Real Estate should take a page out of the play book from the New York City School system. Much to the surprise of some wealthy homeowners in New York, the city released its first grading system results for public schools. The schools were based on performance, academic progress, and indexed against one another. Good schools whose standardized test scores did not improve were given grades of B or C. Many people are speaking out in NYC, especially residents who moved to an area because of school quality, and not surprising - REALTORS® representing sellers. Suddenly, good schools are not good [...]

MLSs are joining agents and brokers in the rush to contribute listings to online listing sites like Trulia, Google Base and others. There have been many spirited conversations regarding this trend and thought leadership is needed in this area. On the surface, the opportunity side of the equation seems pretty simple – send the listings and these companies will share them with visitors to their website for free.  Listings are marketed to consumers expanding the reach and exposure to the properties available. Opportunity Costs – although most mls organizations can easily provision listing feeds, depending on the rules and regulations [...]