MARY ANN QUINN – Changed policy

While personal Web pages often are credited with boosting real estate business, some real estate agents now say homebuyers and sellers are misusing information posted on their sites.

According to brokers who feature complete home listing information, including addresses of homes on the market, some homebuyers take the free information and do the homebuying on their own or with another agent, completely bypassing the agents who provided the information.

That type of “disloyalty” is pushing real estate agents to change their policies on when and how much information they provide to a prospective client. That’s the case with Mal Duane, a former Re/Max agent who now runs MalDuane.com Real Estate in Framingham and 12 other Web sites.

Duane recently helped a customer sell a condominium, only to find out last week that the same person took a listing for a $560,000 house that Duane e-mailed to her and bought the home without Duane’s help.

That “painful experience” convinced Duane to change her listing policy. Now, Duane no longer gives addresses to all users of her database but only to those who are active clients or have contacted her office and signed a contract saying they want to use her services.

“That’s the danger of giving that information to the consumer,” Duane said of providing home addresses. “That’s the chance that you take when you’re giving the consumer everything they want.”

Duane’s change in listing policy comes as homebuyers and sellers are demanding, and getting, as much information about properties for sale as they can before calling or visiting an agent.

For years, real estate professionals controlled all home information, forcing homebuyers who were seriously interested in a property to contact an agent if they wanted to view it or know its exact location. With technological advances and as more real estate agents turn to the Internet to improve business, that has slowly started to change.

Real estate Web sites started springing up, and tech-savvy homebuyers welcomed them with open arms. Not all of the current real estate Web sites include home addresses with properties for sale. Many sites, such as Realtor.com, do not feature home addresses and some listings on that site don’t even include a photograph of the home.

Duane estimates that 80 percent of today’s homebuyers are surfing the Internet when they begin their home search.

Five years ago, Re/Max agents, including Duane and Janet Halloran of Re/Max Premier Properties in Lexington, were among the first to contract with a multiple listing service provider to download homes for sale onto their sites.

Halloran said that under the agreement, agents were not supposed to arbitrarily put addresses on their sites.

A sales agent for over 20 years, Halloran said Web sites and technology have been a tremendous time-saver for busy homebuyers and brokers. Home listings, with photographs and addresses, can help buyers weed out houses they are not truly interested in, saving agents the time of driving consumers from home to home.

Halloran acknowledges, however, that some buyers have abused the system, particularly in the recent tight housing market when homes were selling within a matter of hours after appearing on MLS.

It was not uncommon over the last few years to have an anxious homebuyer get a listing, go out to see a house and decide to buy the house without contacting the agent who provided the listing, she said.

“There’s been quite a bit of disloyalty when you have a tight market,” Halloran said. “I think as the market slows down, there’s not going to be this panic among buyers … People are going to be more willing to slow down and work with you [the agent].”

Halloran, who sells homes in Lexington, Arlington, Belmont and Winchester, does not provide home addresses unless she has met prospective customers and interviewed them about their needs.

She routinely monitors visitors of her Web site and subscribers to her electronic mailing list, and calls or sends messages to users who have not contacted her office for help.

If a user does not respond to her message, or indicates that he or she is working with another agent, Halloran shuts the user out of her listings.

This active monitoring is critical in order for the Web site to work for agents, Halloran said. Too many agents are not using Web sites, electronic mail and other technology to their fullest benefit, she said.

“You can’t just put people on MLS and walk away,” Halloran said. Brokers who get “burnt” by the system are not staying in touch with their Web site visitors and are not “controlling the information,” she said.

“I’m not saying that I will withhold information from a consumer,” Halloran said. “I think I am providing a service. I am paying for that service. I am expecting in return to make money. In order to make money, I need to work with these people.”

Pitfalls and Plusses
Mary Ann Quinn, a Realtor with Re/Max Top Achievers in Reading, realizes how important it is to exercise greater control over the information on her Web site.

Just last week, Quinn changed her Web site listing policy. Homebuyers will not get home addresses unless they’ve had a face-to-face meeting with her or one of her buyer specialists. Exceptions will be made for buyers who have been referred by past clients or for people who are already active clients, she said.

Quinn changed her policy because there have been instances when homebuyers have taken a home address and other listing information from her Web site and completely bypassed her to buy a house.

In Reading recently, a homebuyer pulled a listing from her Web site, drove by a home and then contacted one of Quinn’s competitors to buy the house.

“I’m at the home inspection meeting the woman [homebuyer] for the first time and she’s thanking me for putting the house on my Web site,” Quinn said. Quinn said that is just one of the reasons she changed her listing policy.

“I don’t want to degrade the proprietary nature of MLS,” Quinn said. “If MLS is just out there on the street for everyone [to use], they’re [buyers] going to need to work with an agent less and less and they can go work with a listing agent directly.”

When homebuyers contact Quinn about a home they’ve seen on another agent’s Web site, Quinn said she refers the person back to the other agent.

“I know what it feels like,” Quinn said, referring to buyers going to other agents with information she’s provided.

Despite these risks, Quinn said Web sites have been a big boost for her business.

Over the last six months, when homes were selling within 24 hours, Quinn said that buyer clients were getting listings and driving by homes before she had a chance to go with them.

If buyer clients weren’t interested, it meant one less home visit she had to make. If the property was desirable and met the needs of the buyer, it meant Quinn and the buyer could act quickly to purchase the house.

So, while Quinn acknowledges the downside of providing addresses on Web sites, she also sees the positive aspects and said there are ways agents can avoid the pitfalls – like meeting with homebuyers to see how serious they are about building a relationship with them.

“There are pitfalls and I tell you, it’s very frustrating,” she said. “But the advantages totally outweigh the pitfalls.”

For Duane, the pitfalls of address listing have been learned.

About 250 people use her database to find homes in Natick, Framingham, Ashland, Upton, Grafton and other MetroWest towns. Only about four people have sent messages to Duane expressing disappointment and questioning her about why she stopped providing addresses to all users.

Duane, who maintains a full-time Internet specialist to provide full listing information, updates on code changes and faxes, said she doesn’t mind giving out information to customers as long as they understand that she is providing a service.

“All we’re asking is if we’re taking the time to do all of this, if there’s something that you really want to see, give us a call,” she said.