J Philip Faranda

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While more knowledge is better all things being equal, a buyer agent has far more to lose by not being a local expert than a listing agent. What good is a buyer agent if they are not familiar with where they are advising a buyer to live? The seller isn't going to be living there anymore, so the listing agent knowing when the farmer's market is held or what the road-widening project will mean don't bring value. However, if a buyer's agent doesn't inform their client that a fire whistle blows their eardrums deaf every day at noon or that a plane roars overhead every night from 6-10, they have a problem. I routinely list property in 4 counties in suburban New York. My seller clients don't hire me because I know when the jitney leaves for the train station, they hire me because I'll close their short sale successfully ( as an example). But buyers? They are given to a company agent who knows their preferred area because there is too much liability if we have the blind leading the blind. Broker-owner, J. Philip Real Estate Vice President, Empire Access MLS (NY) www.jphilip.com www.WestchesterRealEstateBlog.NET

I like Mr Kelman, but he does no service to consumers here. First, any buyer reading this will conclude that they will save an extra 2% by dealing directly with the listing agent, since the data seems to suggest that buyer agents can't even get their clients a better deal than the listing agent. Second, and perhaps more importantly, unless Mr Kelman broke into my office and raided my filing cabinet to read my agency disclosures, he has no idea if the MLS credit to the same agent on both sides of the transaction was truly dual agency. The buyer could be an unrepresented customer, or could have had a designated agent in an in-house sale, something Redfin *DOES* practice. This was one of the fallacies that scuttled Redfin's failed field reports on agent statistics. Unless Redfin is hacking MLS passwords, then the data they are using is their IDX/VOW feed, which is an inferior way to analyze data. That is meant for consumers to search for a home. It is not an optimal means of analyzing market data in such a granular way. The devil is in the details, and I don't see how IDX or VOW could normalize the data for a host of variables that affect outcomes. Broker-owner, J. Philip Real Estate Vice President, Empire Access MLS (NY) www.jphilip.com www.WestchesterRealEstateBlog.NET

My report is missing 98% of my sales, with the disclaimer that the data is incomplete when I log in that does not appear if I am not logged in. I don't see how Redfin can conclude that I was a dual agent in transactions where I have MLS credit on both sides without burglarizing my office and reading my files. It is valid to have the buyer be a customer under NY law without compromising my client relationship with the seller. If you don't see the signed disclosure forms, you have no business, especially as a competitor, reporting false information. I have no issue with my data being published. I benefit from it, actually, as I trade on my volume. But get it right or don't do it. Broker-owner, J. Philip Real Estate Vice President, Empire Access MLS (NY) www.jphilip.com www.WestchesterRealEstateBlog.NET