When I meet the “father of Public Relations,” Edward Bernays, he was in his 90s. I was a USC grad student in the School of Journalism working on my Masters in Public Relations (MPR). A small group of us had gathered at a Public Relations Student Society of America reception at a national conference to meet the living legend. His body may have been feeble, but his brain was still wickedly razor sharp.
This Flashback Features series unearths profiles from the past of real estate and technology leaders. A version of this story was first published in California Real Estate magazine. This profile of Gary Keller, founder of Keller Williams Realty International, is from 2004.
General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) compliance crisscrosses every business in the real estate industry. Yes, it’s another acronym and it is not tech driven. Well, almost not tech driven.
This post is the result of a collaborative effort amongst the Council of Multiple Listing Services, The Realty Alliance, The National Association of REALTORS®, and Larson Skinner PLLC. Many MLSs have been making changes to the way they file copyright applications and their MLS terms of use. Those changes have raised some questions from participants and subscribers. This FAQ is intended to answer some of those questions and emphasize that the MLSs are not forcing participants or subscribers to give up ownership of listing content.
Keller Williams had another great family reunion, their annual convention in Anaheim drew more than 17,000. Perhaps the most remarkable information conveyed is that they have hit a lot of their ambitious targets for growth, and are now re-targeting to leverage data and technology as their next conquest. According to Teresa Metcalf, their big bet is on the underlying framework and Platform – and the AI component is on top of that.
One of the tools in the Public Relations’ publicity toolkit to communicate for decades has been a paid newswire. PR Newswire and Business Wire early on dominated the business in the U.S. What people don't realize is that the reason one used a paid newswire has evolved with technology and our times. Initially, the popularity of newswires was fueled by federal regulations that required public companies to meet specific disclosure laws. With the digitization of news and the expansion of the Internet, firms like Marketwire and PRWeb emerged (and much later, GlobeNewswire), and so did the value proposition of newswires. Technology firms became the client of these more Internet-focused firms, and the value proposition became SEO.
Consolidation of Associations and/or Multiple Listing Systems (MLS) at any level has its pros and cons. Consolidation can tip the scale in the way that it improves the business, the industry and most importantly, how it impacts all the stakeholders. This of course includes the consumer who is at the top of pyramid!
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Denver will be my fourth RESO Spring Tech Summit. Compared to many of the RESO leadership, who, like WAV Group, work for companies that are charter members, I’m still a newbie. Even so, RESO conferences have come a long way from the Chicago spring meeting I attended in 2015 at the NAR HQ.
It is always interesting to me when I hear about a company I have never heard of raises a pile of cash. Qualia, a real estate technology company that aims to make the closing process better for consumers just closed a series B round, led by Menlo Ventures, with participation from 8VC and Bienville Capital.
I will always vividly remember riding to a meeting with a large broker in Marin County, California back in 2002ish. We were discussing the brutal competition among brokers in Marin County. At the time, Keller Williams did not have much of a presence in San Francisco or Marin. I was wondering why Keller Williams had failed to grow as they have in other markets. Moreover, Century 21 was conspicuously missing from the market altogether. Coldwell Banker was huge, along with Pacific Union. A bunch of independent brands like Frank Howard Allen and Melissa Bradley Real Estate were performing well in upper Marin. Decker Bullock held their own with the large firms in Southern Marin.
