Tours forbidden on many real estate websites

I've recently noticed that many IDX companies (who sell to agents and brokers)  and brokerages who design their own websites with custom IDX feeds do NOT offer tours of any kind on their websites!  Just because your tour is on your local MLS, it is NOT necessarily visible on other websites that participate in IDX.  Not good.

Any software developer who gets the raw data feed from the MLS has the option of which fields to include, and which NOT to include, and I'm finding a lot that (for whatever reason) do NOT include tours!

In our area, Coldwell Banker for example ONLY allows their videos (which are generally pretty bad).  They won't allow any OTHER videos or any other tours of any kind from any company.  (they claim it's for consistency purposes).  Anyone searching on their site will see no tours except the videos that CB produces.  Another New England realtor with a great website and top search rankings has chosen NOT to provide any tours as well.  It's hard nut to swallow when your client works for them, and the tour that they are PAYING for isn't even included on their own website!  Plus the company provides websites for each individual agent - with no tours are available.  And I've found numerous others, so it's not that uncommon.

Even a very large, local Better Homes and Gardens franchise here, with a very sophisticated website, does not automatically pull the tour link from the MLS.  So the agent has to enter the link in the MLS AND then go to their company website and enter the link there separately if they want it to appear.  I discovered this accidentally one day last year - I assume it populated automatically, but it does not!  And of course the agents are paying attention so they don't know what's going on!  So now I instruct them specifically on how to enter the tour into their company website!  I needed to investigate this company by company.

I'm not sure what can really be done about this, but acceptance of tours will definitely be hindered if large companies like this forbid any tours from appearing on their IDX sites or make agents go through extra steps to get it up there!

One would think that these companies would do everything they could to help their agents  (and their own bottom line) especially those who go the extra mile and spend the extra money to market their listings, but evidently they do not really care that much about selling the property or the productivity of their own agents.

I work with several Coldwell Banker agents, and they continue to do videos with me in spite of their company's lame policies - because they KNOW it works - in spite of their company's refusal to allow it on their company site.

As long as I live, I will NEVER understand the real estate industry as it exists today.  Never.  

 I find this whole IDX thing insane, maybe one of the Realtors in the "hood" can fill me in how it benefits them, cause I sure don't see any benefits to it, to us it's just a pain the ***!

Every MLS has different rules, some even go crazy by not allowing the sign stand itself to show?

I'm a minimalist, but that's just ludicrous, am I missing something... Down with the IDX! At least it would make our job much easier:)

 I agree....   it's annoying in many ways.  My biggest objection is that many seem to make up their 'rules' as they go along, which always makes them more difficult to follow!

The reason no signage or branding is that OTHER agents and brokers listings are on YOUR site, and the owners of that site (obviously) want the viewer to call their agent, NOT the listing agent, which is easy to do if the branding is on the video.  The buyers don't always understand how all of this works - they call the easiest person with a phone number - which would be the listing agent.  So I understand why on shared listings (IDX) that the listing contact information is removed.

One of the big selling points for video, if presented correctly, is that agents sell their OWN listings more often.  Of course, that translates into a double commission, so it's a good thing for agents.  I've had 3 clients in the past 10 days sell their own listings (and those are just 3 that actually TOLD me!).  If these branded videos are thrown all over the web, there is a great likelihood that someone will see it and call the person whose phone number is on the video!  Works more often than people realize.

Yes, the IDX feel is frustrating and it's seems to come down to local politics. Two of the biggest brokerages in my area (one being Coldwell Banker, does allow the feed for virtual tours, however, that wasn't always an option for those paying for the IDX feed.

I am a associate member of my local associates of realtors and really pushed for them to open up the virtual tour option in the IDX feed. They had put a stop to it and  weren't allowing virtual tours to come through the IDX feed for the longest time b/c there were too many branded tours in MLS and they were getting all kinds of complaints from brokerages paying for the feed which was giving advertising to their competition. (Like Fred said, it was issue to have another brokerage show up on your brokerage site) But then our association  got a committe together to police the MLS virtual tours and implemented a $25 fine per day for non-compliant virtual tours in MLS.

And now, our local MLS has moved to a pull methode, were everythining in the IDX is availble, but you have to select what fields you want from the IDX feed, NOT what you don't want. So I know of some locally that have IDX feeds that just don't know what they are doing because it would be dumb not to pull the virtual tour / video from IDX - buys are so content driven, they are not going to shop on your site if they can get better content, more info from somewhere else !!!

 Oh, I can just see it now.  Some video guy is going to get a call from an irate realtor saying, "You created a video that they deemed to be branded for 'xxxxx' reason, and I was fined $300!"  

 "Going to get?"   Oh, I've received that call many times.  I work pretty fast, and sometimes I mess up... and that's usually the way I do it (accidentally putting a branded version on the MLS).  And the fine here is $1000 a day...  after the second warning.  They usually do give you the opportunity to correct it before the fine kicks in - I've never actually had an agent fined.

 I too have had it happen many times, but not because of my doing. We provide two links in a completion email and frequently the agent or their assistant uses the wrong one. So yes someone there is policing this at the MLS' at least to some degree.

 Actually, at least in our area, it's the competition.  Agents can click on a little "policeman" button to "report" a competitor.  It used to be that it was anonymous, and people were doing it ALL the time (some agents have a lot of time on their hands!).  About a year ago, they changed it.  Now, if you report someone, that person gets YOUR information, as the person who reported it. Oddly enough, the number of reported infractions have dropped significantly since they're now identified by name.  

From a realtors perspective I sometimes have issues with film makers making the video "all about them".  The SEO effort is about the film makers website, not the agent.  There just appears to be a conflict of sorts here that I personally struggle with.  I respect many of the film makers right on this particular post, but do you see what I'm talking about here - at least a little bit?

The IDX thing is all about control - control of agents.

I forgot to mention, Realtor.com (and similar sites) is all about control as well - and making money on the backs of agents.

 If you're referring to the videos appearing on our WM or YouTube pages or accounts... In our case we try really hard to convince agents to create their own accounts so that these videos appear on their accounts as well. Unfortunately most don't get the importance of it and don't do it. We also create link to the agent sites for all the videos we post.

I do the same thing, Matti.  I've only gotten 3 agents to sign up on WellcomeMat, and for 2 of them, I created the account for them!  I've had to do the same with Youtube, etc.  Except on WM, I need their passwords in order to upload videos to their other accounts, and I generally charge extra because it takes extra time.  For a small additional fee, I'm perfectly willing to upload it to each of their accounts as well--and with a high-speed connection, it takes me about 60 seconds per video, where the T1 connection in most brokerages would take hours or even days to accomplish the same distribution.

I think Laura & Michael (sorry, not sure who) may be referring to how the tour pages on the MLS are branded with the tour company's branding, and not so much about the agent.

I think this varies.  For me, there are 2 reasons: time and money.  It is much less expensive for me to have a templated page with only the basic contact info. for the agent.  I do marketing for many companies, small and medium, and my LOWEST profit margins are in real estate, because I can't get agents to bite (though I'm working on this process).  With time I hope to have it down to a science (like Fred), and be able to give a higher level of service for a similar price.

For the number of HOURS it takes to put a tour together, and to only be paid $200 (not to mention I have an assistant and voice-over artist to pay), it makes sense economically to cut a few corners for now.  I'd have to charge $350 for the level of service I would prefer to give, but then I'd have a very hard time selling tours.  I generally make TWICE that amount on the smallest productions I do for small business, and for the same number of hours.  Even agents selling multi-million dollar listings (at least in my area) are too cheap to spend $200 for a video tour.

It never ceases to amaze me how many mansions are listed with 12 professional photographs on the web, and very little distribution marketing.  It's no wonder they take 1-2 or even 5 years to move.  One of my agents has a $13M home listed, and the owners don't want to put pictures on the internet to sell it, so he has one picture of the front gate going into the estate.  They absolutely refused the video tour, and it's been on the market for several years (since before the market 'crash').

Okay.... so time is one issue, and because of the low profit margin, I feel like it's okay to have my branding on the tour page and at the very end of the video.  I actually do allow agents to have it completely branded to them, for a 35% fee.  I always include their branding at the beginning and end of the video (right before my branding).  I also include a lead generating form on the tour page (and I've gotten leads for them through that as well) as well as their contact information.

The other issue here is that our MLS has VERY strict requirements on the MLS tour pages, and most agents wouldn't be able to set up any tour pages to meet all of those requirements.

That was very long-winded... it's getting late, but hopefully that made sense... :)

 I always put a link back to the Realtors site as well. 

I think IDX feeds are great if the agent's visitor to their site gets past the videos posted right on their home page. So far my clients have been gladly embedding their videos right there so that it is the first thing a viewer sees.

My hope is that if the visitor doesn't find a home with a tour (which very well could be the case) that the visitor has already established that the agent is a leader in his/her industry and hopefully the next thing they will do is search the IDX and know that they are dealing with a Top Producing Agent.

I believe most of us understand the importance of promoting our Agents because it promotes us.

As far as MLS goes I have decided not to even mention it anymore to my clients as I see how it is not going to benefit them if we have to fight them every step of the way. One of my clients told me I should sign up in January to be on the local MLS committee and now I'm thinking why waste my money, time and breath. I just inform them that we are going to bank on the uniqueness of our videos and promote those listings in a million more ways than the MLS is going to do for us.

• Sure people use Google to search for homes and usually what they find is local agents sites which all have IDX feeds and that is how  85% of buyers find listings. However, that is all slowly changing as Social Media has more impact.
• With Social Media the listings come to them before they even become buyers.
• They already know who the Savvy Realtors are in there area first. The buyer has already befriended the Realtor a couple years prior to even knowing that they were going to sell their home and has become good friends and has been watching that Realtor evolve on their social media site for the last few years and how many clients they have helped.
• So now where do you suppose that Realtor's friend is going to start his/her search?
• And as a added bonus, that Realtor just so happens to have professionally made Video Tours (i hate that word) on their Social Media site that their friends and all their friend's friends have been watching for years.
• So now when that Realtor's  buddy Suzy calls up and says "hey we're gonna put our house up on the market and we want a video" Mrs Realtor says " Great let's do it" Mrs Realtor puts the video up on her social site for all of her friends and her friend's friends to see and Suzy does likewise.

So with the ever growing popularity of Social Media you can see how marketing in future is going to be done.

WORD OF MOUTH ON STEROIDS

Hey Realtors, we are here to help you. Not hinder you!

And i hope that helped you.

Marcus

 After searching to no end for an actual document that contained the true IDX rules, I gave up.  Now I just create a branded tour and a non-branded tour which I'm sure you guys are doing as well. The hardest thing about the non-branded tour has been not including any kind of link back to the agent, which for the most part is myself, because I have to host the video somewhere and often times the places I choose to host want to promote their own brand and won't remove it from the player, and CAN'T remove it from the url.  

But I believe it is a necessity and as a Realtor as well I can understand that there is a need for non-branded tours, and I could see where other agents would be threatened if they send out listings to a potential listing client to show them what's on the market and low and behold they come across another agent who is offering video, the wave of the real estate future, and sure enough if they have any brains whatsoever they will realize what an invaluable tool high quality video can be in selling a home. So they ditch the original Realtor for another agent who uses video tours.  I can see the conflict of interest there.  But there does need to be clear cut rules about how it is to be done, and like I said, I can find no pertinent information about this mythical IDX company that somehow landed the monopoly gold mine of teaming up with every MLS and producing such rules, which again I don't think exist in a specific formal place.  

But I was unaware that some companies have opted not to port in the unbranded tours, which would mean they aren't pulling in the virtual tours of any kind?  

Within our MLS there is no video tour slot, we only have a virtual tour slot and that's where I put my videos and recommend for other agents to do so as well.  When we send out listings to clients via e-mail I know the virtual tour link goes through.  Not sure about other companies and their websites or if they are able to choose wether or not to pick which links appear on their websites or not.  We have a spot in our MLS for "Agent remarks" and "Internet Remarks".  The internet remarks cannot contain any agent information, and those remarks are what is attached to the listing for descriptive purposes. Without that, the listing would contain nothing more than facts.  So I would recommend for agents within your area to post within the "internet remarks" field, assuming there is such a thing to state something like, "Be sure to watch the Video Tour!"  I do it myself to bring attention to the tour already for someone new to the system that may not be familiar with a. where the tour is and b. that there even is a tour.  If enough people did that in your area perhaps the CB's of the world would eventually get tired of hearing, "Where is this tour I read about?" or tired of their clients finding other agents because they aren't providing the absolute best representation of those properties currently on the market, and by bypassing the video tour it sure would seem like they aren't living up to their fiduciary duties and providing the maximum disclosure that their is such a tour available to the buying public.  

That's my thoughts at least!

 As for those Realtors working for the Coldwell banker's of the world, and continue to do so when their company has poor policies that don't allow them to shine as brightly as they could, well perhaps they should stand up for themselves once in a while or make a suggestion. Of course since it's a large corporate broker and it will likely fall on deaf ears, what's the point?  And that is why they should find a company who doesn't have such asinine policies and go to work for them! Or even better, go into business for themselves and stop paying Coldwell Banker all of their money!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Data_Exchange

That's about the IDX.  I don't know if you already read through that or not, but it's pretty interesting (especially when you get into ILD and the federal investigation... haha!).

The IDX Policy is available to agents via Realtor.org then just do a search on IDX to view the policy.  Then request a copy of your MLS's IDX policy and compare.  Remember though that NAR's IDX Policy allows quite a bit of latitude at the local level plus there are few if any enforcement procedures in effect.  So adherance of a local Board to NAR rules really comes down to educated Broker and Agent membership calling out any flagrant discrepancies.

Dustin,

Our main business(HDhat) had now evolved heavily into "private" work for Professional Videographers i.e. they film the tours...then get back to the office and upload the tour and narration text to us and we do the rest.....for an incredibly low "wholesale" fee.  Some of them choose to have us distribute to WM and others do their own....we do whatever works best so that the Pro can be filming more tours which we then private brand for them.  I can give references and assure you that our video Pros are netting great incomes by this workflow.