Real Estate should take a page out of the play book from the New York City School system. Much to the surprise of some wealthy homeowners in New York, the city released its first grading system results for public schools. The schools were based on performance, academic progress, and indexed against one another. Good schools whose standardized test scores did not improve were given grades of B or C. Many people are speaking out in NYC, especially residents who moved to an area because of school quality, and not surprising - REALTORS® representing sellers. Suddenly, good schools are not good [...]

MLSs are joining agents and brokers in the rush to contribute listings to online listing sites like Trulia, Google Base and others. There have been many spirited conversations regarding this trend and thought leadership is needed in this area. On the surface, the opportunity side of the equation seems pretty simple – send the listings and these companies will share them with visitors to their website for free.  Listings are marketed to consumers expanding the reach and exposure to the properties available. Opportunity Costs – although most mls organizations can easily provision listing feeds, depending on the rules and regulations [...]

Mid Year Technology Overview It is our pleasure to present the annual WAV Group Mid-Year Technology Review. The information included was gathered from meetings at NAR’s Mid-Year Conference in Washington, DC as well as on-going technology reviews we conduct throughout the year. While not intended as a detailed product comparison, we hope this overview serves as auseful resource for you. Please feel free to contact us if you require a more detailed vendor/product review or help with any technology decisions for your organization. […]

The Consumer is driving change in the MLS   2006 WAV Group MLS Technology Study Consumers are driving the need for change in the role of the MLS and ultimately the REALTOR® members, according to respondents of the 2006 WAV Group Technology Study. The study, completed by 2600 MLS Executives, brokers and agents probed MLS technology trends and vendor satisfaction as well as the future of the MLS and challenges facing the real estate industry. […]

This morning, Dave Marron, CEO of SphereBuilder, talked to Inman News Editor Jessica Swesey about the evolving role of lead generators, and understanding the math involved in strategizing conversion points. It is a short piece, but it triggers the imagination about how much business is lost these days, despite the efforts of Real Estate Brokers. Key Point – 50% of online leads are not responded to! Everyday, the online and offline marketing quest to generate clients for the brokerage gets more and more competitive.  The saddest part is that the Return on Investment is reduced not by the amount of [...]

I consult with a broker client who pays $20,000 to Realtor.com for listing enhancements. We have tracked the value of these over a period of 4 weeks to view the relative value. There is a comon misconception in online advertising that I would like to unveil. […]

I will carefully not mention the many fast growing companies of the early 2000s that swiped millions of dollars from the real estate industry.  But there were plenty and some of them are sitll around thanks for the way they entended thier theftdom to the public stock market. I find it interesting that these same individuals are still respected around industry events – you would think that the calvary would have run them out of town or held a public hanging (metaphorically, of course). Ok, so having said that… here is my wisdom of the day for online advertising. Impressions [...]

They have the power to send stock prices plummeting, and consumers count them as more credible than advertising and e-mail marketing. But odds are you have no idea who they are. Marketers, meet the bloggers. They have the power to send stock prices plummeting, and consumers count them as more credible than advertising and e-mail marketing. But odds are you have no idea who they are. […]

I have spent a 4 years looking at the advertising trends of real estate agents and brokers through some very interesting real estate cycles. What amazed me was that they are backwards. Real Estate Agents and Brokers advertise more when the market is good and less when the market is bad. This is inverted with what I will refer to as “professional” advertising.  In professional advertising – mass market retail and other, advertising is used to drive business and increase market share to improve slow sales, or launch new products.  This is true of all of the worlds largest advertisers. [...]

Several of us have been involved in a lot of discussion about why the same search produces different results between Google Maps and Google.com. The recent expansion of the Google Maps One box on Google.com makes local search optimization much more important than it was before this new display was implemented widely on Google.com. Now, whether you have a web site or not, a business that Google ranks highly in Google Maps can get dramatic exposure thanks to last month’s change. How dramatic? Well, according to Bill Tancer’s Hitwise data, Google.com gets about 100x more traffic than Google Maps. So, [...]