Mel Aclaro

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Interesting model for using the internet as an enabler for pairing. Sort of like a match.com but for real estate? ;-) It would seem the volume of subscribers would have to be HUGE(!) in order to make a "clean swap" the norm so as to prevent the site from settling into a bunch of non-matching contingent purchases and contingent sales as the predominant type of transaction. Are there any stats yet, I wonder, about the ratio of tit-for-tat matches vs. non-matching contingent transactions? Seems like an interesting idea, though, if you can get the volume "up there." Mel RealtyU.com RealBlogging.com

Good thread with some insightful comments... I also expounded a bit more about it in a blog article here. In a nutshell, I wonder if it's really about online (technologies) changing traditional real estate marketing? Or can we just as well say technology, in its broader context, changes traditional real estate periodically. I mean, to the extent that the proverbial "MLS book" of old, though not an online technology was, in its own right, a technology innovation nonetheless; couldn't that be said to have changed "traditional real estate" as it was defined back then? The more I think about it, the more inclined I am to believe that a unique aspect of online technologies (web sites, blogs, social networks, etc.) isn't so much the automation it affords, but rather in its enabling aspects. It enables users to be at once authors AND readers, consumers AND service providers, mentors AND mentees. It also enables the quantity and speed in which individuals touch other individuals. Mel RealtyU.com RealBlogging.com