TOP 5 AGENT & BROKER ARTICLES OF THE WEEK!

  Note: If you do not have a RE Technology account, please contact April at april@wavgroup.com, and I will be happy to create a complimentary account for you.  More than 70 MLSs and Associations offer RE Technology as a free member benefit - contact Melissa@retechnology.com for a program overview.     RE Technology wants to support our MLS partners by highlighting articles that peeked the most amount of agent and broker readership.  The goal of this effort is to provide content for MLSs to re-purpose to their members. Feel free to use these articles in any of your communication programs [...]

Move Announces 2x More Revenue than Zillow

Today, there are two front-runners in online property search – Zillow and Move. They are both public companies. Falling in line behind them are two private companies, Homes.com and Trulia. Here is how the revenue stacks up on the public companies. Move, Inc., Operators of Realtor.com who is in partnership with AOL Real Estate and MSN real estate for publishing broker listings reported revenue of $47.7 million today. Move did not report any earnings or losses. Seattle Upstart Zillow has been on a run, increasing traffic to levels comparable with Move and purchasing companies. They reported revenue of $22.8M and [...]

CRMLS Partners With Homes.com for Full Offering

Today’s real estate technology companies are partnering with MLSs at an unprecedented rate. This trend is brought about by natural gravity. The MLS is the primary source of fundamental technology for real estate professionals. WAV Group is beginning to see a number of MLSs pursuing a variety of strategies for offering non-core MLS services. Historically, MLSs only pursued site licenses for technology for their members, paying a price per member per month. This trend expanded as emerging products like Listhub, Property Panorama, and Listingbook began to offer Freemium services, where the MLS offered a free basic version of the product, [...]

Two Brokers Go YouTube on Syndicaiton

Listing Syndication has become one of the more polarizing business topics in the real estate industry. Everyone seems to have a view, and many groups are trying to figure out how to fix it. There is no doubt that some companies are benefiting from syndication, but most find only little or moderate success. We seem to be hitting an inflection point with syndication where a lot of change is about to happen - slowly I suspect - like all real estate trends. The Council of MLS published two surveys this week - one for consumers and another for professionals. They are [...]

Explaining an MLS App Store

I am not sure if anyone is allowed to use Apple's famous App Store name, but lets suffice it to say that the term App Store is familiar to most - so lets use that anyway. The key components of an App Store are Instant delivery, Platform Specific, eCommerce enabled. This is really important to understand because FBS truly is launching the first real MLS App Store. This is different from the RE Technology Success Store, which we call an App Store, but it is really an eCommerce solution. Let me explain: Instant Installation The key component of [...]

Are People Really Resistant to Change?

I had the pleasure of speaking at the Broker Summit put on by the Michigan Association of REALTORSâ this week in Detroit, Michigan.  The topic I was asked to speak on was the “Future of Real Estate”, just a small topic right?  But this was really a fun topic because it gave me an opportunity to talk about some significant changes I have witnessed over the years impacting our industry, like the change in the broker/agent relationship, changes in technology and the changing role of the consumer and what these changes mean for our future.  In this post I don’t [...]

METROLIST NAMES SLUNAKER AS PRESIDENT & CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER

Denver, CO – Metrolist® announced that Kirby Slunaker has been appointed as President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) effective March 13, 2012. “In Kirby, we have chosen a seasoned business leader to continue our transition as a high quality service-oriented organization serving Colorado Realtors®,” stated James T. Wanzeck, Metrolist Board Chairman.  “Kirby has deep experience in transforming and leading top companies, such as VISA USA, eBags, FedEx, MDC Holdings, and, most recently, Pendum LLC.  With an executive of this caliber, we’re extremely well positioned to take the company to a new level.” Slunaker was chosen as interim Chief Operating Officer (COO) [...]

Top Articles from Last Week on RE Technology

RE Technology is now providing communication support to more than 70 MLSs. The site allows the MLS and Association to deliver engaging technology learning for their members. If you have not considered offering RE Technology in your market, give us a call or lets schedule a meeting at Mid-Year. It is easy to launch and is completely free. If you do not already have an account, we would be happy to create a complimentary account for you. Just email melissa@retechnology.com TOP 5 AGENT & BROKER ARTICLES OF THE WEEK! RE Technology wants to supports our MLS partners by highlighting articles [...]

Listings MUST include at least one photo, period.

The attached article from Anastasia Wilcott, a frustrated real estate consumer, points out the pain that is created when listings are published without any photos.  I read the attached article on RETechnolgy this week and it inspired me to talk about a big issue that could be remedied very simply: lag time in listing photos.  Every MLS has their own rules about requirements for posting photos. Some require a photo within 24 hours, some are as long as 7 days after the listing is live. The current rules harken back to a time when a photographer was needed to take the shot,  [...]

Listhub launches new dashboard

Years ago, before ListHub, Point2, and Postlets, – if a broker wanted to publish listings to a third party consumer facing website, they would need to hand enter the listing or manufacture a data feed. ListHub was among the pioneering companies that helped brokers solve this problem. Today, in most MLS markets around the nation, ListHub offers a free service to brokers that will send broker listings to hundreds of websites. Today, ListHub released an upgrade to this system that offers more brokers options and flexibly in choosing their publisher partners. For MLSs, ListHub now allows you to share your opinion about each [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:25:05-07:00April 25th, 2012|Broker Technology Research, Main category|2 Comments

CoreLogic Executive Seain Conover provides insight

WAV Group partner Victor Lund interviewed CoreLogic® executive Seain Conover to learn his view of the MLS software business. Mr. Conover founded, and along with his dedicated partner, built up an MLS software development company called Tarasoft®. Last year, Tarasoft® was acquired by CoreLogic®. MatrixTM, Tarasoft’s flagship MLS platform brand continues to be offered globally. Why did you sell Tarasoft® to CoreLogic®? It is always fun to get the conversation started with a challenging question. If you know Seain, you know that he is a fairly reserved person with a kind heart, great work ethic and a big smile. He [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:25:06-07:00April 24th, 2012|Main category, MLS Insights|0 Comments

REALTOR.Com Shoots across bow of Trulia and Zillow

The industry knows the dirty little secret. Many third party listing websites are full of garbage data. In a major online marketing effort, REALTOR.com is telling this story. Inaccurate listings are not appearing here and there, but more than half the "for sale" listings on many sites populated from syndication are duplicates, already sold, expired, pending, or bank owned homes that are not for sale at all. Bad real estate listing information is bad for the real estate industry. So many of these sites claim to be consumer centric, but they blatantly and knowingly allow data to be fed to their [...]