Working Smart in Real Estate

Don’t get caught improperly using the word REALTOR ®for your web domain as in this example.  Whoever controls it now is trying to sell it for $1600 hoping to find some new agent that doesn’t know better.  Here are the rules:

1. The term REALTOR® , whether used as part of a domain name or in some other fashion, must refer to a member or a member’s firm.
2. The term REALTOR® may not be used with descriptive words or phrases. For example, Number1realtor.com, numberone-realtor.com, chicagorealtors.org or realtorproperties.com are all incorrect.
3. For use as a domain name or email address on the Internet, the term REALTOR® does not need to be separated from the member’s name or firm name with punctuation. For example, both johndoe-realtor.com and johndoerealtor.com would be correct uses of the term as a part of domain names and jdoe*realtors@webnetservices and jdoerealtors@webnetservices.com are both correct uses of the term as part of an email address.
4. The REALTOR® block R logo should not be used as hypertext links at a website, as such uses can suggest an endorsement or recommendation of the linked sited by your association. The only exception would be to establish a link to the National Association’s website, Realtor.com.

You could easily build up the ranking before NAR becomes aware of it and then have to scramble to come up with another catchy name.  This guy will probably find himself in this situation eventually.   This one really surprises me, illinoisrealtor.org, I guess REALTOR® associations can use it.

photo by http://www.flickr.com/photos/7301623@N06/