Does Your MLS System Speak In Tongues?

One of the great attributes about conferences is that they set the stage for product releases. Product Managers, Marketing Staff, Developers, and of course Sales People are always working toward releasing a new feature that stimulates Buzz in the industry. Today’s top press release comes from Discover MLS – the MLS system that speaks in tongues. Discover MLS announced today that their product now includes multi-lingual functionality. This will come as a welcome announcement to our friends in Canada, and around the world. WAV Group has worked on projects for aspiring companies wishing to launch MLS service abroad and the [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:24:26-07:00September 30th, 2013|MLS Insights|1 Comment

Leveraging The Browser

Many software solutions used in real estate today are offered as Software as a Service (SaaS), meaning that they are accessed through a browser or, in some cases, a mobile app. For most companies today, being cross-browser compliant is about as far as they have gone. Advanced companies, mostly those who have the luxury of products released in the past couple of years, have made their browser-based application “responsive” so as to fit naturally into any screen resolution on any browser. Cloud CMA just came out with a browser Bookmarklet that reminded me how many powerful browser features are not [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:24:26-07:00September 25th, 2013|Broker Technology Research, Main category, MLS Insights|0 Comments

Listen When Smart People Speak

We all have our opinions about things like productivity and social media. Our own experiences with it along with what we hear and see around us make even the casual observer an expert. But there are actually people who study this stuff, and when they talk about their research, it is worth listening to. Heidi Ambles is the Director of Product Management and Social Software at IBM. She thinks highly of social media and is bullish on the benefits of social collaboration in the workplace. Here are a few statistics that Heidi recently shared during a talk that she gave. [...]

RE Technology’s Top 5 Articles of the Week

Does Your Website Capture Leads or Let Them Get Away? Getting visitors to your site is only half the battle of online advertising. If your website does not convert even the highest quality visitors to leads, your online lead generation efforts are doomed to failure. Your website needs to both engage your visitors with the information they are looking for and ask for their contact information so you can reach out and turn them into clients.  5 Reasons to Use a Virtual Tour In conversation with Tim Denbo of VirtualTourCafe, we asked a simple question: "Why should agents create a [...]

Pilgrims vs. Portals

History tells many stories of long ago that reflect on the conditions of today. I came across a story about the Pilgrims that made me think that in some way, it is similar to the real estate industry and portals. In 1630, a Pilgrim court dealt a nasty blow to one of its settlers. They ordered him to be incarcerated, burned his house, confiscated all of his goods, then ultimately exiled him from America. The Pilgrim’s name was Thomas Morton, and they said that he was a danger to society. Morton went to England and pleaded with the English court, [...]

Why Your World Does Not Want You To Change

Have you ever noticed how the people you are closest too, in personal and business life, are the ones often most resistant to letting you excel, especially if that involves you breaking new ground? That is, they are resistant to you changing in ways that threaten the way they see you and/or the business you work together in every day. In an earlier post, I made the comment that people aren’t resistant to change.  What they are really resistant to, however, is losing control.  That is probably pretty easy for us to accept when we think of ourselves but the [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:24:27-07:00September 20th, 2013|Main category|0 Comments

RE Technology Top 5 Articles

  Which Real Estate CRM Should I Use? Are you looking for a real estate CRM? There are so many systems on the market these days that weeding through them is often difficult and time-consuming. We feel your pain! That's why we want to make it as easy as possible for you to understand what to look for in a real estate CRM.Beyond     Residential: Commercial Agents Can Use RPR, Too! Making the transition to the commercial real estate can be challenging for agents who come from a residential background. We recently spoke with Sydney Machaut, CCIM, CRE, a veteran [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:24:27-07:00September 16th, 2013|Broker Technology Research, Main category, MLS Insights|1 Comment

It’s Time to Re-invent the Search

There’s a fundamental problem in the real estate business today. Since time immemorial real estate ‘searches’ have utilized a property-centric approach that ignores the other 50 percent of the business: the buyers. In the real estate industry, we focus so much on displaying listings hoping to attract a buyer without spending nearly enough time and resources to analyze and understand the market segment that are the drivers of the purchase. This is also symptomatic of the industry’s fundamental focus on the needs of agents, not consumers. Doesn’t it make more sense to focus on the needs of the consumer? The [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:24:27-07:00September 10th, 2013|MLS Insights, Reports, Technology Evaluation|2 Comments

Build a More Well-informed Board with the WAVinar Series

Our industry is moving really quickly these days. There are so many challenges facing MLSs that threaten the viability of the entire industry--lawsuits, new players, technology revolutions, economic shifts. It is difficult and expensive to keep MLS leadership teams up to speed on the myriad of events, trends, policies, legal issues and research affecting the business. MLS organizations and their leadership need to keep up on all of these issues so they can make proactive decisions to keep their organizations relevant. That's why the WAV Group created its new WAVinar series. The Solution: WAVinars The WAVinar is designed to provide [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:24:27-07:00September 10th, 2013|Main category, MLS Insights, Our Services, Strategic Planning|0 Comments

Last Call For WAV Group 2013 MLS Technology Survey

If you haven’t already signed up this is your last chance to have your MLS participate in the WAV Group 2013 MLS Technology Survey. Last year we had 75 MLSs participate with over 15,000 agents and staff taking part. This year we expect to have even more participate. Three Free Reports For Participating National Roll-up Report Every MLS that participates will receive the national roll up report, which provides a summary of the overall findings for all of the vendors reviewed. This will include comparisons to results in 2012, what users and staff like most about each system as well [...]

Leaders and Innovators Often Walk Alone

I have been working a lot in Brazil these days working with a company called Prolist building the first true MLS in their country. The reason I mention Brazil is because it is a great case in point regarding leaders and innovators walking alone. In dozens of meetings I have had with major real estate companies, associations and banks in Brazil I meet those that are leaders and innovators and I also see those that are part of the herd, that only go where the herd goes. The brightest, those with clear vision into the future, often those who have [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:24:28-07:00September 10th, 2013|Main category, Marketing, Our Company, Our Services|4 Comments

FIND Offers Unique Reciprocal Data Sharing.

Before REALTORS® Property Resource (RPR) was conceived, the National Association of REALTORS® was working with their realtor.com partner, Move, Inc. to develop a library of information on every property in America. NAR selected another vendor and developed what we know as RPR today. MOVE took their prototype and developed a free product called FINDSM. FIND is proprietary software for MLSs that provides property centric data on more than 100 million real estate parcels in the United States, and offers agents and brokers access to timely, accurate and reliable listing information across MLS boundaries. Available as a link or a toolbar [...]