WAV Group Consulting

LPS sells tax solutions to Lereta

Victor Lund — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 04:15:37 +0000

LPS saw the spin off of their Agent-Broker products division in a management led buy out last September. The new company formed is called Real Estate Digital. Today, it was announced that the LPS Tax company was sold to Lereta. This company has nothing to do with the data that is licensed to RPR or MLSs. This is a tax services company totally separate from the Applied Analytics Data Solutions company that licenses public records and serves MLS. These are interesting times. We will keep [...]

Balancing exchange rates in listing syndication

Victor Lund — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 20:30:28 +0000

Online listing syndication presents complex strategic challenges to real estate brokerage in America today. The structure of economic trade between real estate brokers and publishers has many variables that are often misunderstood and often hard to measure. At the heart of the conversation is an unresolved understanding of the exchange rate in listing syndication. Even people with business analyst certification may be baffled. Do brokers subsidize the success of publishers by providing listings? Do publishers subsidize brokerages by providing willing homebuyers? Some of the policies [...]

Frugyl launches with great buzz and fanfare

Victor Lund — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 15:33:53 +0000

A new company launched yesterday called Frugyl. It is the child of Jimmy Mackin and Chris Smith, creators of the “What should I spend My Money On?” Facebook Group. This will be of interest to those with analyst careers. The goal of Frugyl is to crowd source information and satisfaction on real estate tools and services used by real estate agents. Additionally, Frugyl will endeavor to provide group discounts on products purchased as a group. The Frugyl site had a great start yesterday when they announced the launch on [...]

The New World of Predictive Data in Real Estate – An Opportunity for MLS

Mike Audet — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 21:17:53 +0000

Real estate professionals today, for the most part, advise clients on both buy and sell decisions with data that is, in many ways, inaccurate. It is inaccurate because sales data is the result of offers that were made and accepted months earlier. Things change quickly in our business, or at least they can. We need to know what is happening today yet our basic MLS data model can only tell us historic sales information and current listing information. Today, neither of these data sets necessarily [...]

ARMLS launches Rent Check with Heat Maps

Victor Lund — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 18:12:26 +0000

ARMLS is the Arizona Regional Multiple Listing Service. Centered in the Phoenix metropolitan area, they are the largest MLS in the State of Arizona. They are among the largest MLSs in the United States and leverage MLS data resources in unique ways to deliver value to their subscribers. I recently became aware of RENT Check™. Rent Check is a monthly report that examines the residential single family leasing market. RENT Check also features the RENT Check Quotient™ (RCQ) which compares leasing activity to sales. As [...]

Earthcomber sues real estate mobile app developers

Victor Lund — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 23:55:55 +0000

Mobile real estate applications are the largest growth area in real estate technology. This is why so many people are attending online school to learn app development. Like anything expanding rapidly, there is big opportunity at stake, and pioneers who filed patents for methods of delivering mobile solutions are working hard to protect their intellectual property. We saw a similar pattern in real estate when mapping was experiencing great growth in real estate. As you may recall, that ended with the National Association of REALTORS® negotiating an [...]

CoreLogic® Signs Multiyear Agreement with Realcomp

Mike Audet — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 20:42:33 +0000

SANTA ANA, Calif., January 12, 2012 — CoreLogic (NYSE: CLGX), a leading provider of information, analytics and business services, today announced it has signed a multiyear agreement to provide multiple listing service (MLS) solutions to Realcomp II Ltd., Michigan’s largest REALTOR®-owned MLS. Serving nearly 11,000 members from more than 2,100 real estate offices in southeastern Michigan, Realcomp has selected the Matrix platform from CoreLogic to augment its current MLS system and to serve as its future replacement solution. Realcomp CEO Karen Kage listed usablility, performance [...]

Consumers Prefer Referrals

Victor Lund — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 13:33:40 +0000

WAV Group Research does a lot of consumer research on behalf of MLSs and Associations. We also do research for State Associations of REALTORS and the National Association of REALTORs. One of the best member benefits is the research that is provided to the real estate professional by these groups. The National Association of REALTORS has a great research team. The data that they publish on consumer attitudes about Real Estate and the process of buying and selling homes using a REALTOR are awesome sources [...]

How Listhub’s Real Estate Network Works

Victor Lund — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 14:47:49 +0000

It is not uncommon for detailed questions to arise whenever there is major change afoot in the real estate industry regarding data. Listhub’s announcement of the launch of the Real Estate Network precipitated many questions regarding a broker’s ability to manage and control websites that display their data. The Listhub Real Estate Network includes the opportunity for any broker to publish listings on Century 21, Coldwell Banker, RE/MAX, and the Realty Executives websites. WAV Group has researched this topic of the Real Estate Network with [...]

What real estate can learn from Zappos cyber attack

Victor Lund — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 21:31:39 +0000

Zappos, a division of Amazon focused on online shoe sales announced that their customer database of 24 million customer records was hacked over the weekend. Fortunately, the credit card database was not accessed. This is a huge problem for Zappos. They will now need to go through a process of getting all 24 million customers to update their password, and notify each user that their username and password have been stolen. The implications of this hacker stealing this information is far reaching. Many consumers use [...]