Move Inc, the operators of REALTOR.com and a list of many quality products and services to the real estate industry has had a rough ride.  In total, they have lost over $2 Billion dollars in their history, and were profitable for two years.  On the surface, this sounds like pretty poor performance, but nothing could be further from the truth.  They have accomplished some outstanding milestones and could be close to hitting a home run.  All of the ingredients are in place.  They have the largest consumer audience with strong advertiser support, the most data, and significant agent/broker sales revenue.

Music streaming company Pandora faced similar performance from their early beginnings in 2000, but just hit the profit button to the tune of $100 Million (pun intended).  In reading their business story, they sound a lot like Move.

Both Move and Pandora rely on content provided by others to power the services they offer to consumers.  Move relies on the relationships with 900 MLSs for their data feeds; Pandora relies on licensing music from record labels.  If you will recall, Pandora was successful in negotiating $.08 per song (25% of revenue) to stay friendly with the record industry when Napster was trying to display music content royalty free.

Pandora got lucky.

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MLS of Choice has been with us for a while now, but has not created any landscape changes in the MLS industry.

WAV Group has had the opportunity to observe the behavior of agents in two divergent situations in California.  CARETS and CalREDD.

Hypothesis:  Agents don’t care about the MLS system.  They care about selling homes, the service they get from their MLS, and the relationships they have with the organizations offering them services.

Case 1 - CARETS Data Share - 100,000 agents in the Los Angles and points south now can freely choose from a variety of REALTOR Associations an MLS providers for their services.  They have the opportunity to shop for the MLS system they like, the Association they like, the price point they like, and compare service offerings among the variety of member benefits that different MLSs and Associations offer.

In the Board Rooms, there were many anxious Directors pondering what would happen when agents had this much choice.  Would they migrate to the neighboring MLS to reduce fees?  Would Associations dump their MLS provider and move next door?  Would the MLS who offered the most services for the lowest price suddenly absorb everything around them?  The answer to all of these questions is……..

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If you are running an MLS, REALTOR Association, or real estate brokerage, you need to begin to read the Inside Facebook Blog.  It will allow you to keep up with trends so that you can consider your company’s Facebook strategy moving forward.

Today, the average Facebook user is 26.  But that is rapidly changing and moving in the direction of the core audience for Real Estate.  According to Inside Facebook, the fastest growing user group is women over 55 (up 175% since Q4 of 2009).    Of course, where the women go, the men will thankfully follow:-)  The second fastest growing user group is men over 55 (up 138% over the same period).

I guess that it is only reasonable to assume that Facebook would eventually hit the Boomers - the largest segment of the US economy and the wealthiest.  If successful, Facebook will realize growth that makes the hockey stick of their adoption curve look even steeper than it does today.

Want to know about all of those Facebook applications that litter your page.  Here are the current adoption rates.

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A few weeks ago we took an RE Technology staff member to Disneyland for her birthday.  She is in her 30s and had never been.  We all had a blast, even in the cold and the rain.

As a consultant and entrepreneur, I take note of excellence.  Everything we touched and everywhere we went, and everybody we encountered from Disney was excellent.  The trip to Disneyland was as much about learning how to provide awesome service as it was about celebrating a team member’s birthday.  I am sure that there are a thousand books about doing business the “Disney Way,” but I must discourage you from reading them, or even taking my word for it. 

Pack up your team and head to Los Angles or Orlando.  It will cost you a small fortune, but you will gain an even larger fortune in fun while you learn a lot about customer service.  Be sure that a person or two in your group requests a button for “First Time at Disney” and “It’s my birthday."  Another person should buy a necklace of Disney pins and begin trading with the staff. 

You will realize that the workers at Disney are not just playing nice.  They are authentic.  They have reached a new plateau with confidence.  They understand that no matter how bad things are at home, with the economy, the rain, or anything - that there is abundant freedom in letting all of that go and treating people nicely.  They realize that being customer-centric is the most fulfilling and rich reward you will ever experience.

How can and MLS or Association leverage this experience?

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If you have worked in the MLS world as long as I have you know how many moving parts there are in terms of technology to run the organization effectively.  With the creation of RETS, the so called “standard", the use of multiple modules to provide services has increased even more.  What has been obvious to me for many years looking at the industry’s technology, however, is that no one has done a good job of pulling all of the important data points together for the MLSs so they can run their organizations more effectively.  

Today, MLS systems do a great job of helping brokers and agents look and use property data. Accounting and membership systems manage member information and allow for billing while call tracking systems, if in place, allow MLSs to track user interactions.  MLS websites reach out to consumers and may provide valuable analytics on search behavior.  But, with few exceptions, these systems and products really don’t share data.  Yes, accounting systems can push some data over to the MLS system and there are other examples of simple data sharing but it is really not being done the way it should be.

Imagine this….

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