February 2012

MRED sends data directly to Trulia

Midwest Real Estate Data LLC or MRED is the MLS of the Chicago region of Illinois. They are the MLS Provider to around 40,000 real estate professionals. In a press release today, Trulia announced that MRED will feed listings directly to Trulia, bypassing Listhub, Point2 and other listing syndicators. “Listing syndication has contributed to a mess on Trulia and all other sites who get their data second hand, on behalf of our brokers, MRED is going to fix it” says Russ Bergeron, MRED CEO. There has been a great deal of discussion in the real estate industry about syndication to publishers. Today, [...]

By Victor Lund|2018-05-03T21:25:13-07:00February 29th, 2012|Broker Technology Research, Broker-Agent Information, Main category, MLS Insights|1 Comment

CoreLogic not breaking into pieces

If you are a stock watcher of the leading companies supplying services to the real estate industry, you have been watching CoreLogic. Since the spin out from First American, the company has been tremendously successful in terms of overall revenue and cash position, but the stock has underperformed. At one point, the stock was as low as $7.64 per share over the past 52 weeks. The high was $19.20, and the target is around $16. The company currently trades at $14. For a company that has $250 Million in cash, a market cap of $1.53B is really low. Some of [...]

By Victor Lund|2018-05-03T21:25:14-07:00February 28th, 2012|Main category, MLS Insights|1 Comment

A Discussion on Virtual Brokerage

We have the opportunity to work with many different software companies providing great products to the real estate industry. Some of these companies are geared to serve both the traditional real estate model as well as a virtual brokerage. It is clear to us, as well as these software providers, that the future of real estate companies will be different. It will be leaner, lighter and in many cased “virtual” with a heavy emphasis on the broker providing great, integrated software products to agents that often work remotely. I wrote at length about this shift in the white paper, “The [...]

By THE WAV GROUP|2018-05-03T21:25:14-07:00February 23rd, 2012|Broker Technology Research, Broker-Agent Information, Main category, Marketing, Reports, Technology Evaluation, Virtual Office Website Series|0 Comments

Why Innovation Fails To Change Real Estate

Every year, real estate sees the launch of beautiful products, offering awesome features, advantages, and benefits. Excellent marketing programs back them and the press creates a jubilee – Innovator of the Year! Then the product launches, and the industry shrugs its shoulder. It is the conundrum of new product development and innovation for real estate. Most of these companies are doing everything right. They are doing research, spotting trends, holding focus groups, testing usability, and modeling lovely financials. If they can only get 1% adoption of this, or 3% of that, revenues will be awesome. There are 1 Million real [...]

By Victor Lund|2018-05-03T21:25:14-07:00February 21st, 2012|Broker Technology Research, How to Make Strategic Planning Really Work in your MLS, Main category, MLS Insights, Product Management, Strategic Planning, Suveys and Research, Technology Evaluation|9 Comments

MLS iPad apps have NOT gone far enough yet

Recently, WAV Group has completed several customer satisfaction surveys from around the country in the Southwest, Mid-West, Southeast and Mid-Atlantic regions. In every case there has been a lot of discussion and requests for more MLS access via smartphones and especially for iPads and other tablet devices. While many MLSs think of their iPad application as a property search tool, agents want their MLS iPad apps to go much further than that. Even for those that have launched Tablet solutions, there are two major areas of dissatisfaction that MLSs need to address to make mobile MLS applications truly useful for [...]

By Marilyn Wilson|2018-05-03T21:25:14-07:00February 19th, 2012|Main category, MLS Insights, Suveys and Research, Technology Evaluation|3 Comments

MLS Domains Association acknowledges likely competing bid for MLS Name

MLS Domains Association acknowledges likely competing bid for .MLS Operator of real estate website MLS.com appears poised to apply to ICANN Minneapolis, February 20, 2012: MLS Domains Association announced today that at it will likely not be making the only application to ICANN for the new .MLS top-level domain on the Internet. ICANN is the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers and is responsible for managing top-level domains worldwide. Its window for applications for new TLDs is open from now until April 12, 2012. “We know of one other likely applicant,” said Bob Bemis, president of the Association. […]

By THE WAV GROUP|2018-05-03T21:25:14-07:00February 17th, 2012|Main category|0 Comments

MLS strategy to diversify revenue

WEBINAR RECAP WAV Group, RE Technology, and Zuora sponsored a webinar on the topic of non-dues revenue on February 15th, 2012. Panelists for the webinar included Jeremy Crawford of MLSListings.com, Melissa Olson of Metrolist Colorado, John Heithaus of Metropolitan Regional Information Systems, Kevin Green of Real Estate Digital, and Travis Hutch of Zuora. Victor Lund of WAV Group was the session moderator. Overview Associations and MLSs have been in the business of offering non-dues related products for some time now. They have sold yard signs, closing documents, certification training, and lock box products for years. [...]

By Victor Lund|2018-05-03T21:25:14-07:00February 16th, 2012|How to Make Strategic Planning Really Work in your MLS, Main category|8 Comments

GLVAR hires longtime association leader Nelson Janes as CEO

LAS VEGAS – The Greater Las Vegas Association of REALTORS® (GLVAR) announced today that it has hired seasoned real estate association executive Nelson Janes as its new chief executive officer. Janes, who previously ran the Sacramento Association of REALTORS®, expects to start work at GLVAR on May 7. He was hired after GLVAR leaders conducted a national search to replace Irene Vogel, who is retiring after guiding the association for nearly 30 years. Devin Reiss, chairman of GLVAR’s CEO Search Committee, said Janes “brings extensive experience building successful associations and REALTOR® programs, considerable experience as a legislative advocate, expertise in [...]

By Marilyn Wilson|2018-05-03T21:25:14-07:00February 15th, 2012|Main category, MLS Insights, Press Releases|0 Comments

Illinois Bans Real Estate Agents

Catchy headline. What the State of Illinois is doing is similar to what Colorado, New Mexico and possibly other States have already done. All real estate agents will need to become real estate brokers to retain their license. Brokers who manage agents will need to become Managing brokers. Oh, and did I mention that the state licensing fees go up 83%. Many view this move simply as a way to tax professionals. Illinois real estate agents have until March 15th to complete the training (15 hours) and take a competency test to meet new rules. By the way, the 83% [...]

By Victor Lund|2018-05-03T21:25:14-07:00February 14th, 2012|Broker-Agent Information, Main category, MLS Insights|3 Comments

Keller Williams Family Reunion a Huge Success

Give credit where credit is due. Keller Williams may not be the largest franchise organization in the US or the World – but they are working hard to get there, and are awfully close. They recruit like crazy. Keller Williams is a franchise organization whose core focus is on the agent. They consider themselves mentors, trainers, and solution providers to support the agent in reaching their potential. Moreover, they profit share. If the company makes money, the agent wins. Last year, they made a profit of $38M across all 75,000 agents. The profit share works out to be about $506 [...]

By Victor Lund|2018-05-03T21:25:15-07:00February 14th, 2012|Main category|2 Comments

Bob Bemis Joins Zillow as VP of Partner Relations

Zillow announced today (full press release below) that Bob Bemis, former CEO of the Arizona Regional MLS, has joined Zillow as the Vice President of Partner relations. This is a major event in our industry on multiple levels. Having known Bob personally and professionally for many years I congratulate Zillow for an outstanding hire, well done! As a consultant in the industry watching the march of Zillow this hire tends to fuel some of my concerns about where this is actually leading. In almost every strategic planning session I lead we talk about threats to the industry as well [...]

By THE WAV GROUP|2018-05-03T21:25:15-07:00February 14th, 2012|Main category, MLS Insights, Our Company, Press Releases|1 Comment

Howard Hanna Syndication Announcement

Another shoe is going to drop today. Howard Hanna, one of America’s largest brokerages will announce their new listing syndication strategy. This is an important announcement because it brings forth a new chapter to the ongoing saga of finding an online advertising paradigm that balances the broker’s needs with the publisher’s needs, in the best possible way. Howard Hanna has spend the past 15 – 18 months studying. They study their website. They study the website of similar size brokerages. They have studied publisher websites. They became experts. Howard Hanna has been testing. Howard Hanna ran lots of experiments with [...]

By Victor Lund|2018-05-03T21:25:15-07:00February 13th, 2012|Broker Technology Research, Main category, Marketing, MLS Insights, Strategic Planning|8 Comments