A new web application created by Realtor.com has spurred a wave of anxiety – and criticism – from real estate agents. The tool, AgentMatch, is currently being tested in only two markets: Las Vegas and Boulder, Colo. It is intended to help consumers select a real estate agent by matching them with an agent who has experience with selling homes in the neighborhood they’re interested in. Consumers are presented with a variety of metrics, including how many homes the agent has sold in the recent past, along with star ratings and a “bio” about the agent.
The backers of the project hope to use AgentMatch to help Realtor.com differentiate itself from its two major competitors, Zillow and Trulia. Realtor.com is the oldest of the three major real estate portals, launched more than a decade ago through a partnership between the National Association of Realtors (NAR) and Move Inc., an independent, publicly traded company which operates a network of real estate-related sites. Move licenses the Realtor name and brand from NAR under a strict operating agreement.
In recent years, Zillow and Trulia have steadily gained market share from Realtor.com. A report last month from web traffic analytics provider Experian showed Realtor.com falling to fourth place among the top 10 real estate websites in October, with the site receiving 6.7 percent of all real estate search traffic, in comparison with 8.2 percent for Trulia and 14.5 percent for Zillow. In response, NAR and Move have repeatedly re-adjusted the terms of their partnership to allow Move more flexibility to add new features in the hopes of attracting more consumer eyeballs.
AgentMatch is intended to be one such feature. “I can’t even express to you, how empowered [consumers] feel…when they see performance stats. They absolutely love this idea,” Ernie Graham, director of the project for Realtor.com, told real estate blogger Rob Hanh in a podcast on his site, Notorious-ROB.com. “All agents know how this market works, when someone walks into that open house, it’s almost like prey. It’s just the way it is. Agents work hard, trying to take [leads] from prospects to clients, but the truth is consumers really love this idea of going from the hunted to the hunter, when it comes to connecting with agent.”
Concerns Abound
That’s exactly what agents are worried about. Many fear that the tool, by ranking agents by how many homes they’ve sold, will simply result in funneling all leads to the agents with the most listings, particularly disadvantaging agents who focus on buyers, agents new to the industry or those who work in agent teams (many of which record every sale under the team name or that of a team leader).
“I don’t think that statistically, you can judge a good agent from a bad agent,” said Rochelle Jonswold, broker-owner of Keller Williams Realty North Central in Leominster. “You can have extremely competent, good agents who might decide they only want to do 10 or 15 sales a year, but they give clients their undivided attention…my concern is that the information they’re giving them is not going to be the full picture of who the person is. You don’t get a picture of what they’re doing, you just get a picture of how much they’re doing.”
Many agents agree. An informal survey of over 400 agents who participate in the industry best practices advocacy group, “Raise the Bar In Real Estate” found more than half of respondents regarded the tool as “a terrible idea” which “concerns [them] greatly” or “quite a lot.”
And many agents feel particularly angered and betrayed that the site leading the charge to introduce productivity rankings is Realtor.com, which uses the name and branding of their own trade group.
“It was a double heartache,” that it was Realtor.com, said Johnson. “Realtor.com should really be representing all the members, and not pitting one against the other. We all pay the same amount of dues, and we’re all in this profession together.”
In the Raise the Bar survey, 69.7 percent of respondents called it “completely inappropriate” for Realtor.com to introduce a ranking tool, with over 90 percent of respondents saying Realtor.com had a “very real responsibility” to support Realtors.
The ferocity of agent’s backlash has already prompted some response from Move and NAR. The groups announced the creation of an advisory council of agents to review the project as it goes through the testing process, and held a public webinar last week to allow agents to voice concerns and ask questions about the project.
But it seems far from clear whether that will be enough. Jack Attridge, an agent with William Raveis Real Estate in Marblehead, publically resigned from the advisory board last week, after just one meeting had been held. Attridge, writing in an op-ed for Inman News said that he felt the advisory group was merely a prop to meant quiet critics of the AgentMatch concept, and called on NAR to disavow the project.
So far, however, neither Move nor NAR have done so, and both have said they plan to test the tool in a further five or six market areas in the next several months. MLS PIN, the largest MLS in Massachusetts, already provides sold data to Move. However, Kathy Condon, president and CEO of MLS PIN, said she had not been approached to be a test site and would be inclined to reject such an overture, based on the response to the project from her members. Move cannot include MLS PIN’s sold data in a ranking tool without renegotiating their agreement with MLS PIN, Condon said.
AgentMatch is not the first such attempt to use metrics to rank real estate agents. Online-centric brokerage Redfin launched a similar effort in 2011, eventually shuttering it due to agent complaints about data inaccuracies. And earlier this fall, Zillow quietly announced that it would be automatically incorporating past sales data into its agent profiles, though agents can edit the profile and add sales the portal has missed.
Moves like that leave some agents convinced that productivity ranking will come to the industry in one form or another, and that agents will simply have to adjust.
“People get to an agent in many different ways, and this is just another way in which our industry is changing,” said Debi Benoit, co-broker owner of Benoit Mizner Simon in Wellesley. “[Consumers] want somebody who’s active in the game….Some people will take advantage of it, and some won’t. There are so many ways for agents to get their name out there, and there’s many other companies that people look at. You’re just not going to be able to control all of it.”
All an agent can do, she said, is, “Do your best, get out there, and work hard.”
Email: csullivan@thewarrengroup.com
