Who Syndicated My Listings?

We have learned over the last half-decade of doing listing syndication that it is complicated, especially for firms that have multiple offices, multiple associations, multiple MLSs, and possibly a franchise or network. We call this overlapping syndication disorder and the existence of this disorder can lead to syndication fraud. Last month, Amy Gallagher of Century 21® Hometown Realty in California encountered a fraud attempt that was blocked by ListHub. This is an important component of our service that you may not be aware of. Gallagher’s firm participates in three primary MLSs along the central coast of California and is also [...]

The End Of War Between Zillow and Trulia

There is a major war going on in the taxi industry today. Uber and Lyft are duking it out. Both companies have deep cash pockets and they are deploying it in marketing and undercutting each other. It is pretty hard to know which service is better as they work hard to drive market share. As Zillow marches toward the stock swap to join forces with Trulia, perhaps a new wisdom of that transaction will reveal itself. They just avoided a very expensive war where the two of them may have killed each other off to reign supreme. It is pretty [...]

Greater Alabama MLS Chooses ListTrac for Seller Reports

  Greater Alabama MLS and ListTrac put out a joint press release that you will find below. ListTrac is free, which makes it an attractive product for any MLS. We are keeping a close eye on them to see how it goes. Today, the voice of real estate seems to be the publisher sites - nobody is counting the traffic in the MLS or IDX sites. However, we know from looking at MLS activity, auto-email, MLS consumer website traffic, and, IDX site traffic that - if measured, equates to some significant consumer listing engagement. Under NDA, WAV Group has seen [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:24:02-07:00August 12th, 2014|Main category, Press Releases, Reports|3 Comments

Sometimes Profitability is NOT as Important as Market Share

Of course, the ultimate goal of any business is to create profitability for its owners, shareholders, and stockholders.  Without profitability, the business will cease to exist. To quote Kenny Rogers, sometimes you need to know when to hold up and when to fold up, though.   There are times when a company is in a significant competitive situation where it needs to go into the market guns a-blazing and grab as much market share and mind share as it can. In the market we’re in right now, some might think the worst is over.  They may think it’s time to start [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:24:02-07:00August 6th, 2014|Main category, Marketing, MLS Insights|0 Comments

Real Estate Book and Homes & Land Under One Roof

Real Estate Media Holdings, LLC, a Lion Equity company, has broadened its investment in the real estate marketing space by adding Homes & Land, a leading real estate media brand, to its portfolio, along with the additional brands Estates & Homes, Rental Guide and Home Guide. The group purchased NewPoint Media Group, publishers of The Real Estate Book, in June of 2012. Both The Real Estate Book and Homes & Land publish local real estate magazines in hundreds of markets across the U.S., Canada, and the Caribbean through a network of independent business owners. In addition, both brands power high [...]

Zillow Announces Trulia Acquisition

Two of America's third party real estate portals have entered into a definitive agreement for Zillow (Z) to purchase Trulia (TRLA) for $3.5 billion in stock-for-stock trade. The Board of Directors of both companies have agreed to the transaction which represents a 25 percent premium to Trulia Stockholders, based on Trulia's closing price on Friday, July 25, 2014. The transaction will now face regulatory approval. Goldman, Sachs & Co. brokered the transaction. Trulia CEO Pete Flint will retain that title, join the Zillow Board of Directors along with one other designee, and will remain the leader of the Trulia.com business unit. He will report [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:24:02-07:00July 28th, 2014|Main category, MLS Insights, Press Releases|0 Comments

Goomzee Growth

MLS Mobile is a highly competitive space. There are so many companies challenging for the lucrative contracts that I am afraid to list them all here. We get press releases sent to us almost every day about who has signed a contract with this MLS or this Mobile provider. One of the things that angers me when we get these press releases is that many of them are renewals. I am not sure what is press worthy of a renewal – but that is another story for another day. Goomzee announced this week the addition of a bunch of new MLS [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:24:02-07:00July 24th, 2014|Marketing, MLS Insights, Technology Evaluation|0 Comments

MLSs Important to Your Business? Don’t Miss out on CMLS 2014!

For those of you that believe relationships with MLSs are important either for distribution partnerships or data access, I would HIGHLY recommend that you attend and exhibit at the upcoming CMLS 2014 Conference in Huntington Beach, CA from September 24th to 27th, 2014.  I served on the board of the Council of MLS previously and I can tell you that is it THE single best way to build relationships with leading MLSs, bar none. It is an intimate conference focused exclusively on MLS issues so it is a great place to build relationships with the movers and shakers of the [...]

Your Spam Filter May Be a Lead Source

Leads sometimes come from humans. That’s a light joke. The point it is that when technology companies test lead capture and routing systems, they typically test them with stock lead content. Unfortunately, many real human leads do not contain stock text. Real humans write real questions and sometimes use language that may not be whitelisted for your spam filter. **It happens! One of the good ways to check your lead generation and a delivery engine is to compare reports. Look at the lead reports that you get from publishers like Trulia, Zillow, Realtor.com or Homes.com. Look at them carefully and [...]

WAV Group 2014 Road Map to Listing Syndication

 Listing syndication to online portals is in the throws of a revolution in real estate today. Listing syndication has followed a philosophical pattern first envisioned by the German philosopher G.W.F. Hagel in his triadic process - thesis, antithesis, and then synthesis. This paper will walk though the first two phases of the process, discussing the evolution of the original thesis of listing syndication followed by the new roots of today's chaotic antithesis. The industry is developing a plethora of new models to transmit listings for online advertising at a pace that is eroding the effectiveness of the process in a [...]

RESO Releases Data Dictionary v1.3

 Last week, the Real Estate Standards Organization released the latest Data Dictionary version 1.3 for industry consumption and adoption. Like all RESO releases, this is important as it should trigger you and your vendors to make data base modifications to come into compliance with this latest database naming convention. There are a lot of changes. Real Estate agents and brokers pay handsome fees to vendors who take disparate data sets from MLSs and map them to their application. It is one of the biggest challenges to offering services. Our industry has fallen well behind in adopting these standards and it [...]

Marketing Trauma

REALOGY has made a big deal of the new 3-D virtual tours that they believe is the future of property marketing. They may be right. WAV Group took a look at homes on the internet which offered three distinctive methods of viewing images – Photos, 3D Tours, Video Tours. When you think of marketing homes for sale, real estate professionals need to think in terms of priority. In consulting parlance – we divide prioritization into three categories – Trauma, Pain Killer, Vitamin. Beyond marketing decisions, it is a healthy idea to use this categorization across many of your technology considerations. [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:24:03-07:00July 15th, 2014|Main category, Marketing, Technology Evaluation|0 Comments