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REBNY portal to open in Sept.

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The Real Estate Board of New York said September will be a month to remember. That’s when its new Internet-based residential listing service, open to the public, is slated to debut. The new portal, dubbed ResidentialNYC.com, was announced on postcards sent last month to REBNY agents and brokers urging them to join the Web site, followed by phone calls from the trade organization, said brokers.

The cost to join ranges from $2,000 to $12,000, depending on a firm’s size. The deadline for joining the portal at a 25 percent discount was May 21.

Still, the trade group’s efforts have not managed to convince the majority of REBNY agents and brokers to join, according to sources close to the organization, and it will likely have to move forward without a substantial number of them. Although the group did not provide total numbers at press time, it is estimated that about 40 percent or less of the total eligible agents, and even less than that of the total eligible broker firms, had joined by the discount deadline.

The portal will bring together property listings from participating firms onto a single public Web site, which proponents say will benefit consumers and cut down on broker advertising costs to publications, including the New York Times.

REBNY currently operates a database of property listings members can access, but it is not available to home buyers and sellers.

As The Real Deal reported in April, with the largest Manhattan brokerages, Prudential Douglas Elliman and Corcoran, and their sister entities, Citi Habitats and Corcoran Sunshine Marketing Group, not participating, the project will already represent less than 43 percent of the trade group’s total listings among the top 10 firms.

While Brown Harris Stevens and Halstead — both large firms under the Terra Holdings corporate umbrella — have decided to join, a number of smaller firms have also decided not to participate, and last month once again voiced their formal objection to the planned system in a letter to REBNY leadership.
The letter, addressed simply to “Steve, Eileen and members of the Board,” and signed by co-chairs of the Independent Firms Committee, Michele Peters and Maggie Hopp, said that “the vast majority of members of the Independent Firms Committee are opposed to and do not intend to join the REBNY listings portal in its present form.”

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The reasons given were REBNY’s inability to provide a business plan, the fact that they had not seen revisions to the planned site based on their input, and the lack of answers to questions they had posed about the planned portal.

Meanwhile, in May, REBNY sent postcards to its agents, estimated at between 6,000 and 7,000 in total, urging them to join the “powerfully accurate, user-friendly and convenient Web portal.”

“It’s going to be a September to remember,” read the card, and “as an agent, you and your clients won’t want to miss this opportunity to market your seller’s and/or landlord’s property.”

Supporters of the project continued to be upbeat about its prospects. “We are moving ahead,” said REBNY president Steven Spinola.

Other grievances persist, however. Some REBNY members interviewed by The Real Deal claim the portal is being used as a de facto device to put buyers’ brokers who work at small firms out of business because it eliminates the public display of IDX, or shared broker listings, and because proportionately, it charges smaller brokers more to join than large brokers.

Although with the new price structure large firms will be paying $12,000 to join, on a per-listing and per-agent basis their cost to be part of the portal is miniscule compared to the cost for small firms, say critics of the plan. That’s because a fee of $2,000 will often need to be spread between two or three agents or brokers at small firms, they say.

Other conspiracy theories have stubbornly circulated among many small brokers: One broker who requested anonymity said the portal is a means for some of the medium-sized brokers to put financial pressure on the smaller firms so they can buy them out.

Still, many firms have embraced the portal. “The site will be designed for its industry members to get traffic to their sites, and that is the benefit of the model,” said Doug Wagner, president and COO of Benjamin James Real Estate, a company with 85 agents.

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