Virtual Office Website

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A Virtual Office Website (VOW) is a web site that is used to conduct business activities. One example is a VOW used as a real estate property search site allowing the public to conduct searches of approved multiple listing service properties in a given area under certain conditions. Also see Virtual company.

Contents

Features

The VOW allows the public to:

  1. provide contact information
  2. agree to become a bona fide customer / client
  3. get a password protected private account
  4. describe property interest(s)
  5. and then conduct searches of all available multiple listing service properties in a certain area.

Site users have to provide personal information before they can actually look at the listings. [1] Also, realtors who use VOW can choose to "opt out" from the local multiple listing service, which means that these realtors' properties will only be displayed to people who have signed in with the VOW. [2]

The benefit to realtors is that registered users of their VOW web site become customers under contract. Registered users gain the benefit of more detailed information about each property and can generally see all available properties.

Regulation

Certain rules apply to the real estate companies ability to display each detail about a property, these "display rules" are set by the multiple listing service which generally forms policy around the recommendations of the National Association of Realtors.

The U.S. Department of Justice filed an antitrust lawsuit against the National Association of Realtors in September 2005 over the VOW policy, which they deemed as anti-competitive.

As of early 2006, the VOW policy has been replaced by a new Internet Listing Display policy created by the National Association of Realtors.

On May 27, 2008, NAR and the U.S. Department of Justice reached a favorable settlement, concluding a two-year DOJ investigation (followed by two and a half years of litigation) regarding NAR's multiple listing policy as it pertained to the display of listings from the MLS on brokers' virtual office Web sites, or VOWs. [3]

See also

Related Research Articles

This aims to be a complete list of the articles on real estate.

A multiple listing service is an organization with a suite of services that real estate brokers use to establish contractual offers of cooperation and compensation and accumulate and disseminate information to enable appraisals. A multiple listing service's database and software is used by real estate brokers in real estate, representing sellers under a listing contract to widely share information about properties with other brokers who may represent potential buyers or wish to work with a seller's broker in finding a buyer for the property or asset. The listing data stored in a multiple listing service's database is the proprietary information of the broker who has obtained a listing agreement with a property's seller.

The National Association of Realtors (NAR) is an American trade association for those who work in the real estate industry. It has over 1.4 million members, making it one of the biggest trade associations in the USA including NAR's institutes, societies, and councils, involved in all aspects of the residential and commercial real estate industries. The organization holds a U.S. trademark over the term "realtor", limiting the use of the term to its members. NAR also functions as a self-regulatory organization for real estate brokerage. The organization is headquartered in Chicago.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Estate agent</span> Person or business that specialises in the selling or letting of property

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A data dictionary, or metadata repository, as defined in the IBM Dictionary of Computing, is a "centralized repository of information about data such as meaning, relationships to other data, origin, usage, and format". Oracle defines it as a collection of tables with metadata. The term can have one of several closely related meanings pertaining to databases and database management systems (DBMS):

<span class="mw-page-title-main">For sale by owner</span>

For sale by owner (FSBO) is the process of selling real estate without the representation of a broker or agent. Homeowners may employ the services of marketing, online listing companies, or market their own property. Typically, they represent themselves with the help of a lawyer or solicitor throughout the sale. As in most areas, there are detailed legal requirements pertaining to sellers and disclosures they must make.

An Internet Data Exchange refers to the agreement between listing (Selling) Agents or Brokers and Buyers' Agents to display Multiple Listing Service properties online, across multiple websites.

Internet Listing Display (ILD) was a set of rules put forth by the National Association of National Association of Realtors in 2005 to regulate how homes and properties can be displayed on internet sites. The ILD policy was intended to consolidate and replace both the Virtual Office Website (VOW) and Internet Data Exchange (IDX) policies to create one set of rules.

A buyer brokerage or buyer agency is the practice of real estate brokers and their agents representing a buyer in a real estate transaction rather than, by default, representing the seller either directly or as a sub-agent. In the United Kingdom and Australia, the most common term is buying agent.

Flat-fee multiple listing service or flat-fee MLS refers to the practice in the real estate industry of a seller entering into an "à la carte service agreement" with a real estate broker who accepts a flat fee rather than a percentage of the sale price for the listing side of the transaction. A flat-fee MLS brokerage typically unbundles the services a traditional real estate brokerage offers and lists the property for sale in the local multiple listing service (MLS) à la carte without requiring the seller to use all services.

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A real estate license is an authorization issued by a government body to give agents and brokers the legal authority to represent a home seller or buyer in a real estate transaction. Real estate agents and real estate brokers are required to be licensed when conducting real estate transactions in the United States and many other countries.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Realtor.com</span> Real estate website

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Homes.com, Inc. was the fifth-largest real estate portal by traffic market share in the USA in 2018. Headquartered at 150 Granby Street, Norfolk, Virginia, United States, Homes.com maintains additional offices in Boca Raton, Florida; Tallahassee, Florida and San Diego, California. The company also provides real estate marketing and media services including brand advertising, property listing syndication, reputation management and lead generation.

NeighborCity was a residential real estate information and service company that rated real-estate agents in the United States, offering a way for buyers and sellers of homes to compare and evaluate agents. It was based in San Francisco.

References

  1. ↑ "What Is VOW in Real Estate?". Realtyna. May 2018. Retrieved 5 September 2018.
  2. ↑ "Virtual office". Saturday, 13 July 2019
  3. ↑ "It's Settled: NAR-DOJ". Archived from the original on 2008-06-07. Retrieved 2009-04-04.
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