Executives with Network Communications and its subsidiary The Real Estate Book categorically deny any relationship with Primedia's Realestate.com and Lending Tree, and further claim that the Real Estate Book listings posted on Realestate.com and Lending Tree are unauthorized.

A spokesperson with Lending Tree confirmed that Lending Tree's brokerage listings are supplied by HPC Interactive.

Glenn Goad, senior vice president of Internet business with Network Communications, and Ray Peabody, director of products and operations for Internet business for The Real Estate Book, claim that their organization has no agreement with Realestate.com or Lending Tree whatsoever. They say they have no agreement which allows Realestate.com to post Real Estate Book's clients' listings, copyright them to HPC Interactive (Primedia's Internet division,) and charge 35 percent referral fees to participating brokers who received leads from the listings.

Says Goad, "We do not support their business model or their position."

According to Goad and Peabody, over 20 of their broker and agent customers have e-mailed or called with concerns about how Realestate.com and Lending Tree got their listings. The brokers are complaining of solitication calls made by Lending Tree which are stemming from the listings.

"They are asking us, 'How come I'm getting calls from Lending Tree?" says Peabody. "Lending Tree wants them to join their referral network. Our clients think we endorsed this, and that we gave them the data but that is the furthest thing from what we do."

Explains Peabody, "We provide our listings to many sites in a very controlled way. One thing we are very careful about is how those listings are used. We provide the listings with the requirement that the lead comes back to the listing agent."

Peabody and Goad say they would never allow their clients' listings to be used to deliver leads to other brokers.

So how did Realestate.com and Lending Tree end up with Real Estate Book's listings? According to Goad, Network Communications provides a feed to Lycos, which they say is handled for the portal by an IT company called One Roof Technologies. One Roof, Goad and Peabody learned, signed an agreement with HPC Interactive, Primedia's Internet division, to supply Realestate.com with listings provided by The Real Estate Book. As the listings appear on Realestate.com and Lending Tree, the listing agent contact information has been removed so that inquiries on the listing can be directed to a Lending Tree partner broker.

One Roof is a one-man show run by Christopher Delaney, according to a British-Isles accented woman who answered the phone for the company. She explained that Delaney office-shares with a real estate company called C. Brendan Noonan, and that the company does not have a Web site where one can seek more information about the company.

Delaney did not return Realty Times' inquiries.

Goad says he has informed Delaney that One Roof is in breach of their agreement. Delaney replied, said Goad, that if the listings weren't on Realestate.com, they wouldn't be on Lycos either because it is the same data feed.

What has Goad and Peabody steamed is that HPC Interactive copyrighted Real Estate Book listings. Goad and Peabody also contacted Melanie Bowdenburger, in charge of business development with HPC Interactive, asking her to immediately take the listings down, they said. We want a resolution to this immediately, they told her. Bowdenburger asked for some time to "huddle." She was informed that the only way HPC Interactive would be allowed to keep the data is if the Real Estate Book name, branding were left and the listing agent identified, and that the agent would get the leads from his/her own listings - at no additional cost. Meaning - no 35 percent referral fees from Lending Tree.

HPC Interactive and Network Communications have scheduled a meeting to discuss the matter, said Goad. If HPC Interactive comes back with a referral offer, then Network Communications will demand the listings come down.

"We may be the majority of the content on their site," says Peabody.

Melanie Bowdenburger with HPC Interactive did not return a call and e-mail from Realty Times, but a spokesperson for Primedia, HPC Interactive's parent, said he would get information to Realty Times as soon as possible.

Corporate communications director for Lending Tree, Deborah Roth, told Realty Times that she would not answer questions until Monday, and that there has been no announcement about listings on Lending Tree, even though the company is already sponsoring listings on Realestate.com.

The situation raises a lot of questions that are yet unanswered:

• Why didn't Delaney inform Network Communications that he was about to cut a private deal to HPC Interactive over Real Estate Book's listings?
• How did HPC Interactive know to contact Delaney to obtain bootlegged listings?
• At what point were the listing agents' contact information taken off the listings - before or after the listings arrived at HPC Interactive?
• As a publisher of well-known magazines including Motor Trend, Apartment World, and Seventeen magazine, why didn't Primedia's Internet organization not know or care enough to respect Real Estate Book's copyrights? Was this a case of dot-com ignorance or entitlement?
• Some of the listings that are derived from the Real Estate Book have the listing agents' contact information, but others do not. Why?
• If the feed from One Roof is the same as the Lycos feed, what other listings sources are being bootlegged to other publishers? Are other listings are being scraped by HPC Interactive for Lending Tree referrals?

Says Dan McCarthy, CEO of Network Communications, "One reality about referral services is that it allows you to think you can be successful without doing the hard work - sales."

Published: February 28, 2003

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