ha
no one can be 100% sure of anything. You learn by doing, you learn from your mistakes. That’s often the best education. If you want to advertise & are afraid of making a mistake take baby steps.

don’t do it unless you are 100% sure you’re doing it right—you crack me up osman

2. Not so sure talking about or blogging about a listing is advertising.

Maybe Russ can split that legal hair.

NWMLS Rule 190 – Advertising Another Member’s Listing Prohibited.
No member shall, without first obtaining the listing member’s or subscriber’s written permission (including email), advertise a property listed by another member in any manner, including but not limited to, display, reader board, newspaper, flyer or other publication, except that a member may republish another member’s listings on the Internet in a manner consistent with NWMLS Rules and policies so long as the listing is approved by the owner for Internet publication.

So when is it advertising and when is it just real estate talk? I know we have at least one attorney from the NWMLS lurking on RCG — care to come in from the shadows and help clarify this?

As a listing broker why would I object if the buyer came by way of blog or broker via blog or ad on semi tractor trailer? I made half a commission pie, which is the staple of the MLS diet. That’s all an MLS is really doing anyway–directing traffic to your listing so you can share the pie with another broker.

If you accept the MLS philosophy that it’s better to share a broker fee with a buyer’s broker (1/2 a pie) why would you object to the broker seeing it on a blog?

Hey, if a buyer sees it & you get a whole pie from a direct sale, you’ll grow even fatter–but keep it to yourself because if your closed MLS hears about it they’ll be upset that you gained so much weight & demand you get back on their 1/2 pie diet. But what do I know, I’m 2 cents short of a nickel.

so now it’s settled–it’s officially ok to advertise real estate on your blog Yippeee! Broker blogger Law

You mentioned that before, but unless you call the listing agents and “New Rule”, get WRITTEN permission…not allowed. We used to be able to just call them and ask if it was OK to note their listing somewhere. No more. The not allowed’s are growing day by day and the enforcement and crackdown is like Elliot Ness going after prohibition.

Generally the whole effort is aimed at the Redfin model. Soon no one will ever have an Open House so Redfin can’t tell people to see houses that way and listing agents won’t show their listings unless the buyer signs a buyer agency agreement. I’m sure the agent world is going to block the strategy that you use the Open House or Listing Agent to get in the house and cut out the Buyer Agent fee in whole or in part.

Not saying I disagree with that. I think buyers should negotiate the same as sellers. Not “trick” someone into showing the house and then disclose their intention to use Redfin after the fact.

You should definitely check out the way that Alex Stenback does his Curb Appeal Enthusiasm each week (or at least he used to…). I would be happy to have you (or any other contributor) post the top five most promising open houses for the weekend!

If you were interested, I could definitely help automate the process a little. Some ideas, we could work with Robbie to automatically map out the selected listings and work with Trumba to easily import the picks into a calendar system!). I’m not the right person to pick the top five open houses each week, but I sure would help someone out who was interested!

How would mentioning someone else’s listing on a blog draw more traffic to the listing agent’s site? If I talked about my top 10 picks on market, which I would love to do each day or week, odds are someone would call me to see and buy them, not the listing agent.

Hence the rule broken appears legit, if you view it that way.