WAV Group partner, Marilyn Wilson was awarded the Blue Crown award last night at the AFIRE conference for her ForeverLazy.com pajamas! About AFIRE - Awesome Females In Real Estate - Group of executive women who meet annually to share ideas, get inspired and have fun. About Forever Lazy - start up who makes super cozy pajamas! Unfortunately there are no photos allowed at the pajama party, but we are sure that everyone looked fabulous!
Steve Hundley of 1 Park Place offered the following concepts about Personal Branding in Real Estate. This was a good session for Agents and Brokers who are not new to online strategy, but looking to get more sophisticated. I jumped on the call to get to know Steve and his company better in advance of joining him as a speaker at RIS Media. 5 Myths are : Personal Branding will build my business; Internet leads are junk; Facebook and Twitter help build business; A website is better than a blog; Consumers want map search Myth - Personal Branding will build [...]
Last Year, WAV Group partners averaged an attendance rate of of 2-3 trade shows or industry meetings each month. This year does not appear to be slowing down. Perhaps we have trade show fatigue or the industry is economically sleepy, but there seems to be a missing component of excitement in our industry. Here is an example of a team of entrepreneurs from Montreal based startup - Tungle - a meeting scheduling utility that we love at WAV Group - its free, works on a mac, is available as a mobile app, and syncs with google calendar. LOOK HOW MUCH FUN THEY ARE HAVING [...]
The National Association of REALTORS has moved headlong into finding new ways to communicate with REALTORS. Among those strategies are Facebook pages and now, Facebook Ads! Imagine my surprise today when this ad poped up on a Facebook page I was visiting. The call to action was “Are you a REALTOR? and the link takes you to the Houselogic Content Resource page. I thumbed it up. I like the ad and I like the strategy. Advertising on Facebook is easy and very inexpensive relative to other online advertising strategies. Choosing Keywords like Real Estate, REALTOR, etc will insure that your ad [...]
The National Association of REALTORS yielded to requests to allow agent and broker IDX listings to be “spidered” or “indexed” by search engines last year. Prior to this ruling, the suggested NAR rules and regulations for IDX was to not allow this activity. This change plays a significant role in search engine optimization whereby a search engine will ‘index’ every listing in an MLS along with all of the content associated with each listing and attribute that to the website. Most agent websites were previously only being indexed for 20 or so pages of content by search engines - examples would include [...]
Midwest Real Estate Data Lands New CEO Lisle, IL (April 16) - Midwest Real Estate Data LLC (MRED), the Chicagoland Multiple Listing Service serving nearly 40,000 real estate professionals, announced today that Russ Bergeron will be assuming the role of Chief Executive Officer at the end of May. Mr. Bergeron comes to MRED from Southern California Multiple Listing Service where he has been CEO since its formation in 1993. As head of the largest MLS in the state of California and second largest in the nation, he is known throughout the world for his leadership in bringing technological advances [...]
Pardon my rant. WAV Group has been blogging for a long time. We believe that it is an excellent way to stay connected to our clients or potential clients, and to showcase the type of (hopefully) thoughtful approach we have to our consulting business. We also are endeavoring to keep clients informed about new ideas in the real estate technology industry - some good, some not so good. We also like to celebrate the success that companies have and publish press releases. Recently we watched some situations of blogging gone bad. This happens innocently as people make disparaging comments on blogs. Indeed, [...]
Clarus MarketMetrics® enters Canadian market; offered as member benefit to Centris® LOS ANGELES (April 16) - Real Estate Business Services Inc.® (REBS®) today announced that Centris®, a division of the Greater Montreal Real Estate board and technology arm of the Quebec Federation of Real Estate Boards (QFREB), has signed a 3-year agreement to provide Clarus MarketMetrics® as a member benefit to QFREB’s approximately 15,000 members. Centris® is the first entry into the Canadian market by Clarus MarketMetrics®. “We’re very excited to be the first MLS in Canada to offer our members access to ClarusMarketMetrics®,” said GMREB and QFREB CEO Michel Beauséjour. [...]
Ben Graboske of First American Core Logic Marketlinx shared the announcement at HAR REIS meetings about the division of First American into two separate companies - roughly dividing the title business from the technology and data business. We saw Fidelity do this a few years ago which resulted in the creation of LPS. Graboske was “hush hush” about the new name of the new company. Many rumors have been circulating. Yesterday, First American announced the new company name to the employees - all 10,000 of them. Believe it or not, the new name was leaked out. Drum Roll please……. Core [...]
MRIS has long offered premium products and services to their participants and subscribers. Below you will see the announcement of a new service of offering agent and broker website and IDX offerings. It looks to be a very complete solution that will cover the needs of the majority of their customers. You will also notice that they are rolling it out as they would any other MLS service - complete with localized information and training classes through collaboration with shareholder Associations of REALTORS. Press Release MRIS will soon launch the XactSite agent and broker web site and IDX packages. The [...]
This is great news for the data sharing among MLSs in Northern California. Unlike the data share in Southern California called CARETS, which pulls all regional listings into your home MLS system – Northern California data share uses reciprocal linking – so any participant may click into another MLS system and have full access….and now, without logging in again! CLAREITY SECURITY LAUNCHES SCOUT FOR SAFEMLS AND SINGLE SIGN ON SOLUTION FOR cooperative MLS of Contra Costa, East Bay Region Data, Inc. and the Bay East Association of REALTORS Scottsdale, Arizona — April 14, 2010 — Clareity Security is [...]
Flipping the switch on your new MLS system There is perhaps no more daunting task that could face an MLS than switching MLS vendors. Most MLSs opt for choosing consultants to work with staff to create communications and training programs to make the transition as sooth as possible, and run systems in parallel until a cut over is complete - but not all MLSs can afford this. Recently we have seen a lot of feedback from some rather challenging CalRedd conversions - most notability in Fresno and subsequently in Lake County. But perhaps it is best to look outside of [...]
