When it comes to real estate salespeople there's a lot of movement. Like the rest of us, real estate licensees are a mobile group both in terms of communities and jobs. Salespeople move and when they relocate they routinely work for a new brokers. And even when they stay in the same community it's not unusual for a salesperson to switch brokerages from time to time.

It's that job change from Broker Jones to Broker Smith which raises a problem: Who gets the business when a salesperson transfers from one firm to another?

Imagine that Agent Brown decides to leave MainStreet Realty. Once Brown changes brokers then advertising, business cards, and related items will be immediately revised. But what about the Internet?

Agent Brown has a web site. Changing the contact information and broker material is no problem because it's her site and she controls the content.

The catch is that Agent Brown, being a good online marketer, has listed her site with various sites and search engines online. Those links bring her a lot of traffic -- including perhaps traffic that would benefit MainStreet Realty. MainStreet, not unreasonably, wants that traffic since its name is being used and since Brown works under the authority of Broker Douglas who owns MainStreet.

Not only does Broker Douglas want those links changed, his MainStreet Realty has a very good licensing argument: Brown was licensed to sell real estate under the authority of MainStreet. When Brown leaves the company, MainStreet does not want to be responsible for her actions. Once gone from MainStreet, Brown is not licensed to do business under the firm's name.

So Brown, wanting to act in good faith, first searches for links to her site using a search engine which has a reverse linking feature such as Google. She then knocks out an e-mail to each linking site saying, "please change the description for my link to show that I am now with OakStreet Realty."

And now the catch: While Brown can change her web site with some speed, that just isn't the case with search engines and other online sites.

The reality is that such sites are beyond Brown's control.

How much out of Brown's control?

Totally.

How long does it take a typical search engine to update a requested change? Is there a range of times?

"It can take anywhere between a month to three months, and unfortunately, sometimes even longer," says Danny Sullivan, editor of SearchEngineWatch.com, an independent monitoring and educational site.

You see the problem. The broker does not want its name mis-used and it does not want business shifted away. That's fair. The salesperson wants to do the right thing and change all ads, business cards, signs and links, and that's fair too. But while business cards and agent-owned web sites can be changed with great speed, that's not true with search engines.

Is this an issue for regulators? I think so.

There ought to be a realistic standard for such things, and I think it should work like this:

1. Any identifiers the salesperson controls should be changed immediately -- business cards, ads, signs, personal web sites, letterheads, etc.

2. The salesperson should be obligated to promptly contact each search engine, company site, and listing service which shows the agent and the old brokerage affiliation to request an update. The agent should be required to retain copies of e-mail, phone logs, and letters to prove that a reasonable effort was made to make the change in a timely manner.

3. There are certain cases where the association of a salesperson and a brokerage are matters of public record and such facts cannot be undone. No one, for instance, would expect a local newspaper to revise an article published two years earlier concerning Agent Jenkins who was then with Green Realty -- an article which may now be online in the paper's archives and searchable. No one should expect that a state real estate commission will delete from its records information showing where an individual had previously been licensed. In neither case can a salesperson or broker go back and re-write history.

In effect, what makes sense is a balance of actions and obligations. Salespeople should do what they reasonably can to make changes, and brokers and regulators must be aware of the realities which impact Internet usage.

For more articles by Peter G. Miller, please press here

Published: February 20, 2001

Use of this article without permission is a violation of federal copyright laws.

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Peter G. Miller, also known as OurBroker®, is the author of six real estate books -- including The Common-Sense Mortgage -- and is the original creator and host of America Online's Real Estate Center. Peter's weekly columns appear in more than 100 newspapers nationwide, he is also published in a variety of other media outlets and he is a frequent speaker at national events and conventions. Peter welcomes your questions, comments, and news releases via e-mail at .

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