Blame California for Rapid Home Price Increases Nationally

As you may know, homebuilders are out of inventory and are now resorting to auctioning off homes that are not even built, with no guarantee that you will get the house you buy for that price if building materials go up. Kevin asked, "How long will homebuilders be out of inventory?" A long time, I replied. "Why do you think that?" he asked. I shared my answer and Kevin suggested that I share it in a post – so here you go.

By |2021-04-16T09:06:13-07:00April 16th, 2021|Research|1 Comment

News Corp Announces New Leadership At Move, Inc.

Ryan O’Hara Named CEO New York, NY (December 17, 2014) – News Corp announced today that Ryan O’Hara will become Chief Executive Officer of Move, Inc. (“Move”), effective January 5, 2015. Mr. O’Hara will replace CEO Steven Berkowitz, who has led the company since January 2009. News Corp acquired Move, a leading provider of online real estate services, including realtor.com®, last month. “We are excited to have secured Ryan O’Hara to take the helm at Move, given his record of transforming businesses in the digital age and his clear determination to accelerate the growth of the company. We are also [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:23:52-07:00December 18th, 2014|Press Releases|0 Comments

News Corp buys MOVE operators of Realtor.com

And so it goes. Move, the operators of the National Associaton of REALTORS portal called Realtor.com have agreed to sell the company to News Corp in an all-cash deal valued at $950 million. MOVE's board of directors were swift to approve the offer, representing a 36% bump in the value of the company. News Corp owns other real estate assets including The Wall Street Journal ( a popular spot for luxury property advertising) and Australian real estate portal - realestate.com.au (part of the REA Group). REA Group will apparently pay for 20% of MOVE, and News Corp will pay the [...]

MOVE acquires Point2 Syndication Contracts

It looks like MOVE, operators of Realtor.com have taken a stride that is not altogether different from the success that Zillow is garnering with their acquisition strategy. MOVE is doing their best to control the pipelines that deliver advertising to portals in the United States. MOVE already owns Listhub, the largest syndicator of listing content. Now they pick up their nearest competitor - Point2 - much in the same way that Zillow picked up Trulia. The biggest difference, beyond taking out a competitor, is that they will removing a layer of duplication of listing syndication. Spencer Rascoff of Zillow describes [...]

How Great Companies React To Feedback

AgentMatch from realtor.com  was a solution that was tested in two real estate markets – Boulder, CO and Las Vegas, TX. The pilot program was developed as a service to connect consumers with agents based on performance, interests and recommendation data. Putting aside the debate about the strengths or weaknesses of this form of rating an agent, there is plenty to learn from how it was rolled out, how feedback was generated, and how the company reacted to the feedback. Pre-roll Out Decisions With any new service, the first question should be opt-in or opt-out. WAV Group has always recommended [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:24:22-07:00December 13th, 2013|Broker-Agent Information, Main category, MLS Insights|0 Comments

Austin Board of REALTORS Bids Syndication Farewell

Sunsetting services are never any fun, especially services that do not cost the membership any money. That is exactly what the Austin Board of REALTORS® is on a path to do this spring. The ABoR directors released a formal statement this week announcing the plan to sunset the Listhub agreement by April 30th, 2014.  The process for researching this difficult decision is nicely outlined http://www.abor.com/syndication. In June 2012, the ACTRIS committee, which is the MLS of the Austin area, created a Syndication Task Force with a diverse representation of members and brokers. They cited some interesting findings. The decision to syndicate [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:24:25-07:00October 10th, 2013|MLS Insights, Strategic Planning|6 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 [...]

Realtors® Reaffirm Commitment to realtor.com®

CHICAGO (July 24, 2013) – The National Association of Realtors® Board of Directors today reaffirmed NAR’s commitment to making realtor.com® the first, best online destination for home buyers and sellers. The board voted in favor of recommendations to modify an existing operating agreement that will help the site compete more effectively in an evolving online marketplace. “Over the years, Realtors® have invested a lot of time and millions of dollars in building information technology to give consumers online access to real estate information, and we know that consumer demand for all things ‘home’ has never been greater,” said NAR President [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:24:31-07:00July 24th, 2013|Main category, Press Releases|0 Comments

The War That Few Are Watching

There is a War being waged between the leading portals today. They are fighting with all of their might to be leaders in consumer website traffic. Today, Zillow is in the lead with Realtor.com on their heals and Trulia not far behind. Homes.com is pacing with the pack too, and perhaps showed just how strong they are by climbing the rankings at a remarkable pace in 2012. In an announcement released yesterday, Move proclaimed victory at retaining their relationship with MSN.com, the portal operated by Microsoft. I tried to get information about the battle, but limited facts were made available. [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:24:33-07:00June 19th, 2013|Main category, Marketing, Strategic Planning|4 Comments

More MLSs launch FIND search from MOVE

Move spread the news this morning that MRED (Chicago) MLS PIN (Boston and most of Mass) and SFAR (San Francisco) have all entered into agreements to offer the FIND product. If you are not familiar with FIND, it is a product that was the early candidate for the National Association of REALTOR's Property Library. It ties all of the active listing data on Realtor.com to a suite of extensive property attributes ranging from demographic data to flood maps to airplane fly over zones and noise. The Find products sits at the top of the page when the agent is logged [...]

Trulia buys Marketleader

In a release today, Trulia announced that they are buying Marketleader. As a result, Trulia has taken ownership of a brokerage. That means that they can compete with other online brokerages like Redfin, ZipRealty, Sawbuck, Movoto, and others. However, I do not think that is their strategy. There is a persistant paradigm emerging in the portal business whereby these companies combine the portal with technology products and services offered to agents and brokers. Operating a portal that relies on ad spending alone does not seem to be sustainable for the type of growth and stable recurring revenue for investors. Advertising has, and always will be [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:24:37-07:00May 8th, 2013|Main category|3 Comments

It is all about schools

The most active group of home buyers in sellers in America have one thing in common - school age children.  Traditionally, real estate has ducked the consumer by avoiding the laborious and somewhat liability producing task of informing consumers about schools. Our industry has largely taken the stance that if a consumer wants to know about schools, they will provide the phone number to the school district. Good luck with that. This is not true of all brokers or MLSs. Some have invested heavily in procuring the most accurate school data available. You will often find the information somewhere down below the [...]