Let me first let you know that I am an Account Executive with Realtor.com. I want to point out an error in this story regarding the ability to search for agents. The story says the following:
Another weakness of the sites collectively is the lack of access to agents. "We have found through our Gomez.com/Realty Times Quick Polls that most consumers want to find a good agent who is knowledgeable in a local market first. Yet, all of these sites have very limited search tools for agents. Only RE/MAX.com allows consumers to search for an agent with email and a personal photograph online.
I'm going to try to say this without any bias. Realtor.com has a "Find A Realtor" tool which gives consumers the ability to do just that! They can include speciality areas, keywords, company names, agent names and speciality zip codes. The search returns a randomly generated list of Realtors who fit the parameters of the search, as defined by the Realtor.
Of course, coming out on top is great, but I wanted to point out that many of the surveys that are done simply don't look at the whole story. To say that RE/MAX.com, one of our partners, is the ONLY site that allows a consumer to search for an agent is plain wrong. There are two sites: Realtor.com and RE/MAX.com. By the way, much of the reason RE/MAX.com does so well on these surveys is because much of the site is powered by Realtor.com.
If you are a Realtor and aren't found in the Realtor.com Yellow Pages directory, then the Realtor search I'm talking about won't find you. If you want to change this, call 888-991-7969.
Tim Dougherty
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