What happened with NAR and REALTOR Dot Com? Why doesn't NAR own REALTOR dot com?

I ask because I have been hearing for years how NAR "sold us out" by allowing an outside entity take control of REALTOR Dot Com.

The fact is, NAR was an innovator, ahead of most other industries and the first industry to offer its inventory to the public online.

As is always the case, there is a context, which examined, will help those who were not there, understand what created today's online real estate environment.

It was actually the volunteer leaders who decided that $13 Million was enough to risk and that no more money should be put at risk. It was the NAR Directors (REALTORS) who pulled the plug and authorized the "sale" of REALTOR.com (with strings and a 1000 page operating agreement with restrictions on the operator), at a Special Meeting of the Board of Directors at the Hyatt O'Hare in August of 1996. I attended that meeting

The original model of REALTOR Dot Com called for the $2 listing fee/month to pay for the project. Austin signed the first contract and was ready to send the first check...

Then, at the launch of RIN and REALTOR dot com at the NAR convention in Atlanta in November of 1995, Microsoft offered their Internet Advertising on its listing portal, HomeAdvisor, for free.

Driving the price to free destroyed the REALTOR dot com business model. In addition, the President of RIN, was a bad actor who was later held accountable for inappropriate financial activities.

Yesterday, I asked rhetorically in a post:

"If you could pay Zillow $2 per listing per month to send all of the leads from your listings to you, and place only your picture next to your listings, would you pay the $2 per month?"

That was the original plan for REALTOR dot com. Your listing is a marketing asset, and the first REALTOR dot com Team understood this basic point.

$2.00 per listing per month and you got all of the leads from your listing. Our biggest concern at the time was the pushback we would receive from buyer brokers, who were beginning to appear in 1995.

And that is something else to keep in mind...the year was 1995. There were only 20 Million people on the web. Microsoft did not yet have a competitive browser. This was a few years before the Dot Com bubble began...before Amazon, before e-Bay. and before Google.

Many believed that the Internet was a fad, which is why our small team at RealTown, after the spinoff of REALTOR dot com by NAR in 1996, launched InternetCrusade, going on the road and working to bring as many REALTORS into the new age of technology as would listen :-)

Our Mission received a big boost in 2001 when NAR awarded us the contract to create ePRO, the NAR online technology certification program, a 10 year project.