On April 10th, 2001, Homestore auspiciously announced an agreement with Bank of America that it had designed and launched a new Web page geared toward providing home buying solutions for the bank's 3.2 million customers. Appropriately named Homesolutions, the site was to have included listings from Homestore subsidiaries Homebuilder.com and Realtor.com, among other features. Without warning, the listings were abruptly removed from the Homesolutions site the next day, to the bewilderment of Bank of America spokespersons. Julie Davis, spokesperson for Bank of America, said, "We wanted the listings as part of our offering to customers. This is content that is not readily available through our channels." She remains hopeful that the situation can be worked out and the listings will be restored to the site soon. "We're trying to get things worked out so we aren't putting a date around it," says Davis. "We're still talking, and that is where we are." But according to Realtor.com President Steve Ozonian, Bank of America may have a long wait. "The listings aren't going to be restored in the foreseeable future," he says. "We want to listen to real estate community," says Ozonian. "If they don't like what we're doing, all they have to do is weigh in." And weigh in brokers did. According to Ozonian and Steve Cook, spokesperson for the NAR, the negative response from brokers that their listings were on the Bank of America site was swift and immediate, and clearly mandated that the listings be removed post haste. "We are a fast moving company, and we will make mistakes," says Ozonian, "But when we make them, we act quickly to solve them." But the Bank of America problem is far from over, and it has the NAR and some of its largest brokers wondering about the loyalties of its technology partner, Homestore. In case Homestore executives haven't been reading the news lately, the NAR and its members are engaged in the fight of their lives - keeping banks like Bank of America out of real estate. One of the largest banks in the U.S., Bank of America is part of the Financial Services Roundtable, the group that proposed the regulation to the Federal Reserve to allow banks to perform certain real estate brokerage services. The National Association of Realtors has taken a vigorous public stand against the proposal, now under review by the U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve, calling it "The Big Grab." Said Cook, "Three times in the past three years Congress has clearly said banks should not be in the real estate business, so now they (banks) are trying to slip through by regulation what they couldn't get by legislation." A congressional hearing concluded last week in which key affected parties testified. Representing the Financial Services Roundtable, the group which put the proposed regulation before the U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve, was none other than - Bank of America. Cook reports that, collectively, brokers and agents have sent the Federal Reserve, the U.S. Treasury, and Congress over 82,000 letters and e-mails against allowing banks into real estate. Many of these same brokers were dumbfounded that Homestore and the NAR allowed their listings to be put on the "enemy's" site. "From what I understand, the deal came as a complete surprise to everyone, and that is an understatement," says Bill Raveis, president of William Raveis Real Estate J. Lennox Scott, principal of John L. Scott Realtors worries that Bank of America will try to refer his own leads back to him. "I didn't sign up to have my listings on Realtor.com to have them end up on Bank of America. I don't want my listings to go to a local company to be potentially referred back to me," he says. It's not the first time that Homestore has acted first and apologized later. The company bought HomeFair a couple of years ago, and then responded quickly when Realtors complained last year that leads were being redirected away from their i-LEAD pages, Realtor.com's Web page lead generation product. Homestore later purchased Ipix virtual tours for the real estate industry, and then alienated some brokers by not enabling tours from other providers unless they purchase an i-LEAD page. The company recently announced that it would enable other providers. "The NAR has a lot of fences to mend," says Charles Dahlheimer, a consultant to brokers. "I'm upset about the NAR's silence about this. My clients are asking me what's going on, and I haven't had much help from the NAR. It appears that we have Bank of America in a contract with Homestore and Homestore has sold something they don't own." The NAR hasn't necessarily been silent. Some actions speak louder than words. The NAR has issued several recent directives distancing itself and Realtor.com from Homestore. Realtor.com's pulling the listings from Homesolutions may be the first step toward fence-mending between Homestore and the NAR.