Prudential California/Nevada CEO Krafchow names new company co-presidents

In a news release today, Ed Krafchow, CEO of Prudential California Realty and Prudential Nevada Realty placed his confidence in David Gardner and Pat Shea as co-Presidents of his company. Together, they will assume the role of continuing to guide this great brokerage down the path of success that Krafchow began so many years ago. It is really a great story about two REALTORS, Agents, like so many others that join the ranks each day. These two passionate individuals grew up in the industry, and like Krafchow - share a vision for managing a brokerage with highly trained agents, leveraging [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:26:01-07:00September 25th, 2010|Main category|0 Comments

MRED Launches new brand image How strong is YOUR brand image?

It’s very exciting to see MRED, the second largest MLS in the United States launch a new brand image for their company.  Their tagline “reinventing MLS” may give all of us a clue about where Russ Bergeron, their new CEO and the rest of his staff are going.  It looks like they are going to “shake things up” a bit. I am heartened by a leader in the MLS industry that is taking their brand seriously. They have launched a whole new marketing campaign to help build awareness of their brand to their subscribers.   By using such an inspirational mark, [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:26:01-07:00September 25th, 2010|Main category, MLS Insights|0 Comments

Concerned about Lower Real Estate Commission Rates? Try Transaction Management

Today’s real estate consumer communicates very differently with their agent than in past times.  Unlike boomers who like to get to know their agent and work with them in person, Gen Y’s prefer to do most things electronically.  They ask for you to send them an update to a contract via text.   They want you to set them up on auto email from your MLS system to look for listings that match their search criteria. Bottomline, they want to just “get it done". They don’t have the time or interest to really get to know and the true skills you [...]

What Happened to Notice of Participants

I came across this post today from an excellent blog by 2 consultant/Attorneys, Tim Jacobson and John Reese - check out thier blog at http://www.strategicmls.com In this post, they remind us of some basics - republished here There may be some confusion about the rights of MLS in connection with new opportunities to license listing content to third parties, such as  Realtors Property Resource™ (RPR), CoreLogic®, and Move®.  For years, National Association of REALTORS® (NAR) has appropriately taken the position that listings are the property of the participant who generated them.  Policy Statement 7.85 adopted by NAR in May, 2005 states [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:26:01-07:00September 23rd, 2010|Main category|0 Comments

MOVE, operators of Realtor.com, Acquires Threewide Listhub

In a MOVE that is sure to improve listing syndication to third party websites, MOVE, Inc has aquired Threewide, the operators of the popular ListHub product which syndicates listings to their party websites like Trulia and Zillow for customers like MLSs, Brokers, Franchises, etc. If you saw the MOVE announcement last week whereby their contract with NAR regarding Listing Syndication needed to be amended, you can appreciate just how tight the relationship is between MOVE and NAR. There is very little that MOVE can do without NAR’s blessing and approval. Everyone should be proud that NAR takes Broker Listing Content so [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:26:01-07:00September 21st, 2010|Main category|0 Comments

The RPR – Data Seeker Update

The RPR Data Seeker Update It has been almost twelve months since the San Diego NAR conference when RPR had their coming out party and began the data wars our industry finds itself in.  Maybe it didn’t actually start the whole issue of using MLS data for non-traditional purposes, but it certainly put it in our mainstream discussions.  It also made the whole concept of using MLS data for purposes other than selling properties a concept that the industry was willing to consider.  This was a big shift and one that hadn’t had much energy since REGIB (Real Estate Business [...]

RE Technology, Inc is Hiring!

RE Technology, Inc. is growing by leaps and bounds! We need to hire another sales peson to help spread the word about the great opportunity to connect technolog companies and services to over 250,000 agents across the United States.  RE Technology’s flagship product RETEchnology.com is the real estate industry’s first ever web portal that aggregates information about a variety of technologies and services used by the real estate industry.  It is a thriving online portal featuring the industry’s most comprehensive resource for products, companies, user ratings and product reviews.  RETechnololgy.com allows real estate agents and brokers to better leverage the power of [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:26:02-07:00September 20th, 2010|Main category|0 Comments

Professional real estate websites are losing the battle for consumers online.

Professional real estate websites are losing the battle for consumers online. Todays real estate consumer has a dizzying array of websites that provide them with access to real estate listings.  There are numerous third party websites like Zillow and Trulia as well as national real estate Franchise sites and local real estate company websites.  Consumers likely assume that all of these sites offer the same quality of information. Unfortunately this isnt the case. This white paper from the WAV Group chronicles research findings on the consumer search experience.  WAV Group has calculated the differences between third party websites, franchise websites, and broker websites [...]

NAR and MOVE sign new operating Agreement that makes Realtor.com a syndicator

In a press release published today, the National Association of REALTORS and MOVE, INC (operators of REALTOR.com) announced that they have completed the renewal of the agreement between these two parties to continue their relationship. In an unexpected twist, realtor.com may now act as a syndication resource to agents and brokers who which to have their listings appear on other third party websites like Zillow, Trulia, MSN, Yahoo, Google and a long list of other third party websites. This is great news for agents and brokers who are challenged to keep their listing content current and accurate at third party [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:26:02-07:00September 16th, 2010|Main category|0 Comments

Listing Syndication leads going to other agents

As a follow up to my post yesterday, Trulia posted a new listing a few hours after Zillow. In truth, I suspect that if you look at the speed that listings get updated at Zillow and Trulia, there are likely to be times when Trulia updates listings faster than Zillow - but there is always a lag between Updates in the MLS and updates to listing syndication feeds to third party websites. What is most concering to me is the way in which other agents are promoted above the listing agent as a contact point for information on the listing. If [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:26:02-07:00September 16th, 2010|Main category|0 Comments

Zillow updates faster than Trulia but leaves listing agent behind.

Since the introduction of Virtual Office Websites, I have picked up the habit of scheduling listing alerts. My interest is not only in keeping up with listings of comparable homes that would influence my homes’ value, but also to see how data moves to third party listing websites. Today’s new listing is 755 Via Laguna Vista, San Luis Obispo CA 93405 Copy and paste it into Zillow and Trulia and see what you get. Right now, you will see that the listing is not for sale on Trulia, but they have built a lovely landing page with deep information. Zillow [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:26:02-07:00September 15th, 2010|Broker-Agent Information, Main category|0 Comments

Trouble for Zillow

Our old friend LendingTree stopped showing up to conferences after agents and brokers clarified that they did not enjoy paying referral fees on their listing content. Now LendingTree has gone on the offensive to block Zillow from continuing their progress on building out their mortgage product. From CNBC.com   LendingTree has sued Zillow and three other rivals, accusing them of infringing two patents for methods to help people obtain mortgage loans over the Internet.   Adchemy, NexTag and QuinStreet were also named as defendants in the lawsuit filed Wednesday in the federal court in Charlotte, North Carolina. LendingTree, a unit of Tree.com, accused its rivals [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:26:02-07:00September 9th, 2010|Main category|0 Comments