Victor Lund, Author at WAV Group Consulting

The Bigger LPS Paragon 5 Story

LPS, developers of the Paragon MLS system, announced that they have secured an agreement to replace a competitors’ MLS system with Paragon 5. This only happens about 12 times each year. The news is less about just getting a win, but tells a larger story about the future of MLS and how one MLS vendor is positioning for long term success. WAV Group performs upwards of 40 MLS customer satisfaction surveys each year to help MLSs understand what agents and brokers expect from their MLS. The number one complaint is Apple compatibility and Mobile compatibility. LPS knew this many years [...]

By Victor Lund|2018-05-03T21:25:21-07:00December 1st, 2011|Main category, MLS Insights, Technology Evaluation|Comments Off

FSBO Sites Grow as Broker and Franchises Languish

One of the pleasures of working at the WAV Group is the barrage of business questions that we are tasked to answer on a regular basis. Often, the questions challenge conventional understandings about the effectiveness of strategies in real estate. A key strategy discussion among executives at large broker firms and at large franchise organizations surrounds listing syndication to FSBO websites. Syndication strategies that each firm chooses varies relative to local market competition and consumer behavior. I highlighted that last sentence because it is the most important statement in this blog post. Many brokers and franchises are looking at what appears [...]

By Victor Lund|2018-05-03T21:25:21-07:00November 30th, 2011|Broker Technology Research, Broker-Agent Information, Main category, Marketing, Strategic Planning|1 Comment

Great Vendors Embrace Rules

There has been a lot of conversational concern about companies that enter into new verticals of data management and service offerings. Four such instances were announced this year. REALTORS® Property Resource contracts with LPS for data services and LPS subcontracts to Real Estate Digital. Zillow purchased an IDX vendor, Diverse Solutions. MOVE purchased Threewide, the providers of the popular Listhub syndication service. CoreLogic launched a new appraisal tool leveraging MLS data. In every case, the vendor has been virtuous and adhered to contracts and data use rules. In each of these cases, many feared that data could be misused or [...]

By Victor Lund|2018-05-03T21:25:22-07:00November 22nd, 2011|Broker Technology Research, Main category, Marketing, MLS Insights, Product Management, Strategic Planning, Technology Evaluation|Comments Off

Is the technology bubble over?

In a report released on November 15th, we see that Technology spending may be getting worse this holiday season, but it is not as bad as other sectors. 14% of consumers plan to spend more on technology this year than they did in years past. Unfortunately, 29% intend to spend less on technology than in years past. The good news is that at 14%, Technology is the leading sector across all industries for increased spending. Books and Apparel come in a close second with 13% intention to spend more. Music and videos did not fair much better with 40% and [...]

By Victor Lund|2018-05-03T21:25:22-07:00November 18th, 2011|Main category|Comments Off

Why MLS sold data is bad, and a note about the comma

Oversights are interesting. They are even more interesting when they are fixed. Let me explain a little bit about “reporting Sales to the (MLS) Service” in the model MLS rules. Up until the recent meeting of the MLS Issues and Policies Committee meeting at the NAR Annual Convention, agents were required to change the listing status to Sold when a transaction closed. This is a case whereby the rule did not clearly indicate the behavior. As written, the agent was required to update the status of the listing, not enter the sale price from the contract. This is a significant [...]

By Victor Lund|2018-05-03T21:25:22-07:00November 16th, 2011|Main category, MLS Insights, Virtual Office Website Series|Comments Off

Nielsen credits HAR and Zillow among others

When it comes to measuring marketing effectiveness, there is little argument that Nielsen is the leader. Nielsen believes that providing clients with a precise understanding of the consumer is the key to making the right decisions — decisions that can lead to profitable growth. At Nielsen, they are always innovating to keep pace with emerging market trends and the increasingly diverse, demanding and connected consumer. Joining Nielsen is the Houston Association of REALTORS, Zillow, a few dozen brokerages, and about 500 of the more than 1 Million REALTORS in America today. These REALTORS are the bold, the true, the transparant, [...]

By Victor Lund|2018-05-03T21:25:23-07:00November 7th, 2011|Broker Technology Research, Main category, Marketing, MLS Insights|Comments Off

CMLS reviews pending IDX policy changes

I am a big fan of CMLS, the acronym for the Council of MLS. The Council does more than any other organization to support best practices among MLS service providers. Today, CMLS hosted a member webinar that provided a 360-degree overview of the pending IDX rule change, a consideration that will be discussed and submitted to the NAR Board of Directors for approval at the NAR Convention in Anaheim. The suggestions to the NAR Board of directors from the call were simple. Cathy Holefelder of Heartland MLS provided a great summary of the call and suggested this synthesized overview. – [...]

By Victor Lund|2018-05-03T21:25:23-07:00October 31st, 2011|Broker Technology Research, Main category, MLS Insights, Strategic Planning, Technology Evaluation|Comments Off

A New Perspective on Google+

Like so many other geeks, technos, and socialphiles – I jumped on the Google+ bandwagon as soon as it came out. I must confess, I did the same on Linkedin so may years ago. Remember Plaxo? In any case, I was not very impressed Google+ on first glance. I doubt anyone was. My first complaint was that the same people I connect with on Twitter and Facebook were on Google+. Why bother? As a result, I would not even think to look at Google+. Today, am beginning to see the +1 button show up on all of the blogs and [...]

By Victor Lund|2018-05-03T21:25:25-07:00October 29th, 2011|Broker Technology Research, Main category|Comments Off

Change hurts

Perhaps there is a new chief executive, a new business strategy, an MLS conversion, a new product launch, a merger, a new data share, or a dramatically altered competitive landscape, in the real estate world, big change means big risk. In other words, company performance may rise like a rocket or fall like a rock. The only thing it’s not likely to do is stay the same. Change may be inevitable, but big change is scary, nevertheless. And how you deal with it plays a big role in the outcome. In just the past few weeks, we’ve seen big change in the works [...]

By Victor Lund|2018-05-03T21:25:25-07:00October 28th, 2011|Main category|Comments Off

CMLS News: Clareity Safe Syndication and RED reDataVault

Today, October 4th, 2011 two vendors announce separate but complementary solutions leading up to the Council of MLS conference: CMLS. Both companies issued press releases of software that effectively works together to handle data syndication. Safe Syndication is a new product launch and reDataVault is a 2.0 release. Both reDataVault and Safe syndication have similar goals in mind – they both seek to support MLSs in managing data outside the walls of the MLS. reDataVault actually distributes data, Safe Syndication does not.. reDataVault goes a bit further by automating the process of managing RETS/IDX/VOW/DataLicense agreements. Safe Syndication has a document repository, but is not a transaction [...]

By Victor Lund|2018-05-03T21:25:26-07:00October 4th, 2011|Main category, MLS Insights|Comments Off

News from Property Panorama and Trulia

Property Panorama as appointed real estate industry veteran Mike Barnet as its new CEO, and Trulia releases information about the source of inaccurate data on their website today. Property Panorama was not specific in outlining the reasons for changing their leadership, but a new captain is at the helm. Barnet joined the company as the CIO about a year ago, and has been working to lead the charge to take the popular virtual tour solution to a higher level. Property Panorama was a unique offering in the industry when it launched its MLS Data Powered automated virtual tour creation program. Today solutions [...]

By Victor Lund|2018-05-03T21:25:26-07:00October 4th, 2011|Broker Technology Research, Main category, Marketing|1 Comment

WAV Group Week in Review October 2 2011

Arizona Association of REALTORS® refocuses its attention on ARBI – Arizona REALTOR® Business Interface which puts MLS, Document Management and a bunch of resources all on one page. The AZMLS Statewide MLS has found new life. No acquisition of ARMLS for now, but MLS partners are aligning to get it done. Perhaps ARMLS will simply move from first to “maybe a little later on.” WAV Group released a new whitepaper in an ongoing series about the Shift in Real Estate for brokers and agents. In the first paper released in June, we looked at the shift happening in enterprise broker [...]

By Victor Lund|2018-05-03T21:25:27-07:00October 1st, 2011|Main category|Comments Off

About Victor Lund