Forbes is known as a financially-oriented magazine for an elite readership, people who are educated, cultivated and wealthy. Their readers choose Forbes for well-researched articles that ring with authority. With its new online publication, Forbes.com, Forbes would love to cash in on dotcom traffic, including the 7.6 million people who visited real estate sites in 2000, according to Media Metrix. But, while it may lead in financial circles, Forbes could have a lot more to learn about online real estate. Forbes.com - Lifestyles For real estate brokers who specialize in luxury homes, Forbes.com appears as an ideal advertising opportunity. Positioned under Lifestyles, home buying opens with a luscious shot of "The Home of the Week." Click on Real Estate and on the left is a section called Finest Realtors, a selection of about 25 brokers, including McGuire Real Estate (San Francisco), Ellen Terry Realtors (Dallas) and MacArthur and Company (Hawaii), among others. Each of these brokers showcases a dozen or two of their finest listings. But I wonder how thrilled these brokers would be to learn that elsewhere on Forbes.com, Realtors aren't so sought after. In fact, they are called "annoying." Best Of The Web Now that Forbes is online, it holds itself as expert in all lifestyle categories, including home buying. To introduce its authority, Forbes has created a Best of the Web list, found at www.forbesbest.com. Inexplicably, Homebuying is not in personal finance, but is found in "Luxe Shopping," along with "Wedding Gifts" and "Cigars." But the real eye-opener is how the Homebuying category is subheaded: "What's the best way to reduce your face-time with annoying real estate brokers...consult the Web." All I know is if I were a broker, I would be annoyed by that. Hell, I'd be angry. I'd be calling Forbes.com up and raising Cain - particularly if I were an advertiser. J. Lennox Scott says he plans to do exactly that. "This is terrible, and I'll be contacting someone personally," he said. "They are in the magazine business, and they are creating a headline to get attention." Scott explains further, "This kind of phrase is cavalier, and it doesn't represent where we are as an industry. We (John L. Scott Realtors) are helping our sales associates go to consultant status and this statement does not express that at all." And that's what brokers did the last time I caught one of their partners insulting Realtors behind their backs. Remember when Wells Fargo printed that buyer's tutorial "Ten Things Your Broker Won't Tell You" on its Web site? Realtors from all over the country hounded Wells Fargo. The parent company was mortally embarrassed, claiming its dot-com arm was simply gathering some free content and didn't realize the impact of that article on Realtors. After all, 70 percent of the company's referrals come from real estate agents! Wells Fargo promptly issued a public apology and removed the offending story from its Web site and parent server so it could never be traced to Wells Fargo again. Calling real estate brokers annoying is certainly less serious than implying that they have 10 dirty tricks up their sleeve, but it is a damaging snub nonetheless. I noticed that there were no annoying wedding planners or annoying furniture salespersons in Forbes' list. That's because it's all too easy to take a pot shot at Realtors. Why? Because everyone does. It's part of our culture - one, unfortunately, that the real estate industry has endorsed with its poor control over service and pricing issues, but that's not the point. The point is the magazine had a choice and if it knew anything about the real estate industry it would have said something like this instead: "Get more information on more homes than you have ever seen in your life, courtesy of Internet-savvy real estate brokers." But it didn't because the Forbes copywriter was obviously ignorant of the fact that virtually all real estate information on the Internet is made possible because of the cooperation and/or direct or indirect subsidy by Realtors. Second, it's doubtful that Forbes readers would choose to work with annoying brokers. As they select the finest in cigars and wedding cakes, they also exercise freedom of choice in brokers. The magazine should well know from their own demographic research that it is the luxury home owner who is most likely to market a home through a Realtor. Only Realtors have the security resources and staff to properly protect and present fine family and vacation homes. They are also the only ones with pockets deep enough to advertise expensive, unique, and hard-to-move properties in places other than local newspapers and the MLS. Luxury home marketing is a specialty and only the most well-heeled brokers are equipped to deal with the demands of high-end homeowners, who expect royal treatment in exchange for their commissions, which are paid on the back end like everyone else's. Namely, it is fine Realtors who can afford to advertise themselves and showcase their homes of the week in publications like Forbes.com. The question is, will they be willing to pay to be snubbed?