Last one here, please turn off the light! Technology may be eroding the culture of broker businesses today.  Each day I see fewer and fewer agents in real estate offices.  Most work from home and port into the office and the mls through web interface. I met with a successful agent who sells 2-3 homes a month in San Francisco.  He joined his current brokerage 4 months ago, and has only been to the office twice – both times to use the copy machine to duplicate some huge documents.  Each time, he had to reintroduce himself to the receptionist and [...]

Ruby on Rails may soon become the leader in development platforms for real estate applications. What is Ruby? Ruby is an object-oriented interpreted scripting language created by Yukihiro Matsumoto. Since the mid 1990s, it has grown in popularity in Japan and has gained recent attention as the language behind the Rails framework. You can use the language for a striking variety of functions—from basic scripting to creating Windows applications to developing Web applications. You can start using Rails without extensive knowledge of the language; the Rails framework generates the fundamental classes needed for the Web application and uses reflection to [...]

In a move to maximize its benefits to its REALTOR® members and encourage the adoption of transaction management subscribers to the RELAY™ product, the National Association of REALTORS has negotiated a reduction of up to $2500 in the deductible amount on Errors and Omissions insurance provided by Geo. F. Brown & Sons. […]

One of the latest issues facing brokers today is adopting strategies to successfully syndicate real estate listings to online portals. The good news is that it will be easier thanks to feeds using xml and web 2.0. The bad news is that very few service providers to agents and brokers offer this capability. The first company out of the box with this capability was Threewide.  The newest entry into this arena is vFlyer. […]

Web Stats- What are Web Statistics, Where do I see my web statistics?, and How to I interpret web statistics? Internet marketing affords the agent and broker the very best methodology for measuring advertising – all types including print, TV, radio and web. There are a few basic concepts that need to be understood in order to measure the effectiveness of your advertising and the effectiveness of your website at achieving the holy grail – lead conversion. Where do I go to see my web stats? The first thing that you need to know about your website is how to [...]

Want to have some fun? Ever have the experience where a customer registers to your website using foul or misleading information ie – Bill Clinton, etc. Well, as it turns out, if you view the details of the header of the e-mail that gets sent to you from your website, you will be able to see the IP address of the sender. […]

Video is becoming ever more prevalent in the marketing of properties in the real estate industry.  For most property owners the addition of a high quality video about their home has been a great listing tool, but to date there has been no way to measure its effectiveness in marketing a home.    A.C. Nielsen, worldwide leaders of media and advertising tracking, has recently announced the launch of a new service that may change all that. NetRatings, a division of A.C. Nielsen has announced a new syndicated measuremenet service called VideoCensus, which measures audience size, demographics and even competitive activity [...]

The popular press would like each of us to think that our suburban neighborhoods will soon be abandoned because of a flurry of foreclosures.  While foreclosure rates are up versus last year, the actual rate of foreclosures remains very low.  According to RealtyTrac, approximately 1 in 961 homes will go into foreclosure. That means that less than .1% of home owners will default on their loans.  In Texas and California, two large states with the largeset number of foreclosures the rate is only .2%.  While none of us like to see people lose their homes, this low percentage clearly shows [...]

In October, The CALIFORNIA ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS ® (C.A.R.) released its

Studies have shown that only about 1 in 3 new products launched become successful ventures.  The real estate industry is no different.  There have been many products and services that have not made it. In my experience launching consumer products, software and technologies in a variety of industries, I have observed a few common mistakes that start-ups and even established firms make when launching new products. […]

Ken Jenny is a frequent blogger on the Inman Blog, and is considerd to be one of the real estate industry’s top broker consultants. Last week at the National Association of Real Estate Publishers annual meeting (NAREP), he addressed the publishing group with his vision for tomorrow. According to Ken, “big brokers are going to bury the MLS becasue it is the conduit  that feeds their growing competiton of unqualified brokers who misrepresent the consumer.” Case in point – if Coldwell Banker, Pacific Union, Alain Pinel, Prudential and RE/Max pulled out of the Bay Area MLSs (of which there are [...]