Real Estate Blogging

The Center for Realtor Technology, a branch of the National Association of Realtors, has launched a piece of software called, "NoScrape", which they bill as a tool to protect Realtor websites from being "scraped".

Scraping is a years old practice of collecting information from a website through some kind of automated means. It usually involves a "robot". The robot is similar to the robots used by search engines like Google and Yahoo, to gather information about websites on the Internet.

Except these robots are used to identify real estate agent websites, and then collect information about their property listings. That information is then used to populate an independent property listings database.

The National Association of Realtors says scraping is a big problem, and developed the NoScrape software to help its member agents protect their websites from being scraped.

But exactly what problem are they talking about?

The bottom line is that a home seller wants to sell their home, as quickly as possible. Hence, it's in the best interest of the home seller to get their property listed in as many places, in order to maximize its exposure. Scraping is certainly helping home sellers, and home buyers.

It obvious that scraping threatens the MLS organizations, as independent operators of internet-based listings databases are gaining in popularity. What's really going on here is the NAR propagating a myth, in order to prevent internet entrepreneurs from chipping away at their dominance.

Realtors and real estate agents are better off embracing the new technologies, and finding a way to succeed withing them. They should take a look at the success that Realtor John Mudd has achieved, by marketing his properties online through his blog and RSS feeds.