Technology is changing the way we do our real estate business so rapidly, that many times we are contravening the regulations of our boards and associations. Unfortunately this leaves those on the leading edge vulnerable to "attacks" of fellow agents whereby the board or association is compelled to act to be seen to be enforcing the rules - at great cost to the accused agent! A recent example concerns delivering listing information on the internet. Many of us have signed MLS Online Access Agreements which contain clauses such as: "Under no circumstances shall the Member store or retain in machine readable form or otherwise nor shall the Member provide facilities for the saving or reproducing in machine readable form or otherwise any MLS Information or establish a permanent file of MLS Information or statistical information for any purpose whatsoever." Do you send listings by fax? Does your fax machine store in memory if you get a busy signal? You are breaking the rules. Does your board or association sell you software that allows you to store listing information on your hard drive or on a floppy? You are breaking the rules by definition. Do you put that listing information in an e mail to send to a client? Make it available thru your web site perhaps using an autoresponder as a response to a visitor's request for specific info? Fax on Demand perhaps? Agents have been ordered to "cease and desist" as a result of complaints by competitors - and the matter goes to various committees for, months perhaps. This is especially a concern when using the internet, as the majority of agents are still not "net wise" and those boards and committees looking at complaints have little understanding of what is actually happening. Worse yet, many agents still believe anyone who wants info by e mail must be a flake anyways - and "why can't you just phone them?" Another agent was forced to stop taking referrals - even though they were from a registered broker - because those referrals were coming from an internet site that was outside of the agent's province (happened in Canada). I still can't figure that one out! How is that different than getting a phone call from an agent in another state/province/country with a referral? I would appreciate hearing your thoughts on this subject - and any experiences you may have had.

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