What Makes Realtor.com Different?

This post is targeted more towards Realtors rather than real estate consumers, hence, the “sideblog” category ….

1 – I kinda like Realtor.com.

2 – I’ve sent clients to the Realtor.com mobile app and they have told me they like the mobile app.

3 – I like how I now can see stats on my listings.

I do have a few questions, predicated by this from Inman.com today regarding the beta Realtor.com:

“”We plan to have homes for sale listings, which is still the search default, new construction, recently sold, as well as off market properties and rentals, all searchable and discoverable from one place,” Berkowitz said.”

– Why do Realtors have to go through (no longer available) the time and expense of VOWs (archived: 2010) to display sold data?

– Why does Realtor.com get to play by different rules than Realtors?

– Why don’t they pay Realtors for data?

– Can an IDX provider do the same thing as Realtor.com? Say, Diverse Solutions, for instance?

I asked this question in January of last year, too.