REBNY listing service casts wide net
Your article “Weaving Webs In Online Property Hunting” in your December 2005 issue made a number of inaccurate statements. Of note, the article stated that “… the major internal, proprietary system brokers use is R.O.L.E.X., which distributes listings between firms and is backed by the brokerage behemoths in Manhattan and owned by the powerful Real Estate Board of New York.”
First, R.O.L.E.X. is not and has never been owned by the Real Estate Board of New York. Second, the phrase “backed by the brokerage behemoths,” attempts to imply that R.O.L.E.X. is controlled by the large firms. That is also flatly wrong.
The truth is that more than 280 firms of every size participate in the sharing of their exclusive listings through their participation in the REBNY Listing Service. No one firm or small group of firms control in any way the system of cooperation between the REBNY Listing Service participants, or more importantly, the residential brokerage industry. Through REBNY, these firms have established rules and regulations that benefit the entire industry and more importantly, the buying and selling public.
Steven Spinola
President, Real Estate Board of New York
Manhattan
Broker licensing remains robust
Your story in last month’s issue (“The market cools, and the brokers don’t bail,” December 2005) asserts there has been a slowdown in the number of people getting their real estate license. The article quotes Esther Muller as the source for this erroneous claim. As the owner of the largest real estate school in Manhattan, I can tell you the number of people getting their salesperson license has increased this year and the number of firms recruiting new salespeople has increased dramatically.
Your reporter allows Ms. Muller to contradict the data that was provided by the Department of State in the same article which clearly shows record increases every year since 2000. Contrary to the gloomy picture incorrectly portrayed by Ms. Muller, the real estate brokerage industry remains robust, the number of independent brokerage firms continues to grow and they are actively recruiting new agents on a daily basis. Also, as The Real Deal can attest to, the circulation [of the magazine] at the New York Real Estate Institute has increased from 350 to 1,000 copies per month.
Richard Levine
President, New York Real Estate Institute
Manhattan
Real estate education must adapt
The real estate market is changing, and those who truly want to succeed need to sharpen their skills. As The Real Deal recently reported (“The market cools, and the brokers don’t bail,” December 2005), there are more salespersons and brokers chasing fewer transactions in a slower market. Only those with greater skills will flourish.
Real estate has become more of a profession requiring specialized knowledge in finance, construction, zoning, and even energy conservation. Institutional real estate, dealing with large portfolios and advanced asset management, now requires a very high level of sophistication. Once PhDs were rare in real estate, and the few who held them did not necessarily even put that credential on their business card. Now, large insurance companies, REITs, Wall Street firms and brokerage firms routinely use MBAs and PhDs.
In short, the real estate professionals who will succeed will need to know more as well as work hard. Informal, on-the-job training is by itself no longer sufficient; growing firms offer in-house or support outside advanced education. What surely does not work are the quickie (but often expensive) highly hyped speakers (No Money Down! Get Rich Quick!) which are at best motivational but mostly irrelevant.
There is a wide range of legitimate real estate educational opportunity. By choosing the right course, and then finding the most effective education to follow that course, real estate professionals will provide themselves a greater opportunity to accomplish their goals.
Barry Hersh
Associate director, the Steven L. Newman Institute, Baruch College
Manhattan