We drive visitors to our site and funnel them to realtor’s sites.

Save your hate for all the companies that post realtor listings and try to sell them back featured listings and other ad packages….
HomeGain is simply a marketer for Realtors.

http://blog.homegain.com/building-pipeline-with-homegain-buyerlink

Obviously you are passionate about being against HomeGain and that passion has clouded your incentive to discover what HomeGain actually does.

Let’s take a look at some of your perceptions of what HomeGain does and what we actually do

“don’t show homes to buyers, you don’t represent sellers or any clients” This statement is correct.

I am sure if we did you would say since we are not REAL realtors we should’nt be entitled to do so!

“helping by driving consumers away from the agent brand”
This is 100% incorrect. Our buyerlink product drives consumers DIRECTLY to the agent’s or broker’s site where they control the show. We say its your show -we bring the audience. On the contrary to your statement we drive consumers directly to the agent brand.

“I think most agents and brokers are moving away from that type of lead generation and into getting their own leads”

You may think that (or wish it to be true)but our business is growing. If agents and brokers can get their own leads-more power to them.

What you missing is the way homegain generates visitors to our customers sites is NOT by scraping listings or convincing a broker to give us listings like counteless other listings aggregators do.
We don’t do it because we don’t display listings on our web site.
The argument that we are taking realtor’s content (listings) and re branding it as our own does not apply to HomeGain.

What we provide to agents is a service-they want visitors to their web site. We manage millions of key words so they don’t have to, we’ve organized and manage over 300 traffic partners, we have brand recognition so people come to homegain because they know they can find a realtor there.

So yes we are a middle man and provide a service for agents and brokers that don’t have the time, resources, or inclination to drive their own leads or visitors to their websites.

Lack of integrity in providing a service that some agents/brokers are willing to pay for because they do not WANT or find it cost effective to do so? Hardly!

Car dealers and departments stores have products they keep in stock so consumers can try them on (out),pay and take those products home with them. HomeGain does not stock anything.

Homegain does not bring anything of value to the industry. You don’t show homes to buyers, you don’t represent sellers or any clients, you don’t further the industry in any way.

The business model of HomeGain is to scrape info and sell it. You can call it being a “middleman” and dress it up any way you want, but there is no integrity in that business model and it damages the agents you claim to be helping by driving consumers away from the agent brand, so even when an agent does get a good lead (in the middle of hundreds of bad ones) the consumer has the HomeGain brand as the source of the agent help, not the agent or broker brand.

Many times the consumer will not remember the contact info for the agent, and they don’t know the brand of that agent because they found them on your lead-gen site.

It’s okay to be proud of your company and to defend it, but I think most agents and brokers are moving away from that type of lead generation and into getting their own leads, and then having those people become clients, through their own websites and branding. And I think that is much better for the agents, brokers, and the client.

Louis, Realtors are already the “middle man.” Does the middle man need a middle man? Some apparently do, or HomeGain wouldn’t be around.

If you are not an agent who has been duped by this company and its business practices you will not understand how I feel and you will dismiss my comments. If you are an agent who has been violated by this lead aggregator, you hope and pray that the individuals who have been convinced to join the ranks of “homegain bloggers” will withdraw their support as soon as possible for the good of real estate agents.

Actually are not Zillow and Trulia-even though they are web 2.0 companies, the real threat as they are taking realtor listings to draw consumers to their sites so they can try and sell featured listings back to realtors.

Think of homegain instead who merely does marketing for realtors that they can’t do for themselves, like arrange 300 traffic and lead partners, manage millions of key words etc so we can drive traffic to YOU.

Web 1.0 companies, like Homegain are not your biggest threat.

Companies in general are the threat to re.net practitioners as they seek to disintermediate the network.

Web 2.0 companies are a bigger threat than 1.0 as 1.0 companies are not competiting on the network, we are competing perhaps in keyword bidding, something the re.net doesn’t seem to have a whole lot of interest in.
We are disintermediators only in our competition for attention on Google-the largest obstacle between realtors and consumers.

Think of HomeGain as a large coop for realtors, to help them negotiate search and other traffic acquisition strategies, not disintermediators.