web site,
than any other national site, often through exclusive agreements with local
realty boards. This lock on a big slice of the market helps keep agents and
their commissions at the center of every transaction. In doing so, it serves
the interests of the National Association of Realtors, which has a say in
homestore.com's business and owns part of realtor.com, the official site of
the powerful trade group.
By embracing realtor.com, says Peter Sealey, a professor at the University
of California at Berkeley, the real-estate industry is acting "to co-opt the
Internet to protect its high-margin structure."
Realtor.com's ties to the Realtors' group have drawn sharp criticism in the
industry and scrutiny from federal antitrust regulators. (The Wall Street
Journal's homes.wsj.com site uses realtor.com as its home-search
database.) The controversy arises from the way homestore.com and the
National Association of Realtors have sought to corner the market in
listings. Homestore.com promised a hot stock; brokers and local realty
boards pledged to make realtor.com the only national Web site on which
they would list their homes.
Those who have gotten an advance piece of the IPO, in the form of stock
warrants, include local realty boards -- which control multiple-listing
services in most areas -- as well as big brokers and thousands of individual
agents around the country. The warrants give holders the right for a limited
period to buy a certain number of homestore.com shares at $20. Some of
those stakes could end up being worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, at
least on paper.
Industry Debate
Homestore.com's tactics have ignited a debate in the industry over
restrictive practices and whether exclusivity is fair to sellers, since it limits
the exposure of a home for sale. "Offering financial incentives to restrict
distribution of a listing is a conflict of interest and a violation of our duty to
the seller," says Bill Wendel, an agent in Cambridge, Mass.
The NAR's role on the Internet and the effort to lock up listings also have
attracted the interest of federal antitrust enforcers, who have opened a
preliminary investigation, people familiar with the inquiry said. It is
apparently focusing on whether the national and local real-estate boards
are trying to slow Internet rivals and protect Realtors' home-sales
commissions, these people say.
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has already reined in efforts by local
real-estate boards to exclude competitors...
Tom D |
