I was just looking at a new construction new listing priced at $999,999.

The agent clearly was unaware that buyers in the $1M and over price range won't see the listing when doing a search based on price.

This sort of cutesy pricing makes sense for the blue-light specials at KMart, but it's terribly stupid in real estate. Round it up to a million bucks and you reach everyone searching from $750 to $1M and everyone searching from $1M and up.

I think the Realtor who delivered the title line expected me to be mortally wounded by it, and be shamed into realizing the ignorance of my ways. In her view, the press has no reason for existing if it isn’t part of the sales team.

Setting the scene: I visit a $2,000,000 new construction open house in a north shore suburb of Chicago. I introduce myself, present a copy of our New Homes Magazine, outline our ambitious plans to build an audience of north shore home buyers and sellers for our YoChicago site, and request permission to take some interior photos to post on an open house tour.

In order that the Realtor will have no surprises when she visits our Web site, I mention that we’d posted a criticism on our site of the home’s exterior – that we’d suggested it was more appropriate for a downscale suburb than for the north shore.

Her reaction was simple and visceral: blind, cold fury. "You have no right to put a photo of this house on the Internet." Well, actually, ma’am, I do. This country has a little thing called a Constitution and it has a certain amendment that’s applicable to this situation. “You're not helping us to sell our house," was her next gambit. I didn’t realize I’d been hired to do that, ma’am.

"We’ll never advertise with you. Never," she continued. Well, ma’am, I’ve been in business quite a while without your support, and might be able to manage a bit longer without it. She then called the home's developer, outlined her view of the situation, and relayed the developer’s order for me to leave the house. So long, ma’am. It’s been good to know you.

This Realtor is typical of many – completely lacking understanding of the role of the press, of the rights of others and, more importantly, clueless about marketing.

She was being handed an opportunity to showcase the home’s attractive interior on a Web site that had criticized its exterior. She blew it.

She made it clear that she doesn't do her homework by looking at exactly what was said before reacting - any hint of criticism is pure evil, she indicated.

She’s closed her mind to advertising (not that she was ever asked to) on a site that has a lot of credibility and that’s building an audience. She’s likely to give bad advice about that site to a lot of sellers for a long time to come. She’s killed any chance she might have ever had of being recommended by someone who’s in touch with quite a few buyers and sellers.

Worst of all, she unwittingly placed a bet that I wouldn’t lay out her closed-minded approach and stupid aggression for everyone to read about on the Web. Suppose she’d been talking to someone who named names? Who knows how many sellers might Google her and stay away?

Draw your own lessons from this story. Here’s mine: the Web changes almost everything about how you need to approach buyers, sellers and visitors to open houses. Start learning the new rules and applying them as quickly as possible.

Tim O’Keefe, over at the Real Estate Marketing Blog, is either serious or is caricaturing a dinosaur mentality on steroids, in this post recommending that real estate agents give away no information to people who don’t give up their name and contact info – i.e. turn themselves into a lead .

At the end of the day, a forced opt-in is about control.

Control over your business, your website and your future. The money is in your list of prospects that come from your blog, your website and IDX VOW websites.

Control is from you communicating your message to an opt in list. It comes from knowing the point of your real estate blog, or your realty website. In my opinion that is to gather names. Lots and lots of names. So that can talk with those names on your terms.

We’re afraid that he’s serious.

What real estate agents need to recognize is that control freaks are perceived by consumers as just that – freaks. No one wants to do business with a freak.

Less than 15% of real estate agents who participate in third-party lead generation programs are satisfied with the results.

That's just one of the many not too surprising findings in the 2006 Realtor Technology Survey from the Center for Realtor Technology.

You'd think any industry with that low a consumer satisfaction rating would die quickly. Not likely. Most real estate agents are suckers for a quick fix to growing their business. And most real estate agents, despite all the evidence, think they'll be the exception to the prevailing rules.

So why is this finding not surprising? Any real estate agent who thinks of a person as a "lead" is doomed to fail. Leads are for losers.

The Rain City Real Estate Guide, one of the most intelligent real estate blogs around, has an extended critique of a Chicago agent-promotional site. Worth a read.

The Rain City Real Estate Guide has a good list of what real estate bloggers should not do. In a nice twist, they cite mistakes they made themselves rather than simply pointing at other sites.

I just found a local (Chicago) real estate blog that illustrates “worst practices" in real estate blogging as well as any I’ve seen. The topics of the last 5 posts (not quoting directly):

1. I have a buyer for apartment buildings with 50 or more units. Call me.

2. We’re a great real estate firm with the latest and greatest high-tech tools and high commission splits. Join us.

3. Call us for all your real estate needs in X neighborhood.

4. I have buyers for vacant lots, 2-4 flats, 5-100 unit buildings in and around Chicago. Call me.

5. I just got a Treo 650. The directions book is so thick it makes me nervous.

Even if posts 1, 2 and 4 are true, and I take no position on whether they are, they’re so thin on facts that most readers will assume they’re just typical real estate agent hype.

Post 3 offers no reason for anyone to call. Tell me something interesting about X neighborhood and I might call.

Post 5 – well, what can you say about post 5? Who wants to hire a real estate agent who’s nervous about reading the directions for their phone?

Blogging can be a great tool to build relationships – but you must consistently offer the reader something of value. If you don’t, they won’t make it past post 1. Come to think of it, that might be a plus: if they skip off after post 1 they won’t have an unshakable perception that you’re a fool.

If you don't have anything to say, don't say anything.

Real estate agents often display a stunning lack of insight into the ways that they annoy people. If a marketing tactic promises money without effort, the typical agent's ability to grasp reality goes bye-bye.

Realty Times, a Web-based real estate publication offers the following advice:

Thanks to the advent of e-mail "drip-marketing" systems, the entire process of staying in touch and even growing the relationship with online prospects can be completely automated.

An e-mail drip-marketing system consists of one or more targeted "campaigns" where each campaign contains a series of e-mail messages that are automatically sent to a contact (either prospect or current client) who has been subscribed to the campaign.

How do you get people to subscribe to canned content with little or no value? Mislead them into thinking they're getting something of value.

Most recipients of this garbage view drip-marketing campaigns as a form of Chinese water torture, and simply hope that it ends or aim their spam filter at it when it first appears.

If you think drip marketing is a way to build relatinoships, you need to be thinking of another career. Perhaps in telemarketing.