Big Data Can Drive Bigger Broker Margins

WAV Group spends a lot of time consulting with brokers on how to re-margin their business. We published a paper in 2013 called Harvesting Business From Broker Data.  That paper characterized the methods that we developed with a number of brokers to harvest business from across the enterprise of title, mortgage, residential, relocation, insurance, commercial, and property management businesses. It has worked very well for many brokers to recapture repeat transactions and new business though cross sell. In many ways, the rethinking that went into the thesis around harvesting business across the enterprise was the first intellectual break from the [...]

How Loyal Are YOUR Customers?

It is critical for MLSs and Brokers to measure the relationships they have with their customers.  While most MLSs do not have DIRECT competition, they have tons of indirect competition.  MLSs compete against companies that generate leads for agents since that it one of their key roles. They compete against training companies providing CE credit and teaching about technologies. MLSs also compete. MLSs also compete with companies that provide ways to aggregate and distribute real estate listing information for the purposes of monetizes the information flow.  While MLSs have survived well in the real estate ecosystem, some are more well-regarded than [...]

Top 5 Ways to Transform Your Office Managers Into Sales Success Coaches

None of the brokers we’ve worked with believe that their office managers are doing what they are supposed to be doing — sales training. Instead, they act more like den mothers. When they could be working on sales coaching or recruiting, office managers are consoling agents who lost big deals, troubleshooting broken printers, or retrieving lost MLS passwords. It’s too easy for office managers to spend the day putting out a series of small fires. Its easy to use all of those daily tasks as excuses for not focusing on the most important roles that managers are responsible for. The [...]

Remine Hires Three Real Estate Technology Veterans

FALLS CHURCH, Va., April 26, 2017 /PRNewswire/  Lucie Fortier will serve as Remine’s VP of Product to oversee product development and MLS implementations.  Bill Weis was hired as Director of Data Acquisitions. Joel Shears is Director of Industry Relations. Fortier joins Remine from Corelogic, where she was Senior Director of Operations for Real Estate Solutions, including Matrix and Realist, which is in use by more than 700,000 Realtors® today. “MLS executives across North America have a deep respect for Lucie because she can take complex situations and deliver results. She’s got the track record to deliver the Remine platform to [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:22:51-07:00April 27th, 2017|MLS Insights, Press Releases|0 Comments

Zillow Improves Broker Programs

Zillow Group, which includes the websites of Zillow and Trulia have landed on a broker strategy for marketing that works. Zillow Group, which includes the websites of Zillow and Trulia have landed on a broker strategy for marketing that works. Featured listings are dead, and have been replaced with a product to advertise in ways that drive the largest margin opportunity for a brokerage firm – leads to eTeams and Relocation. I call this “shared display,” where the brokerage and agent are clearly displayed and may be contacted – easily understood as “your listing, same leads.” This functionality works equally well [...]

Brokers Need To Fix Their YouTube Channel

WAV Group has studied the effectiveness of video marketing for brokers over number of years. By and large, firms are not seeing the level of engagement on video marketing that justifies the trouble or expense. Having a video on YouTube with 2 or 3 views is not a conveyance of success. The promises of video marketing are pretty significant. By using video, a property is marketed more dynamically than photo and text marketing. Videos are processed by the brain 60,000 times faster than text. Simply stated, it’s a better consumer experience. Prima facie – people enjoy a video television experience [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:22:57-07:00January 11th, 2017|Broker-Agent Information|0 Comments

Should Brokers Do REALTOR Background Checks

Too often, brokers and managers get caught up in recruiting goals that they skip some basic best practices – Background Checks, Customer Satisfaction Checks, etc. Perhaps agents should be checking out the backgrounds of their broker too. Before the New Year, Todd Kohlhepp, a real estate broker was linked to 7 murders and a kidnapping. Todd was the broker in charge of TKA Real Estate. Inman news reported that the guy had spent 14 years in jail for kidnapping a 14-year-old girl. Of course – his agent ratings on popular listing syndication websites gave glowing reviews. (The agent has been [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:22:58-07:00January 4th, 2017|Broker Technology Research, Main category|0 Comments

Imprev Study Shows Real Estate Leaders’ Outlook for Housing, Economy Softens for 2017

Who really has the pulse of the U.S., World, State and Local Economies? Those with boots on the ground versus those sitting in Ivory Towers, I’d argue. That’s why I look forward to Imprev’s annual study that examines the confidence that the top real estate broker-owners and executive management at franchises have in the housing market next year. There have been 240 responses this year from leaders who run brokerages that together, are responsible for one of every two home sales transactions in the U.S. It’s the most comprehensive study of real estate industry Thought Leaders, and it has shown [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:23:00-07:00December 7th, 2016|Reports, Suveys and Research|0 Comments

WAV Group DMCA Safe-Harbor Alert

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act provides some protection to website owners from tiresome litigation when an image or other copyrighted content is found to be on their website.  Before December 31st 2017, you should electronically register your designated agent. Even if you filed before using the old paper method, you must refile electronically by Dec. 31, 2017 or your DMCA safe-harbor will no longer be in effect. By now, I think that every website owner has gotten some form of letter from Getty Images or other copyright trolls – and this will continue. In fact, now that the Copyright office [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:23:00-07:00December 6th, 2016|Broker Technology Research, Main category|0 Comments

MLSs and Brokers Misunderstand RESO

Our industry is in the dawn of a new day. With some measure of struggle, the Nations’ MLSs and their Vendors have endeavored to adopt a set of standard fields for standardized data transportation from the MLS system to applications that support the real estate industry.  I consider this the dawn of the effort because, for the very first time, MLS adoption of the real estate standards are more strictly mandated by the National Association of REALTORS® MLS Policy. For years, the National Association of REALTORS® supported and funded the Real Estate Standards Organization, which is referred to by its [...]

What Does Your Website Say About You?

Websites are the public faces of real estate professionals.  No other single marketing tool comes close to equalling the importance of a  website.  They deliver the first images and words about an agent or a brokerage that prospective clients and customers see. If a site doesn’t connect with  consumers in a matter of seconds; that first impression could be a real estate professional’s last chance to win a new account.  Sites that consistently fail to be compelling can do serious damage to a perfectly competent real estate practice. Yet hundreds of thousands of agents and brokers publish sites that miss [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:23:07-07:00August 16th, 2016|Broker Technology Research|0 Comments

How MLSs Stand To Benefit From Upstream

The pessimist MLSs among you will look upon the title of this article with raised hairs. The lens that we have adopted here is for a single focus. Namely, to search for specific context within the databases of Upstream that may be of value to MLSs. Remember, Upstream does more than manage listings, but it does  start with the MLS destination in mind. The MLS does not need to change their business rules, or modify their data schema. They need only disclose to their brokers what their rules and schema are and accept a broker load as is common among nearly [...]