Many MLSs and Associations are looking for ways to increase their relevance for their members. When we conduct member satisfaction surveys across the United States with many of the largest MLSs we have observed one consistent point. Electronic faxing is always one of if not the highest rated service according to thousands of agents around the country. They like the service for a few reasons: […]
As reported on Property Portal Watch, Trulia is expanding their service offerings to Agents and Brokers who seek to add more marketing power to thier consumer relationship on Trulia.com. This move signals the emergence of Trulia as more than just a listing advertising outlet - but a technology provider of a variety of services that support the marketing of real estate listings, like Virtual Tours, and Reports on listing activity. Visit Trulia for more detailed inforamtion about these offerings. The company will now offer Trulia Pro Deluxe ($79 per month), Trulia Pro Plus ($39 per month) and Trulia Pro Starter ($19 per [...]
Game Changer……. Apple, the technology hardware and software provider is the leading retailer in terms of dollars per square foot of any retailer in the world with an average of $4700 income per square foot – nearest competitior is Best Buy at $1000. Disney is investing $1 Million per store to create shoputainment – a shopping experience destination for childrens products. Want to see a refreshing blend of space usage for agents and consumers – have a look […]
WAV Group has been tracking the adoption of online transaction processing software for several years. In the 2005 WAV Group Transaction Management Adoption Study, we identified a number of factors that were inhibiting adoption of transaction management solutions and recommended steps to improve adoption. We are seeing encouraging adoption increases throughout the country. The WAV Group 2009 Transaction Management Adoption Study surveyed over 1700 brokers and agents from 22 different MLSs. In addition, we worked with major Transaction Management vendors to look at their product adoption trends over the last few years. The result is a much clearer picture of where online transaction processing stands [...]
The EPA has just released a study that confirms it is safer, not to mention cheaper to drink tap water than bottled water. There is less scrutiny placed on health standards and reporting for bottled water than tap water. Now here’s a great way to be safer, save money and Be Green in your real estate office all at the same time. Instead of buying cases of bottled water for your office, why not buy a Camelbak water bottle for all of your agents and encourage them to be healthy and hydrated with their very own branded water bottle. You can purchase [...]
In a move to facilitate quality product information about real estate software and services to thier subscribers, MRIS and MRED have selected the portal solution from RE Technology. By offering the RE Technology portal to thier subscribers, MRIS and MRED will allow thier members to gain access to product vendors by category, product reviews, user product ratings and product comparisons all in one location. Technology vendors are invited to submit thier products for display in the portal by visitingretechnology.com installed into MLS systems allowing agents and brokers to gain access to information, reviews and product ratings of real estate [...]
In 2008, Move, Inc reported $61.4 Million in sales and reported a net loss of $2.1 Million. This year, under the strong leadership of former Ask.com CEO Steve Berkowitz - Move, Inc is now posting $3.2 Million in profit in the second quarter of 2009 against lower revenues of $54.6 Million. Sales are down, but profits are up! “During the quarter, we continued to make solid progress toward both our short term business objectives and our long term growth strategy,” said Steve Berkowitz, Move’s CEO. “While we remain focused on improving the financial and operational performance across our product lines [...]
Google has expanded their search strategy by adding in a new search option: Real Estate. As you may recall, Google first launched their property search solution by placing a quick search bar above the search results for key words like 'san francisco real estate.' That search functionality was always demarked with the term 'beta' and now seems to have gone away. We suspect that it may have deminished advertising revenues. Here is a video demonstrating Google's new strategy. Map based search and natural language search seem to be providing better results than typical form based searches - something to keep [...]
At noon today, Real Estate Business Solutions (REBS) announced a partnership with Seek Mobile to form a new company called Real Estate Mobile Technologies. The new company will develop consumer and REALTOR mobile applications. REBS, a subsidary of the California Association of REALTORS will be the majority shareholder of the new corporation, and the current applications like MyCAR will be rolled into the new company according to CEO, Alan Arora.
The Advertising Age has Ended, the Edutizing Era has Begun Consumers simply do not want to be “sold” anymore. They have become cynical about advertising claims and “its all about me” advertising. They dont want to hear an agents claims of greatness. They want to understand what you can do for them. They want to know that your claims are backed up by legitimate experience and insights you can bring to them. They want you to prove why you are the best agent or broker for them. Simply making promises of greatness is not enough to attract consumers anymore. Customers [...]
As reported on MobileMarketer, MSearchGroove recently evaluated three mobile voice search tools for the iPhone- Google, Yahoo and ChaCha. The researchers from MSearchGroove evaluated the overall performance of the voice-enabled mobile services from ChaCha, Google and Vlingo for iPhone with Yahoo by asking a series of 18 queries from six typical mobile search categories such as navigation, direction, local information, general information, social and long-tail. In the category of queries asked as questions, ChaCha accurately interpreted 94.4 percent of the tests and delivered accurate search results in 88.9 percent of cases. Google’s results on the other hand were pretty dismal. On the other hand, Googles voice [...]
I have been writing a lot about edutizing lately and have been offering several methods for attracting new customers with educational pieces containing relevant, timely information consumers are interested in. We talk a lot about how it is very important to share local market statistics to consumers to help them understand the ins and outs of the marketplace. Importantly, by sharing this imformation agents and real estate associations can reinforce their position as local experts. […]
