January 2014

Leveling the Playing Field Leads to Disaster
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Leveling the Playing Field Leads to Disaster

Broker-Agent Information, Main category

Leveling the Playing Field Leads to Disaster

I read a story today about a social studies professor who engaged his students in an experiment to demonstrate the long-term effects of socialism or leveling the playing field. This is a topic that is so dear to the hearts of today's real estate brokers that I could not resist sharing the story. The day of the first test, the teacher advised the students that he would average the score of each student and issue the average grade to everyone. The students took the test. The average was a B, and everyone was given a B. As you can imagine, [...]

By Victor Lund|2018-05-03T21:24:17-07:00January 31st, 2014|Broker-Agent Information, Main category|0 Comments

What Does the State of the Union Address Mean for Small Businesses?

As some of you may know I was recently appointed as a Trustee to the National Small Business Administration. One of the reasons I am thrilled to serve with this group is their stated non-partisan approach to evaluating and influencing policy. If any of you have suggestions about ways you believe the Federal Government can better serve the needs of your small business please pass them my way. I would love to represent your ideas to the NSBA. As part of my appointment, I now have the privilege of receiving regular communications helping me and thousands of other small business [...]

By Marilyn Wilson|2018-05-03T21:24:17-07:00January 30th, 2014|Main category, Press Releases|1 Comment

Correcting False Consumer Beliefs About the Real Estate Market

On the January 22nd, hundreds of real estate professionals joined Victor Lund on the webinar, "How to Combat Misinformation about the Real Estate Market." Attendees learned about data-based strategies and tools they can use to correct erroneous beliefs that consumers have about the market, like prices and home values. It begins with education. We heard from two brokers, Ed Finlan of Ed Finlan Group-Keller Williams Western Realty and Amy Gallagher of Century 21 Hometown Realty, on how they're leveraging these new data tools to communicate correct information to consumers online and gain credibility as knowledgeable local market experts. The webinar [...]

By Victor Lund|2018-05-03T21:24:17-07:00January 29th, 2014|Main category|1 Comment

Peoplework Book Review

I participated in my first Kickstarter project this year. If you do not know about Kickstarter, it is an online company that helps creative people fund their projects. In this case, the Kickstarter project funded a book called Peoplework, rather than a piece of art or a music album or such. The authors of Peoplework are Austin Allison and Chris Smith, with a byline to Austin's company dotloop and mentions of support from LaunchSquad, 1000Watt, Nathan Scherotter and 260 people who contributed $73,000 to get the book to press. I mention this because the story about how the book was [...]

By Victor Lund|2018-05-03T21:24:17-07:00January 28th, 2014|Main category, Our Services|0 Comments

Brokers Should Update Their Contracts Now!
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Brokers Should Update Their Contracts Now!

Broker-Agent Information, Main category, MLS Insights

Brokers Should Update Their Contracts Now!

Brokers and agents can protect their online reputation with a small change in their contracts with consumers and terms of use on their websites. If you have not taken a look at the HomeActions newsletter recently, you should. They write consumer articles that brokers or agents can send as newsletters or blog posts to their customers. It is one of my favorites. In today's issue, they talk about the potential liability that a consumer may face if they publish a negative review about a service provider. In essence, companies are requiring customers to agree not to publish any negative remarks [...]

By Victor Lund|2018-05-03T21:24:18-07:00January 23rd, 2014|Broker-Agent Information, Main category, MLS Insights|1 Comment

Why Brokers Get Upset With Their MLS

Some of our time at WAV Group involves supporting brokers and their technology vendors at problem solving. Yesterday we encountered an issue with the data feed to a vendor. The vendor claimed that everything was working. The broker knew this was not the case. So we got on a call and did a screen share to match the listings in their system to the listings in the MLS. The marketing staff member for the broker is not a savvy expert of using the MLS. But the broker does pay associate fees every month so she has access and she goes [...]

By Victor Lund|2018-05-03T21:24:18-07:00January 22nd, 2014|Broker-Agent Information, Main category, MLS Insights, Our Services|1 Comment

Agents Only Get 12 Leads a Year

Returning from the Real Estate Connect Conference (aka Inman NYC), you would think that any agent or broker who is not 100% dedicated to cultivating the online customer is doomed. Yet surprisingly, nothing could be farther from the truth. In fact, if you read between the lines of a recent press release from Realogy, the global leader in size for a real estate group, your take away might be that online marketing and lead generation is a complete distraction and waste of time and money. Headline: Realogy's LeadRouter System Delivers Record 3 Million Online Leads to Its Affiliates in 2013, [...]

By Victor Lund|2018-05-03T21:24:18-07:00January 21st, 2014|Broker-Agent Information, Main category, Our Services|5 Comments

Cartavi Adds Gusto to Version 3.3

Since being acquired by DocuSign, Cartavi has been working away at developing the golden triangle of the real estate document management echo system: Forms, Signature, and Storage. Better yet, they focus on making it happen on mobile first. Before this new release, signing a document was kind of clunky. You had to open your document in DocuSign, add signatures, sign it, then pull the completed document back into Cartavi. Now, you can sign any document right inside of Cartavi using DocuSign Ink. New Integrations They took a complicated workflow and narrowed it down. When you look at a document today [...]

By Victor Lund|2018-05-03T21:24:18-07:00January 20th, 2014|Broker Technology Research, Broker-Agent Information, Main category, Press Releases, Technology Evaluation|0 Comments

Marilyn Wilson Becomes Trustee of the National Small Business Association

WAV Group is excited to announce that founding partner, Marilyn Wilson has joined the Board of Trustees for the National Small Business Association (NSBA). In its rich, 75-year history, NSBA has made significant strides in advocating for small businesses. From its humble beginnings under founder DeWitt Emery, a small-business owner who aimed simply to make a difference, to today with the broad, national presence as the leading small-business advocacy group, NSBA fights daily for Mr. Emery’s mission to make a difference for America’s small businesses. “I am excited to join such a dynamic group of trustees who guide the Association [...]

By Victor Lund|2018-05-03T21:24:18-07:00January 13th, 2014|Our Company, Our Services, Press Releases|6 Comments

Agent Responsiveness Study Reveals Critical Flaws in Real Estate Lead Response

A new whitepaper reveals that failure to respond to leads in a timely manner is a major problem for many real estate professionals. The whitepaper is the result of the collaboration between partners at leading consulting firm WAV Group and Weichert Lead Network, the Internet lead generation arm of Weichert, Realtors. What they uncovered was remarkable and could help real estate professionals achieve new levels of service and prosperity. In the whitepaper, WAV Group details lead responsiveness results from a sample of 384 different brokers across 11 states. Researchers posed as consumers and inquired about listings on broker websites, Zillow.com, [...]

By Victor Lund|2019-06-20T05:10:35-07:00January 13th, 2014|Broker Technology Research, Main category, MLS Insights, Our Services, Reports|9 Comments

How to Combat Misinformation About the Real Estate Market

Every day real estate agents and brokers have to battle a consumer who has built their beliefs about trends in the market, from prices to home value, on misinformation. The only way to combat this is to be more vocal with the correct information for today's home buyers. Previously there have not been tools available, but CoreLogic has tied together MLS data with the public record information to create a better forecast of the real estate market. WAV Group founding partner, Victor Lund is set to moderator an upcoming webinar to educate on the topic. This webinar invites Ed Finlan [...]

By Victor Lund|2018-05-03T21:24:19-07:00January 13th, 2014|Main category, Press Releases, Strategic Planning|0 Comments

Your MLS Technology Business Rules – Bet You Don’t Know Them!

I have worked with hundreds of MLSs around the world and been personally involved in over 100 installations and/or conversions and one thing I have discovered over the years is a little-known fact. MLSs don’t know the business rules that are built into their MLS systems to control their data, member access and overall permissions and MLS vendors have never created a way for you to see them! When you consider the complexity of our MLS systems today this is both understandable on one level and really inexcusable on another. Unfortunately, this lack of knowledge usually comes to light when [...]

By THE WAV GROUP|2018-05-03T21:24:19-07:00January 12th, 2014|Main category, MLS Insights, Our Company, Our Services, Strategic Planning|0 Comments