The national real estate press seldom seems to ever give Realtors a break. No matter what information is available to them, some writers manage to use only that which they can turn into a negative spin. Are Realtors really all that bad?

Take this recent headline from Bloomberg News - "Agents Shun Web as Home Buyers Flock Online"

Boy, does that make agents look dumb. Apparently, agents avoid customers. Makes you wonder why, doesn't it?

Journalist Kathleen M. Howley's intriguing headline would suggest that she had interviewed agents to find out why they were "shunning the Internet," but the story unfolds with not one agent being interviewed. Howley takes a figure from the new National Association of Realtor member profile, which was the catalyst for the story, and says "almost half of real estate agents surveyed by the National Association of Realtors said they don't use the Internet to generate business leads." She contrasts this fact with findings from a recent Gomez survey where over 70 percent of home buyers who plan to buy in the next three years say they plan to begin their search on the Internet.

To explain this failure to capture Internet buyers, Howley does not go to the NAR, which would perhaps have an explanation, but turns to Bradley Inman, founder of HomeGain for a quote. Howley mentions the name of Inman's company, but does not explain that HomeGain is an Internet business which allows consumers to interview real estate agents anonymously. Agents pay for these leads as referrals. Not surprisingly, Mr. Inman says, according to the report, that the agents who aren't online are "missing an opportunity." By not mentioning Mr. Inman's true interest in whether or not agents get on the Internet, Bloomberg does its readers a disservice. They might conclude that he is a neutral pundit offering an opinion, when in fact he has a strong interest in encouraging agents to use the Internet to close leads.

All agents operate under a broker, who may or may not be implementing a technology lead generation solution for agents. These agents for the broker are usually paid as independent contractors, and for them, the adoption of Internet lead generation tools is an expense. In order to justify the expense, they must be compelled in some way - namely that the Internet will work as well or better for them than other proven means of lead generation.

Internet buyers who might use the Internet sometime in the next three years are hardly leads, by most agents' standards. Most Realtors consider a lead to be someone who is ready to find a home, who is in the process of being qualified by a lender, and is ready to write a contract when the right home is found. Otherwise, they could spin their wheels for weeks or months working for unprepared or unmotivated buyers. So if agents are less than enthusiastic about Web buyers, maybe it has more to do with the buyers than the agents. Either way, that's a story worth investigating.

According to NAR, Net use by Realtors is actually on the increase. Most agents use the Internet for communication more than lead generation. She might have learned that three out of five agents use the Internet for business purposes and three out of four use e-mail for business purposes.

That's hardly "shunning the Web."

Ms. Howley isn't alone in building a case to make Realtors appear backward. The Atlanta Journal and Constitution writer Amy Winn also wrote a similar story, saying agents "cool on Net." She even goes so far as to say that agents do business the old-fashioned way -- by phone. Since when is using the phone old-fashioned -- except where Realtors are concerned? She also uses the same NAR and Gomez figures to build her case that agents are flubbing it on the Web.

The L.A. Times also joins the chorus. With a headline reading "Realtors Retain Low Profile on the Web," journalist Diane Wedner opines that "real estate agents lag in their use of online technology to generate business leads, according to a pair of recent surveys."

To her credit, Wedner takes the story further than her competitors and mentions that "77 percent use e-mail for some business purposes." But where is the follow-up?

Ms. Wedner also takes the trouble to interview a real live real estate agent who explained that she had used a national service to help her generate leads, but didn't get any, and that is why she no longer uses the Internet for lead generation. Wedner also interviewed an NAR researcher who explained that the numbers looked small, but that agents were using the Web successfully.

Of the three writers, Wedner makes the most effort to develop a story, but to what end? For the third time in as many stories, Wedner also pairs the NAR figure with the exact same Gomez survey result giving her story a negative slant from the getgo.

Wow. Three out of three? Using the exact same figures? What are the odds of that? More astronomical than you would think. The NAR survey alone was 45 pages long, and delved into all sorts of agent behavior with as many as five to twenty statistics per page. The likelihood that all three journalists could only find the same embarrassing tidbit about Realtors and then couple it with the same exact quote from another source is nothing short of amazing. What would explain this? Is there a journalism conspiracy to make Realtors look like idiots and my invitation to participate just got lost in the mail?

No, unfortunately, the answer is much more mundane. Why? Many news agencies rely too heavily on press releases from companies instead of ferreting out the real story. They also take plenty of shortcuts using the same pundits over and over without questioning the person's authority or their actual agenda, but that's another story.

Meanwhile, real estate agents continue to look bad in the national press. That's not right, and that's not the whole story.

Published: June 26, 2001

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