I feel this is one of the most important information for me. And i am satisfied reading your article. But should commentary on some normal issues, The site style is great, the articles is truly great : D. Just right activity, cheers

Still the finred or what eva, this site is beginning to remind me too much of the mls zoo we have over here in Van.BC

If they can't provide accurate data, then they shouldn't even be THINKING about posting it online for just anyone to see. Period.

Scouting Report Data No Longer Available

Dear Customers,

Redfin is suspending access to Scouting Report, the online tool that publishes deal histories and performance metrics for agents across the United States. We will continue to show this information for our own agents.

Our primary reason for excluding other agents is that the data we exposed has too many inaccuracies, mostly because agents work informally in teams, or don't formally record who represented a buyer in a deal. You can read more about the decision on our blog.

We apologize to consumers and agents alike for discontinuing the service, and hope to restore it in the coming months.

We belong to MRIS. It will be interesting to see how this shakes out since there are other sites that already display similar data.

First off let me say that MRIS will never allow this information to be posted. I wish they would, I have nothing to hide and would be happy to let consumers see this information. Furthermore, this is what was posted yesterday on the "Scouting report - search for any agent" page.

Quoted from Redfin - "Due to potential problems in our software, Redfin has decided to temporarily disable or limit the Redfin Scouting Report, the tool for reviewing an agent's deal history and performance metrics, in the areas below:
Phoenix, AZ & Sacramento, CA: temporarily disabled
Southern CA & Long Island, NY: limited to 2 years of deal history (730 days)
Denver, CO: limited to 1 year of deal history (365 days)
We hope to fix the problems in the next 24-48 hours. Thanks to Jay Thompson, Bob Connors and others for their friendly and timely reporting of problems with the Scouting Report. Thanks for your patience.

Bryan Selner, VP Products, Redfin
Sunday, October 2nd, 6pm, PST"

In short, Redfin seems to have made some enemies with several agents, brokers and local boards. Remember the local boards are governed by agents/ brokers. The boards are also scared of potential litigation (at least until there is some case precedent). People/ companies have sued for less and the only one liable would be the local board, since they have to authorize the release of information to Redfin.

BTW great Blog post!

Can't wait.

Hey Jay -- I've been watchin' boards of Realtors screw things up for a few days short of 42 years now. I realize this is hopelessly OldSchool, but the MLS was created for its members and nobody else, including the public. We owned it, and allowed our brainless leadership to give it away.

What this post brings to light is merely the latest consequence of countless bad decisions and no spine. The industry, and especially its foundation -- agents -- are now reaping what they've sown.

>> many agents for years and years boasted of being *million dollar producers* while dentists and attorneys didn’t take that route in promoting their professional services.

Howard, this is an astute point. Realtors basically "brag" to earn business. Much/most of the bragging is about being better, the best, the most, etc. A quick Google of Austin real estate agent reveals in the search result snippets the following examples:

"For The Best in Austin Condos, Real Estate, and Homes For Sale In The MLS ..."

"Our knowledge of the communities and the growing urban market set us apart in the changing Austin Real Estate market..."

"Welcome to the number one ... "

"Austin's Most Popular ..."

I think this tradition of Realtor puffery and bragging about performance and purported accomplishments might be where the "Live by the Sword, Die by the Sword" Redfin comment comes from. It's essentially saying "Really, let's see".

Also, the comparisons of other professional industries are not exactly apples to apples. Lawyers, Docters, even Plumbers have licenses and/or degrees that take multiple years to obtain. In Austin (and all of Texas), a real estate license can be obtained with a few weeks of classes and passing the test.

This low barrier to entry assaults and insults the professionalism of our industry by basically allowing anyone to become a Realtor. I'd like the bar to be raised. If Scouting Reports are a first step to greater consumer awareness, I'm for it.

That said, I think all of the current points about it being improper use of data and "not what the MLS was intended for" are valid and true. But times they are a changing. Will we resist or adapt?

Steve

This is getting ridiculous! So as an associate broker of 35 years here in Virginia, I complained to the Chairman of the Board of MRIS (the greater DC/Baltimore MLS with over 40,000 subscribers) on Thursday, 9/29. As a result, by Friday, 9/30, here is what Redfin posted on their website -

"Redfin has suspended Washington DC-area access to Redfin Scouting Report."

The consumer is not asking for this!! (And even if a small percentage of them are, that doesn't mean they should get it.) When did anyone appoint Redfin or any other entity to bring transparency to the consumer? Who made them the Real Estate Town Crier?

In my opinion, this is now a complete misuse of our MLS data! It was never intended to be used in this fashion - to start showing any consumer the data from our system so that they can now compare or pit one agent against another.

Remember that the original idea of displaying properties on the Internet was sort of like offering the visitor an "electronic Homes Magazine" to surf through as a way to hopefully entice them to contact the office or an agent to want to learn more about a certain property. In the beginning, they were viewing pretty much what anyone could see in an ad in a newspaper ad or Homes Magazine - the MLS number, property address, asking price, number of bedrooms and baths, remarks describing the property in more detail, along with a few other items... just enough to capture their interest. Yet, by only allowing a limited amount of data to be displayed, the consumer still had to contact a real estate agent if they really wanted to learn more, thus keeping the agent and brokerage firm in the center of the buying and selling process.

Now brokerage firms and vendors are increasingly displaying to visitors virtually every field of data that any agent can view or print out in a Full Listing from the MLS. About the only fields that are still being suppressed are the two showing the names of the seller and the seller's phone number to call directly for an appointment and bypass an agent altogether! As a consumer, armed with all of this information, why would I ever need to call the agent to learn more?? Guess what? I wouldn't! I would only need an agent to open the door for me... and if I could figure out a way to get around meeting an agent at all by calling the owner direct, I would probably try. Yes, we have Exclusive Right To Sell listings that would protect the firm's right to a brokerage fee no matter how the property is sold... but for how much longer?

Redfin has figured out a way to massage all of our data to show the "track record" of any agent in our MLS system. How come? Who allowed that? There must be rules and restrictions of what data of ours that can and can not be displayed to the casual consumer. The agent with the most sales in a certain area may or may not be the best one for the job of working with that consumer as a buyer or seller. And these comparison searches certainly put our newest MLS members at a great disadvantage if the consumer can now compare their sales record (or lack of) on the Web against the long time veteran. Sure it is factual, but that doesn't make it fair or mean the consumer should have complete access to it! Again, more "garbage in - garbage out" analysis tools that we are just giving away to the uninformed public.

Far greater oversight needs to be in place as to how the data in a RETS feed can be used or how much can be displayed to the consumer. This incident with Redfin is just the latest example of how others can and will invent new ways to take our collective data to create displays to the consumer that were never intended by us.

As I said at the start, this is just getting ridiculous!

Win

Hi Jay,
I think the biggest change this is going to add (if it succeeds and stays) is that non-MLS transactions will have to be reported post-completion in order to provide a more accurate scope of data. That's a heck of a lot of paperwork just to keep the record on Redfin straight, and that's assuming that someone doesn't sue the pants off of them.

Put me in the "don't have a real problem with it" camp. I understand the anger and frustrations being expressed by some agents, but this sort of information will in fact be normal and expected in coming years. As usual, it takes a disrupter from outside the old guard mindset to force innovation and technology upon the Realtor industry.

I agree there are problems with how the data may be perceived with husband/wife, small team, big team, short sellers, REO, etc companies that do a lot of pocket or off-MLS sales. I think that can all be addressed eventually, but this move by RF essentially forces us as an industry to make a decision, again.

I suspect the great majority of agents that produce will be able to leverage the stats as evidence ofsuccess. Newer agents with no stats, or even veteran "listing specialists" under Team structures who have a bunch of deal under their belt in the primary Broker/Team leader name will feel cheated by their Goose Egg ranking.

This will be interesting to see how it plays out, who sues, who embraces, etc. But instead of sitting at the head of the table innovating and getting in front of these things, the real estate industry remains on the menu.

Steve

Jay - a nicely written, polite and even handed post. If, indeed, the data were accurate, I'd have less of an issue with it's public dissemination. But I'm not crazy about the information being controlled and disseminated by a direct competitor in my own marketplace.

If it's going to be released to the public (and I'm okay with that transparency) it should be controlled, in my opinion, by the local associations and/or the MLS.

What other NON-publicly traded business owner shares his income/productivity with his competitor FOR the sole purpose of his competitor's use AGAINST him on their website or in their advertising? This company is not even in my area and I'm incensed by it.

Inaccurate or not, this is not a direction that I feel is healthy for any business. I believe that new agents will suffer greatly should this practice become commonplace. Who wants to work in a business where you're so heavily penalized right out of the gate? And there's not even a 'small salary' for new agents to fall back on either.

Publicly traded businesses? Of course they are to be 'exposed' and fully transparent but, my company is not a publicly traded company. Rarely do I hear our local restaurant owner, dentist or attorney broadcasting their income, productivity or number of patients or clients whom they are serving. In fact, NEVER do we hear our attorney, doctor or other business owner neighbors share this information. Why should we be expected to share ours?

I agree with Drew Myers on this. I'm tired of the information that is created by brokers and MLSs being whored out to outside companies to the detriment of the agent community.

I wonder how many of you other agents are in the same boat as me: Redfin's Scouting Report on me is off by 62%. That's a pretty big miss in my book and I'm sure it won't help me compete when compared to the 100% accuracy of their own agent's Reports.

Redfin has launched this new feature because they believe this will benefit Redfin more than it will help competing agencies and brokers. They routinely have a dozen support people work on one transaction, from field agents to transaction coordinators, yet they attribute the sale to their top agents to skew the statistics and make their agents look like Superman. It's dishonest and disingenuous and for all their talk of transparency, exposes them as manipulators and frauds.

Within the MRIS it is extremely easy for me or any other broker to completely manipulate the listing data. I can almost guarantee that every single one of my listings will sell within a day and go for full list price. And if it means that I will jump to the top of some Agent Performance Report that ranks on search engines and generates leads that turn into customers, I will be tempted to do just that. And I know other brokers who will do it immediately and have no qualms about it.

Teams will definitely be an issue. There is no way a single agent can compete with the stats of a team leader with 17 affiliated agents. But I don't have an issue with this technology at all. In our MLS agents have a bad habit of listing foreclosures as regular listings. It'll be interesting to watch the reactions.

Old news repackaged with a better PR team. www.FranklyCRA.com shows the launch of my Comparative Realtor Analysis back in 2008. It is very beneficial when used right. Just takes some 3 years to catch up.

When I checked yesterday it showed my average DOM as 270. Spit my coffee at the screen & began cursing. Fired off a quick..are you trying to trash my reputation email. Received an email back a few hours later with the opps data is wrong. Now it shows 48 DOM but it appears that for the moment DC is out of the report. Since I opened my own brokerage last fall it has left out my previous transactions which leaves a lot of transactions hiding from view. Can't wait to see where this gos.

Thank you Jay, I read about this earlier this week and was really surprised more agents weren't raising a stink. Great job!

The NAR opened this can of worms with their VOW settlement with the DOJ, which seems to have escaped many of the commentators I have seen around the web today.

While the VOW allows publication of electronic data in the same way as you can present data in-person from your MLS database, I wonder if an unintended consequence of this will be that MLS's gather and shut off access to sales history for individual agents altogether. You could certainly change the database to only show your own history or that of your brokerage and hide the sold data for everyone else while not running afoul of VOW settlement guidelines.

We are just about the only industry I can think of where you can get granular details about your competitor's sales results at the touch of a button. It doesn't actually have to be that way.

Yes, I have a problem with this scouting report, and I'm a Redfin Partner agent. While I think ratings and reviews are a good idea, what do statistics really measure? Diligence? Intelligence? Creativity? Experience? Heart? As Mark Twain said,"There are lies, damn lies, and statistics."

I don't care if my stats are posted and I am not even a top producer (much of my income comes from BPOs.) I always have fun telling the recruiters to shove it when they tell me they looked up my MLS stats & their brokerage can teach me how to make more $$$.

Now here are the problems I have.......

They are advertising other area agents on my profile. Me no likey.

Their agent's profiles are reviews. In fact their Phx broker is also the LV broker. What has he sold in my market? Zero point zero zero. His profile is all happy reviews and looks NOTHING like my statistical profile (which is fairly factual other than DOM and missing new construction sales & rentals.)

I wonder if Redfin would enjoy me pulling their LV Broker's stats from my MLS and putting it next to mine? (Which makes me look like a top producer!)

I'm all for open data, being in the web and IT business, I constatnly hear complaints from my clients (agents) and consumers that they can't find a lot of info on agents, and past sales and stuff without going through lots of closely guarded systems. This seems like a great move. The data accuracy I think will be fixed over time when the MLS is simply forced to ramp up their quality checks, or risk loosing a large customer base.

Great post, data integrity will be the key. The game is afoot....this real estate thing is about to get very interesting. I am curious to see how the agent report card and the Redfin partner agent thing goes over.

A lawsuit is not a matter of if but when. Someone, somewhere is going to sue because of an inaccurate data. Whether anything will come of it, who knows.

As of 12:43 MST 9/30/11, Redfin has suspended ARMLS data pending a review of the agent/brokerage relationship issue and MRIS has asked Redfin to suspend their data pending a review of the site and/or contract pertaining to the use of the data.

We'll see how many others ask for reviews before the day is out.

Major hot button issue.

Like you Jay, I played with this new redfin feature for about and hour yesterday. Having used Broker Metrics in the past, to look at the same type of data I was using it to more or less see how it compared. Of course the first thing I did was look up my wife.

The way we my wife and I work is pretty common. She lists all the homes for us, and usually is the buyers agent on our buyer transactions (for her and I not our whole office). The first stat I knew was way off was the Days on Market. It had her Days on market at over 300 which is completely false, it is actually less than 30.

I found it pretty interesting how they mapped the homes though, and that to me seems to be the most useful part of the feature. Looking for a home in Scottsdale? Well why not see how many homes your agent has actually sold in Scottsdale. They might have sold 100 homes in Surprise, but that means nothing about their local experience.

The other interesting thing that is not explained by redfin is the number of sales an agent may have outside the MLS. I look like an agent that hasn't sold anything. Of course tehre is no way for them to see the 500+ homes I have purchased for clients at trustee sales, or the dozens that have been wholesaled to other investors that happened outside the MLS. I haven't sold a new home in years, so that doesn't affect me, but I know a lot of agents have focused on representing new home buyers.

I think the service is actually quite useful to buyers and sellers, and I am of the mindset that the transparency is a good thing. It will be interesting to see where they continue to develop it, but I think you are spot on that agents need to be prepared to defend themselves if asked by a client about their Redfin Scouting Report. An agent will look pretty stupid if they say they are the "Number 1 Agent" in such and such, and their client looks them up and they have sold two homes in the last 12 months.

I think it would be smart for ARMLS (or AZMLS if that ever gets going, but don't get me started on that) to provide this data publicly, or even for brokers. I think it is interesting that services like Broker Metrics, Redfin, Altos Research, and of course Cromford Report, analyze data provided to them by ARMLS, yet ARMLS themselves don't offer similar options. I love to research how many transactions an agent has had when they send an offer over. Not because I think less of agents that have fewer transactions, but it changes how we work with the agent. The best thing an agent ever says to us is "Hey here is this offer, but hopefully you can help me through the transaction because this is my first one." We then make sure to send reminder emails about deadlines and such to the agent to help them get through the process better. If ARMLS offered a similar service, I think that agents in general would be less scared of the data being public.

I'm all for the reviews. I am on Zillow and have gotten many buyers because they told me they've read my reviews.
I agree with everyone, if it's not accurate data then that's going to be extremely upsetting.

Jay, I was delighted you did this post. I just posted on AARonline's blog about this new offering. Like your comments and glad to see you have done a great job of investigating its merit or non-merit. Fact is that this, and more, will become our new normal. Just a matter of time, and tweaking.

So, another reason to group twenty agents together and call us a team like so many other agents do even though in reality they aren't working together as much as adding total sales together to say WE sold 390 homes last year. Works well when you go in for a listing. This looks like another tool for the top 10 percent to help crush the other 90 percent? No?

The team thing may be an issue. I guess we'll have to do a better job of highlighting the "team's" competitive advantage, individual members, their roles, how we roll... and anything else we can do on our blogs to address that challenge up front.

But, that is assuming we get a chance to show that buyer/seller our site first.

Maybe the MLS can have an option for "Team" with the Team Leader or Name, which Redfin can display next to the agent in order to stay along the lines of transparency that they're leveraging for their benefit.

Or, maybe Redfin can have a login area on their site where the agent can update their correct info, and basically create a business profile within their platform. If anything, it would be a killer way for them to get every agent in town to opt-in to Redfin's database.

I think this info (if accurate) should be open to the public, even as someone that only does a few deals a year. (And it doesn't appear to show rental properties). I'd bet most people are only going to look at total sales and median price anyway.

I don't see this as being a big deal anytime soon. Most consumers won't even know this exists.