Thanks for understanding. You are my friend in word and though we may disagree on some things there is surely more we agree on–intelligent dialogue, understanding, respect, good humor, need for spirituality, the brevity of life. Peace & Good Health to you and yours.

I am rarely offended, mainly because I have often been the one to lash out at people and attack in the past. In the recent years, last 5, I have learned that sugar and honey are much sweeter than salt and vinegar! Now, how can I get consumers to fall in love with my website? How can I present the best NWMLS data, I want to share some touching heart felt stories about consumers who have bought and sold their homes. I actually will be working on a project with a recent home seller. Also, I went to an Escrow company’s office today per divine chance, only to find out that the owners husband died unexpectedly last week. I had tears in my eyes, I had just talked with him last week. She is an amazing spiritual women, and there are so many people that we all get to know every day. This is a people business, unlike any other, and that is why I love selling real estate. Buying or selling a home is one of the top 5 stressful events in people’s lives, I am glad that people entrust in me, and all of us in the business. That is why, I really like real estate agents and respect them, and all of us need to just find ways to help people achieve their goals, there is plenty of money for all of us to go around, if we just do that well! My dear 3Cent I wish we were friends, I think I would like you, I love the reference of our leaders of the past, Original meanings and healthy dialogue. I don’t know who you are, and that is all cool with me, sometimes it’s better we stay that way. Some times our friends are in places we need them to be, even our enemies if there are such things, teach us lessons.

Your words to which I focused my narrow response:

” I think there are some aspects of the home listings data that cause personal security issues. There are also private matters and legal issues that a foolish young technologist company will never understand. Some of these issues can actually cause physical harm to home sellers and their families, eg. security codes and info on families.”

Free and open and intelligent dialogue should have room for a comment like “too much time in the lab not enuf outdoors” to make a point about low tech lawn signs–don’t you agree? Did you ever watch English Parliament –do you believe their style of debate is not intelligent dialogue? Do not take my one statement out of context and call it an attack. Perhaps I should have added so as not to injure. mea culpa.

In my opinion, your claim of “attack” is actually your defense mechanism in response to my narrow point, which is that tech advertsiing is no more dangerous to safety than old fashioned garden type advertising & lawn signs. I think your sense of attack comes largely from my disagreement with you. Sorry about that.

History trivia: George Washington would often rail against Congress during the Revolutionary War & only one member took offense, I believe it was John Hancock, who during one episode, ran out of the chambers, wildly upset, saying “George is being mean to me”

I am sure you don’t know this, but I will take being outdoors over being infront of my computer any day, so I thought I would tell you about my outdoor life. Infact, my blackberry is my favorite tool, can you tell by going to my http://SeattleHouses.blogspot.com blog? In case you did not want to visit, or vist, I write from my blackberry more than I write from my computer, especially my blogs on that particular website. Mostly when I am out-of-doors, I have had a blackberry since Feb. 2001. Just for your info, I spent about 2 hours at Lincoln Park on Sunday morning, 4.5 hours showing and helping a client buy a $600K plus home, and another 2.5 hours walking my dog at Green Lake, very late in the day. In between, I played with my kids, had dinner with my in-laws, in a different part of townm out-of-house again, celebrating a wonderful Easter Holiday. For those of you who don’t know me and my family, kind of hard, as we make so much press:-)

The Singh/Dickinson family lives in Queen Anne, we have 2 children and a dog name Logan. Logan is named after Logan’s Pass Glacier National Park Montana. If you have not visited, you are missing the most beautiful park in North America. The main road though Logan’s pass is called “Going to the Sun road..and is only open for 3 months of the year, I think”. Do you think we go outside and enjoy the outdoors? My wife JIll, and I were snow shoeing two weeks before the birth of our child. We love hikiing, biking, jogging**I have run 4 marathons–Yes It’s true. We are out of doors type of people, if there is such a thing, and we have our sense in reality with nature as it’s core. We moved to Seattle from Minnesota back in Jan. 1998, we have lived in Queen Anne and Fremont neighborhoods of Seattle. We have visited every neighboring hiking, biking, dining, tourist spot you can imagine in the Northwest. The locals mentioned to me back in 1999 only a year after we got here, that they had not even seen a lot of the places we had. Jill bought one of those local tourist guide books, and a couple of hiking books. I highly recommend that to anyone who is moving here, or wants to enjoy the best that the Seattle Metro and the Pacific Northwest has to offer. That is infact, why we live here. And, since I am a successful real estate agent, I recommend these books and spots to relocation clients.

Oh yes getting to the main point of the Blog title, getting back to access to listing data, consumer access, and different technologies to make things better. Back in 1999 when I co-founded a successful technology company, XML was not well known or used, so at that little company we built a interesting Bot technology. It was actually that technology that led to the acquisition by the 6th fastest growing company on the NASDAQ in 2001. That scraping, as Robbie calls it, worked off the Object Component model of IE, and the bots were custom developed better than any other at the time, as they were easier to train. Bots, for most of you that don’t know what they are, are short for Software Robots. Robot.txt is something that almost all of your real estate website owners should be aware of. As those are instructions to Bots by search engines. Google Bots are the smartest tools that Google utilizes to aggregate and index data/content on the web. The nerd in me, my senior thesis in MIS was on Robots and Artificial Intelligence, where I taught a class to fellow MIS senior graduates. So bots, and scrapers for data access are somethings I know about:_)

I agree with Robbie that Agents should have access to the listings data, the MLS does provide data in XML as of late, but to only to provide it to the consumers via their websites. But if the MLS does not provide a tight control over the access, and or unethical or worse non-security savvy or smart agents/technologists will cause harm to sellers or manipulate the data integrity? Data Integrity is as big of an issue to the NWMLS as is security. Please don’t ask me to explain data integrity issues, and equal opportunity to all agents etc? (**why are they dealing with technology any way–shouldn’t they be selling real estate?). Most importantly for me, security is an issue informationn such as, schedule of kids sleeping, the sellers traveling and out of town for a week or longer, people’s work schedules, security codes for doors, alarm systems etc. This type of data is provided to agents to make it easier for them to show homes to their clients, and often lots of other types of private data is available to agents and should not Ever be allowed for direct access to consumers. Why? I thought I explained that pretty well in the previous post. Folks, and especially technology folks, think from other points of view not just yours. There are so many issues with consumers calling sellers directly without being qualified negotiating etc. Most sellers don’t want to be bothered with cheap unqualified buyers wasteing their time, the issues go on an on. To quote Stephen Covey, “Seek to understand before trying to be understood”. This is paramount in applications of technology for consumer and business needs. Why did I spent so much time writing this email, because I want people to make smarter decisions. Ignorance and lack of knowledge will cost people thousands of dollars. That is why the UrbanTango tagline is “Smart Real Estate, Nice people” Let’s all make the world a little smarter, a little nicer!

Re; security issues/safety

technology search no more risky than an ad in any other medium unless security codes, location of hidden key and notes that property is vacant are in database (not a wise thing to do). Casing a neighborhood and looking for ” for sale” sign on the lawn is as low tech as you can get and much more effective for burglars. You’ve spent too much time in the tech lab and not enuf out of doors.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/insideout/southeast/series4/burglary_crime.shtml

The Listings data access is a very complicated process, and needs to be enhanced. I do hear there are some new rule changes coming out of the NWMLS. I certainly support your efforts to get the NWMLS and MLS systems across the world to make it easier for Agents or other credible organizations that want to help the consumer. I think it is always about the consumer first, Real Estate agents and Brokers second, we have two constituents in this case, the buyers and the sellers. Even the County records have restrictions on public records access and what maybe shared and what not. Consumer privacy is paramount, so is the IP owners, and than ofcourse the even level playing field for business competition.

Back in the early 2001-02, my company was helping the HIPPA regulations for healthcare, gigantic data issues there. Any way, there are countless industries with these data and content issues of ownership and control. Ticketmaster fight over event data, Google issues with Publishers, how about Google getting sued a few weeks ago about it’s rankings impacting control to that kids website? Even unintentional issues with CraigsList lawsuit, and Napster enabling illegal activity? IP and data access issues will continue to be challenged and enhanced. So forword we go, making the world a flatter place. But selling a home or two in Seattle, one client at a time, is how we make it work!

To quote computer security professionals “The only secure computer is one that’s unplugged, locked in a safe, and buried 20 feet under the ground in a secret location… and I’m not even too sure about that one.”

Now, obviously an unplugged computer isn’t very useful, so whenever you put a computer on the internet you are putting it at risk. A database server is more complex than a file server, and it’s more likely it could have security hole or be misconfigured by system administrator that could be exploited by hackers.

I think giving agents data access via database server or data download would be fine. A database server would be nicer but, with shared web server/database hosting plans being so cheap from companies like Inmotion Hosting (The host of Rain City Guide) or Parcom (My favorite shared hosting company) it’s not a deal breaker.

Vipin,

I should say, that despite my free data / tech loving frenzy, I don’t think it will change the fact that a real estate transaction for most people will always be a complex, stressful & emotional experience that will benefit from the assistance a human agent.

If you can attract leads, turn them into satisfied repeat customers who give you referrals, you’ll do well (regardless of what business you are in). Obviously this is easier said than done, but there many unique & effective ways of doing this that don’t require computers.

I just believe that smart use of technology can improve the home buying/selling process by making consumers smarter and more satisfied with the services you provide. It can also make agents/brokers more efficient, lower transaction costs & perhaps even improve your revenues. Unfortunately, the relentless march of technology, tends to lower margins and change the status quo (which tends to scare the establishment).

As I said before, the NWMLS and major MLS’s are doing a great job, and I agree with about 95% of their rules. I do think the power needs to be equally weighted, instead of just big companies. Trust me, the big company guys are the one’s who have the most to protect. I see this dialogue as a way to impact the MLS policies.

I want to share some non-documented statistics with all of you. The top 3 real estate agents in Queen Anne don’t have much of a web presence. They continue to be the Top 3, and no matter what the medium for leads, sucessful people still have to convert the leads. Technology cannot not convert the leads, real estate is a complex sales cycle, anyone read Spin Selling? To make my point clear, here is a story of someone you all know or should know. While I worked for an old world company, that office was #10 in the world of 2400 offices. In 2005 Jim became the #1 agent in that office. While Jim did that, he has made some headlines, but his success is about much more than just online leads.

When I joined Jim’s company, I asked him to be my mentor not because of his technology skills or know-how. I asked him because Jim is one of best people I know. What makes him a great real estate agent and very successful? Same thing that applies to all great sales people and market leaders. He is very ethical, honest, smart, nice, and works super hard. He is organized, he does not try to screw people over, and he focuses on his clients needs ahead of his. He closes real estate transactions because people trust him and his team, and they want to do business with him. How can a website or ebusiness do that? Well, that is the multi-million dollar question Will some of us figure it out? Is Jim earning more profits than this hot real estate company? Well, some of us know that he is, how about that, a 5 person non-technical team, whipping a high tech company with million’s in investments? Why, he knows what he is doing!

Before, I sign off I must mention my truth. I have kept quite for a long time, and will need to be for about 2 1/2 more years at the MAX. Because of this topic of MLS data, I got an email from Dustin last week. And, I love this website as it is very informative. All of you really are an asset to the real estate industry, well almost all:-) I also got a call from a top real estate agent from my old world real estate company. And that person asked me to share my truth, and some of you know the pain and sufferring I went through. Me and my family are still recovering from it. My truth will come out in the court of law, and yes, the honest hard working people always win, some times it takes them a little longer.

There are people on this board that I don’t respect, I know these people have lied to the public, and many in the industry have noticed. I am not interested in saying negative things about who these people are. They know who they are, and all I can say is, Karma is, what it is. All I ask is that people, please stop lying to the public, I am not the only one sharing this view. Real Estate agents are very hard working people, and the earn every dollar they make. Are Investment Bankers worth their 10-20% fees? Technologists must understand and have empathy for the human factor before they build their solutions, or they will simply wither away.

Dustin, way to go and make this website a huge success!! I am super proud of you and Anna, as you have come a long way since when I told you guys to start a website and blog to generate leads back in 2004. I will never forget Carol’s wedding where we met, I still can’t forget how my daughter had the poop accident:-) It’s awesome to see that you are getting more traffic and higher rankings than UrbanTango.com. Why would I say it’s awesome, because you want others to succeed as well as your self, especially people you like! It was sad to see Anna leave the Keller Willams family. I really do love KW, and the incredible ethics that the company is known for, no wonder it’s the Fastest growing real estate company in North America! Those ethics actually got me a great lead for a $600k client yesterday. The prospect mentioned the ethics of Keller Williams as a determining factor to choosing our website, and me! I am sure we will stay in touch privately, Avoir and Bon Voyage!