I responded earlier to this article, but after reading some of the follow-on posts, especially the one from Steve Jarrell, CEO, VisualTours.com, I feel the need to repond anew. As a realtor, I have to pay to join my local MLS in order to get my listings thereon. My MLS and Homestore/Realtor.com then enter into an agreement whereby my listings as well as those of other realtors are uploaded to appear on Realtor.com. However, once on Realtor.com, my listings only appear with the name of my office. If I want my name to appear, guess what? I have to pay Realtor.com for an iLead site. Great now my name is there. Oh, my virtual tour since it is not an iPIX tour is not there. I guess Realtor.com is not interested in me providing full service to my customer in terms of selling their home. Well maybe that is not true. After all, maybe they will try and enter in an agreement with VisualTour for their (my virtual tour vendor of choice because it is the best one out there, bar none) tours to be on Realtor.com. But wait, it appears that VisualTour will be charged for that privilege of helping a realtor help his/her customer. At that point, VisualTour will have no choice but to raise its prices and so once again I pay. I obtain the listing, create a virtual tour using VisualTour and in order to do the best job of selling my customer's home by exposing it to the largest possible audience of potential buyers, I have to make three payments in effect, 1) to join my MLS, 2) to have my name associated with my listing on Realtor.com and 3) to VisualTour to cover their agreement with Realtor.com. 1 and 2 are too in-grained to fight, but 3, no, no, no (and at no time do I blame VisualTour for 3.) When will this madness stop? When will Realtor.com truly become a friend to realtors and our customers instead of their own pockets?

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