Where Real Estate Gets Its Dirt

San Diego Broker, Abbott Realty Group, pulls listings from “3rd party syndicator sites”

ARG Announcement

UPDATED: Click on over to You Tube and check out the comments, a lot coming from Zillow and Trulia (they are going on batshit crazy over this).

Also interesting is the mention of Sandicor’s public MLS site. You can see it at about 7:02 in the video above. Then again at least it keeps them from going to this site (uuuuuuugly!).

And lastly they created a logo! The slogan is “Never Syndicated. Never Duplicated”. It kind of reminds me of the stamps you see on a side a beef.

  1. Most of the video seems to be anti-broker reciprocity and buyer agency, as a whole. Kind of hypocritical considering that the ARG website, goes to great lengths to prominently display a toll free phone number for ARG at the top of every listing, yet don’t display the listing brokerage anywhere. Oh wait, it’s called buyer agency and it gets listings sold… Hey, wait a minute!

  2. I think this is one of the silliest videos I’ve seen in ages. This is nothing more than an Edina echo. I’ll give him this much – he has some good sound bytes and he is creating conversation.

    I’m sure local Realtors in San Diego LOVE this video. Abbott just served up the listing market to competing Realtors with ANY degree of Web savvy.

    What’s going to happen?

    It makes a double dip easier, doesn’t it?

    Mr. Abbott’s agents will be unable to generate leads on third-party platforms. Eliminating “competition” and free leads puts him into a much better position for a larger revenue share selling leads to his agents in-house. (DISCLOSURE: I don’t know if ARG business model includes selling leads to agents … this is one of the bullet points in the Edina saga making the rounds.)

    It took me a few minutes to find his agent list under a “partner” tab on a horizontal navigation menu. I was looking for and “agent” list. I wonder how many consumers are more accustomed to looking for “agents” than “partners.” Agents do not have profile pages, there are no links to their websites or links to their blogs on ARG. (Is that any way to treat a “partner”?)

    If Mr. Abbott had any credibility in Internet marketing, this story would be more interesting. His Facebook page is almost 6 month old and he has 67 fans, a string of uninteresting links and comments, and zero engagement.

    His arguments are mostly misinformed and chock full of hyperbole, evidence he does not have a handle on listing management and I’m guessing he does not have a social media policy in place or a best practices SOP that helps him leverage his listings and abate risk. (If he has NAR’s two-page social media policy cheat sheet, that does not count IMHO.)

    The real story will be told in six months … How many agents will remain with a brokerage that wants to turn back the clock? How many agents will he be able to recruit? My calendar is already marked. I’m counting 26 “sales partners” today …

  3. Pingback: This is a test post. Please Delete | Home to Minneapolis

Sponsored By VestaPlus