Trendwatch: Who owns the customer

Everyone likes to think they are in control of the real estate transaction. But who really owns the customer?

If anyone knows, it would be Steve Kropper. He founded Domania a few years back and started helping big lenders stave portfolio runoff by providing home pricing data to consumers already in their databases. That company is now owned by LendingTree, a firm that profits from portfolio churning and isn't in the news much anymore.

But Kropper is still hard at work. Today, he is a top executive with Equinox, an international outsourcing firm owned by i-flex solutions. He has some definite thoughts on the customer ownership problem and captured them recently in a podcast that is featured on his parent company's webpage.