You’ve doubtless already heard that Judge Kennelly has finalized the settlement between NAR and the Department of Justice. It looks like NAR may be interested in taking a bet with me on the number of VOWs there will be two years from now. According to the NAR press release on the settlement: “The impact of the amended VOW policy is expected to be minimal, since most consumers do not use VOWs because these sites require online registration.”

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Comments

  1. Hi Brian,

    Am totally loving the blog. 🙂 Maybe this belongs on your other post, but…

    Aren’t you completely discounting the impact of consumers having to register in order to take advantage of the VOW listings?

    Furthermore, as I wrote in my post on your

  2. Rob,
    I don’t think I’m discounting the registration hurdle at all. I just think the hurdle is proving lower all the time. First, consumers, especially young ones, are getting more comfortable with having to log in to a web site to use it. I mentioned Facebook and MySpace as examples. Social networking of any kind generally requires some kind of login.

    Second, brokers are getting more

  3. @Brian –

    Thanks for the response, Brian. I guess I’ll have to go over and comment at MLSTesseract as well. [And now I have!]

    I’d love your thoughts on my speculation viz MLS/Realtor Associations being freed of the restrictions of both IDX and VOW under the new legal regime.

    Because even if you’re right about customer reticence re: registration, if there is an