It’s good to hear from somebody with integrity in Real Estate marketing. It is something that I have always practiced in my Bed & Breakfast business, and though sometimes you feel like getting down and dirty like your competitors, I believe that honesty pays dividends in the long run.

Good luck in your endeavours to bring honesty and integrity into an otherwise questionable industry.

I have just been reading all these comments and find it all very interesting.
My name is Guy Davidson and I am the director of Tasmanian-Property.com, which is an internet based real estate and property listing service. We specialise in Tasmanian property and have links throughout the world as part of a global hub of realestate sites. We pride ourselves in integrity and transparency. For this reason, I have included here a copy of our Privacy Statement…for your scrutiny and comments.

It is a shame that there are still ‘crooks’ out there (not making any reference to any particular people or organisations) who insist in taking people and their confidence in them, for a ride.
The one good thing about such behaviour is that it helps set a standard to differentiate between the good and the bad. So rather than ‘cry over spilt milk’ we need only provide decency and treat our customers and all others for that matter, with dignity.

There is too much compromise for the dollar, and unfortunately it isn’t past some of the bigger corporations to allow success to be measured in dollars rather than customer relationship and care. Smaller companies and businesses as well as individuals are often also guilty of such poor tact.

I don’t know about all of you blokes, but it is always very refreshing to read about and experience wholesome marketing skills refined with conscientious endeavour to protect the customer’s privacy and be open and honest about all dealings with personal information.

Here is our Privacy Policy and if you are interested, you can take a look at our professional site at
http://www.Tasmanian-Property.com
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Thank you for visiting Tasmanian-Property.com, an Internet Marketing Ltd. site. Your privacy is important to us. To better protect your privacy, we provide this notice explaining our online information practices and the choices you can make about the way your information is collected and used at this Internet Marketing Ltd. site.

The information we collect

At some Internet Marketing Ltd. sites, you can order products, enter contests, vote in polls or otherwise express an opinion, subscribe to one of our services such as our online newsletters, or participate in one of our online forums or communities. The types of personally identifiable information that may be collected at these pages include: name, address, e-mail address, telephone number, fax number, credit card information, and information about your interests in and use of various products, programs, and services.
At certain parts of some of our sites, only persons who provide us with the requested personally identifiable information will be able to order products, programs, and services or otherwise participate in the site’s activities and offerings.

We also may collect certain non-personally identifiable information when you visit many of our web pages such as the type of browser you are using (e.g., Internet Explorer, Mozilla), the type of operating system you are using, (e.g., Windows ‘XP or Mac OS) and the domain name of your Internet service provider (e.g., America Online, Earthlink).

How we use the information

We may use the information you provide about yourself to fulfill your requests for our products, programs, and services, to respond to your inquiries about our offerings, and to offer you other products, programs or services that we believe may be of interest to you.

We sometimes use this information to communicate with you, such as to notify you when we make changes to our subscriber agreements, to fulfill a request by you for an online newsletter, or to contact you about your account with us.

The information we collect in connection with our online forums and communities is used to provide an interactive experience. We use this information to facilitate participation in these online forums and communities and, from time to time, to offer you products, programs, or services.

If you choose to submit content for publication (e.g., a “letter to our editors”), we may publish your screen name and other information you have provided to us.

We sometimes use the non-personally identifiable information that we collect to improve the design and content of our site and to enable us to personalize your Internet experience. We also may use this information in the aggregate to analyze site usage, as well as to offer you products, programs, or services.

We may disclose personally identifiable information in response to legal process, for example, in response to a court order or a subpoena. We also may disclose such information in response to a law enforcement agency’s request, or where we believe it is necessary to investigate, prevent, or take action regarding illegal activities, suspected fraud, situations involving potential threats to the physical safety of any person, violations of our terms of use, or as otherwise required by law. In addition, we may transfer information about you if we are acquired by or merged with another company.

Agents and contractors of Internet Marketing Ltd. who have access to personally identifiable information are required to protect this information in a manner that is consistent with this Privacy Notice by, for example, not using the information for any purpose other than to carry out the services they are performing for Internet Marketing Ltd

Although we take appropriate measures to safeguard against unauthorized disclosures of information, we cannot assure you that personally identifiable information that we collect will never be disclosed in a manner that is inconsistent with this Privacy Notice.

We may on occasion combine information we receive online with outside records to enhance our ability to market to you those products or services that may be of interest to you.

Finally, the Internet Marketing Ltd. sites covered by this Privacy Notice will not use or transfer personally identifiable information provided to us in ways unrelated to the ones described above without also providing you with an opportunity to opt out of these unrelated uses.

Cookies and Web beacons

To enhance your experience with our sites, many of our web pages use “cookies.” Cookies are text files we place in your computer’s browser to store your preferences. Cookies, by themselves, do not tell us your e-mail address or other personally identifiable information unless you choose to provide this information to us by, for example, registering at one of our sites. However, once you choose to furnish the site with personally identifiable information, this information may be linked to the data stored in the cookie.

We use cookies to understand site usage and to improve the content and offerings on our sites. For example, we may use cookies to personalize your experience at our web pages (e.g., to recognize you by name when you return to our site), and save your password in password-protected areas. We also may use cookies to offer you products, programs, or services.

“Web beacons” or clear .gifs are small pieces of code placed on a web page to monitor the behavior and collect data about the visitors viewing a web page. For example, web beacons can be used to count the users who visit a web page or to deliver a cookie to the browser of a visitor viewing that page. We may use web beacons on this site from time to time for this and other purposes.

Collection of information by third-party sites, ad servers, and sponsors

Some of our sites contain links to other sites whose information practices may be different than ours. Visitors should consult the other sites’ privacy notices as we have no control over information that is submitted to, or collected by, these third parties.

The Internet Marketing Ltd. sites covered by this Privacy Notice sometimes may offer content (e.g., contests, sweepstakes, or promotions) that is sponsored by or cobranded with identified third parties. By virtue of these relationships, the third parties may obtain personally identifiable information that visitors voluntarily submit to participate in the site activity. Internet Marketing Ltd has no control over these third parties’ use of this information. The Internet Marketing Ltd site will notify you at the time of requesting personally identifiable information if these third parties will obtain such information.

Some of the Internet Marketing Ltd. sites covered by this Privacy Notice may use a reputable third party to present or serve the advertisements that you may see at its Web pages. These third party ad servers may use cookies, web beacons, clear .gifs or similar technologies to help present such advertisements, and to help measure and research the advertisements’ effectiveness. The use of these technologies by these third party ad servers is subject to their own privacy policies and is not covered by our privacy policy.

Our commitment to security

We have put in place appropriate physical, electronic, and managerial procedures to safeguard and help prevent unauthorized access, maintain data security, and correctly use the information we collect online.

How you can access or correct information

For instructions on how you can access the personally identifiable information that this Internet Marketing Ltd. site has collected about you online, or how to correct factual errors in such information, please click here to contact us

To protect your privacy and security, we will take reasonable steps to help verify your identity before granting access or making corrections.

How to contact us

If you have any questions or concerns about the Internet Marketing Ltd. online policy for this site or its implementation you may click here to contact us

Updates and effective Date

From time to time, we may update this privacy notice. We will notify you about material changes in the way we treat personally identifiable information by placing a notice on our site. We encourage you to periodically check back and review this policy so that you always will know what information we collect, how we use it, and to whom we disclose it.

The Privacy Notice posted on this site was updated on 1st of October, 2005.
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The live links in this policy statement are not enabled here, but if you would like to follow up to be more sure that all that is written here is transparent, please go ahead !

All the best to you all . You have a good thing going here.

Guy

You’re deliberately missing the point. Data collected by secret and sneaky means was the matter under discussion, and I gave you an example.

Please don’t go all hysterical on me when I draw attention to the poverty of your arguments.

Information should be gathered in an ethical manner, and then provided for the benefit of the entire industry, and by this I mean the real estate industry, not just the estate agent industry.

It is arrogant when estate agents seek to extract information from consumers by use of dubious means, and then claim some form of ownership of that information for the purposes of maintaining control over consumers.

Glenn, controlling “our industry” is one thing, but controlling access to information is something else entirely.

I don’t have a problem whom sends the information on to whatever organisation so long as it is accurate. We offer all of sales data except in the case where confidentiality agreements are executed.

Personally I find this data a revelation as now we can access yesterdays statistics that are exacting as against a previous system that was both out dated and inaccurate. This now greatly assists the Reserve Bank of Australia and Treasury. As they now pin point market activity and gauge which markets are flourishing and those in destress.

I am a huge supporter of data aggregators.

I understand that.

Firstly they are still two separate entities and secondly they are not the only companies involved…

thirdly, who is to say that the information is being sent only to the two main aggregators. Just because we know about them does not mean that the information is not being sent to anybody else.

The REA clause at least allows them to send it to whoever they want or are you fine with that?

and lastly, even in Sydney only a small percentage of agents submit their sales to Fairfax media and I reckon that just about all of them would realise that the information is also given to APM. In fact doesn’t the collection sheet you fill the information in say exactly that? That’s transparent, however how can you say the other collection methods that have been raised are transparent?

Robert, does your privacy notices to your clients declare that the information you have collected is being forwarded to these data aggregators?

Please understand I am not disagreeing with you at all. They are a good thing, and they are certainly needed. No question whatsoever.

Much of the responsibility of the problems I have falls on the portals. It is easy to say read everything before you sign it but its the simple reality that this does not happen. You would have to be anal retentive if you read all of the terms and conditions for everything your bought, every service you used and every website you visited.

Of course agents know that if they send information themselves it ends up being collected, but how many know that even if they dont send it in it is being provided by the portals to the data aggregators anyway.

Because of Domains minority share, APM go out of their way to get agents to submit data to the newspapers so they can then access it. We get emails from them every week to submit our sales data. RPData does not seem to do this I assume because their partner is REA which has the sheer majority of agents anyway.

The real estate industry certainly needs them and they get a hard time, but in this case they are only the recipients of the information. It is the portals that have these clauses and forward the information on whether you send it to the papers or not.

Why shouldn’t the portals disclose who they are sending the information to?

Why shouldn’t agents have the ability to stop a feed of their information to a particular company because they published it when it was marked not for display or indeed for whatever reason they see fit?

Are you ok with clauses such as REA uses?

Do you believe that the portals don’t need to be transparent about who they send the information to.. giving them control what they do with your data?

We are talking about sale information here and you offer the collection of buyers information at open houses. Then you admit that there was a disclosure on the collection form but you claim it was not collected legitimately. You question that an agent asks for photo id before letting somebody into their clients property but hasn’t the owner got rights? You would be the first one complaining and bitching if it was a criminal casing the home that an agent let in.

Since when does client information collected by an agency in a database not belong to them? Client databases are the cornerstone of just about all businesses, even legal practices.. now your claiming real estate agents don’t have any intellectual property over the client data they collect..

Why shouldn’t real estate agents remain in power of ourselves. Real Estate Agents as an industry should not be run by lawyers but be run by the agents themselves. Why should lawyers draft clauses that effectively strip away our entitlement to our own intellectual property. Ahh.. thats right, as far as you are concerned real estate agents cant have client databases.

Even your supporters would have trouble believing there is not any agent bashing going on. Lets face it negativity sells. That’s why Today Tonight and a Current Affair have an audience. Do they raise real issues, sure, sometimes, but it is lost between the waffle for the majority of Australians. Real current affairs programs do a better job of highlighting real problems with real journalism rather than beating it all up with sensationalism. As I said, negativity sells. Still people would rather watch that drivel rather than say the 7:30 report on ABC. If you stick with the Anna Coren model I am sure you will continue to get people who claim you are agent bashing.