hype or hope?

Going to slip in a short post--still too busy with estate ripples from my mothers death and the mountains of papers to go through to get back on track toward coherent integration.

The launch of Chico et al. MLS triggered another flurry of "gee how wonderful we are" press releases from CAR. Those are increasingly irritating to an wider and wider audience. The system has been up for a year now--debuted formally at Monterey meetings January 09. It's still not complete and the user base is not impressive. What is impressive is the number of larger associations who have elected NOT to adopt the statewide MLS (which isn't and won't be) with the marvelous new technology (which hasn't been so far--but it's not finished yet).

The organizational narcissism virus has a firm grip on state and national trade organizations. The paid executive staff and core volunteer leadership (aka KoolAid Krowd) are devoutely focused on expanding the power and control of the organizations above all else. Member needs are seen from that perspective--ie what's good for the organization must be good for the members, because the organization belongs to the members--oh really? The welfare and satisfaction of the Buyers who pay for the whole real estate industrial complex is barely on the horizon.

This is also apparent in the RPR initiative--their data user agreement offers almost nothing for the pleasure of giving up MLS data so RPR can package, sell, slice, dice and archive for eternity. It is a very nifty quasi MLS application, but the cost seems a little extreme--unless you buy the idea that technology is the ONLY way quality service can possibly be delivered to the public. Is better technology worth absolutely any cost?

That's just the spin the trade organizations have put on things the past several years and, golly gee, guess what products and services they now offer their members?
Captive consumers are loyal consumers, particulary when there's a monopoly--as there is in standard forms.

Repeating my comment from an early post. 25 years ago the trade organizations played almost NO role in day to day real estate activity. Real people bought real houses--mostly from agents who worked full time in the business and had personal knowledge of each house on the market because they'd been in that house and discussed it's benefits and negative aspects with their contemporaries.

I know we can't go back again, but we can look back and learn some valuable lessons from the past. When real people make decisions about real houses, technology can't replace the human element. Technology is a tool to facilitate decisions based on intuition, emotion and inspired insight. Technology is not fiduciary duty in a neat little box.

The trade organizations seek to create products and services that define all aspects of the real estate industry, but that "one size fits all" approach disrespects the human element in real estate. That human element is the factor that ultimately creates singular service and it's being incrementally devalued by today's real estate industry.