NAR and Ann Bailey saved us with CIVIXX

Real Estate agents, brokers and MLSs have plenty to complain about today. Real Estate is in a challenging cycle representing a blend of customary challenges with economic cycles that are beyond our control. When the National Association of REALTORS announced the CIVIXX settlement at Convention for the healthy sum of $7.5 Million to settle the patent lawsuit, the industry was a bit surprised. Many thanks to the nation’s league of MLSs who participated in funding the $7.5M bounty. Most MLSs also received significant contributions from their MLS vendors like LPS, Corelogic, FBS, Rapattoni and others. We all owe gratitude to [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:25:11-07:00March 6th, 2012|Broker Technology Research, Broker-Agent Information, Main category, MLS Insights|Comments Off on NAR and Ann Bailey saved us with CIVIXX

MLS and Brokers need community managers

Like many others in real estate, I’ve spent the last few days devouring the new brand timelines launched for Facebook pages. This new medium is the focus of this article, but consider other publishing requirements in business today as you read this: website publishing, youtube publishing, twitter, etc. My expectations were sky-high but after several hours I realized that Facebook timeline is going to be a lot harder to implement than most real estate professionals think. As it stands now, there is a clear divide between brands that have adopted the timeline feature set full on and those that have [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:25:11-07:00March 6th, 2012|Broker Technology Research, Broker-Agent Information, Main category, Marketing, MLS Insights|Comments Off on MLS and Brokers need community managers

Barbara Corcoran Holding Sales Webinar

Successful New York City REALTOR® with appearances on NBC's TODAY Show and ABC's reality hit Shark Tank Barbara Corcoran knows that innovation may be the single most important key to success in today's highly competitive marketplace. She is known for having built the most successful real estate business in New York City, as well as her current appearances on NBC's TODAY Show and as investor/shark on ABC's reality hit Shark Tank, from which she is now shepherding 11 new businesses to success! In this free live webinar Barbara reveals the unconventional strategies she used to achieve this, like: How to create an image bigger than reality. How to [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:25:13-07:00March 6th, 2012|Broker Technology Research, Broker-Agent Information, Main category|Comments Off on Barbara Corcoran Holding Sales Webinar

Century 21 CMO Bev Thorne Joins Zillow Advisory Board

Zillow is smart. They are building their Board of Advisors with key decision makers in the industry. Zillow is well aware that franchises are contractually required to submit listings to the franchisor, and in most cases, the franchisor can syndicate listings whereever they want. The data feed from franchisors like REALOGY Brands, Keller Williams, and RE/MAX are vital for long term assurance of listing count on Zillow. This also demonstrates Zillow’s disposition to surround itself with stakeholders in their mutual success. It also may deflect some of the local broker’s choice in syndicating listings to publishers. Century 21 has a [...]

Sami Inkinen step up to Trulia Board of Directors

When Sami Inkinen and Pete Flint founded Trulia – they had a great vision. One that has been realized, perhaps beyond their expectations. Now that the company has established itself, it is morphing into a different kind of company. Today, Trulia announced that co-founder Sami Inkinen will step aside from his day-to-day role of President (Operations) and join the Trulia Board of Directors. They have brought on a strong management team over the past under the leadership of CEO Pete Flint. In the wake of the announcement, the Executive Team at Trulia will look like this. […]

By |2018-05-03T21:25:13-07:00March 1st, 2012|Main category, MLS Insights|Comments Off on Sami Inkinen step up to Trulia Board of Directors

Top MLS trends for 2012

WAV Group is among the ranks of consulting and research firms dedicated to the success of the Nation’s MLSs. Given the company’s involvement at the strategic planning level, there are several developing themes being nurtured.     The top six trends are: Listing Syndication Premium Service Offerings MLS Consumer Websites Online Signatures Data Licensing Data Sharing […]

By |2018-05-03T21:25:13-07:00March 1st, 2012|Main category, MLS Insights|Comments Off on Top MLS trends for 2012

MRED sends data directly to Trulia

Midwest Real Estate Data LLC or MRED is the MLS of the Chicago region of Illinois. They are the MLS Provider to around 40,000 real estate professionals. In a press release today, Trulia announced that MRED will feed listings directly to Trulia, bypassing Listhub, Point2 and other listing syndicators. “Listing syndication has contributed to a mess on Trulia and all other sites who get their data second hand, on behalf of our brokers, MRED is going to fix it” says Russ Bergeron, MRED CEO. There has been a great deal of discussion in the real estate industry about syndication to publishers. Today, [...]

CoreLogic not breaking into pieces

If you are a stock watcher of the leading companies supplying services to the real estate industry, you have been watching CoreLogic. Since the spin out from First American, the company has been tremendously successful in terms of overall revenue and cash position, but the stock has underperformed. At one point, the stock was as low as $7.64 per share over the past 52 weeks. The high was $19.20, and the target is around $16. The company currently trades at $14. For a company that has $250 Million in cash, a market cap of $1.53B is really low. Some of [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:25:14-07:00February 28th, 2012|Main category, MLS Insights|1 Comment

A Discussion on Virtual Brokerage

We have the opportunity to work with many different software companies providing great products to the real estate industry.  Some of these companies are geared to serve both the traditional real estate model as well as a virtual brokerage.  It is clear to us, as well as these software providers, that the future of real estate companies will be different.  It will be leaner, lighter and in many cased “virtual” with a heavy emphasis on the broker providing great, integrated software products to agents that often work remotely.   I wrote at length about this shift in the white paper, “The [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:25:14-07:00February 23rd, 2012|Broker Technology Research, Broker-Agent Information, Main category, Marketing, Reports, Technology Evaluation, Virtual Office Website Series|Comments Off on A Discussion on Virtual Brokerage

Why Innovation Fails To Change Real Estate

Every year, real estate sees the launch of beautiful products, offering awesome features, advantages, and benefits. Excellent marketing programs back them and the press creates a jubilee – Innovator of the Year! Then the product launches, and the industry shrugs its shoulder. It is the conundrum of new product development and innovation for real estate. Most of these companies are doing everything right. They are doing research, spotting trends, holding focus groups, testing usability, and modeling lovely financials. If they can only get 1% adoption of this, or 3% of that, revenues will be awesome. There are 1 Million real [...]

MLS iPad apps have NOT gone far enough yet

Recently, WAV Group has completed several customer satisfaction surveys from around the country in the Southwest, Mid-West, Southeast and Mid-Atlantic regions. In every case there has been a lot of discussion and requests for more MLS access via smartphones and especially for iPads and other tablet devices. While many MLSs think of their iPad application as a property search tool, agents want their MLS iPad apps to go much further than that. Even for those that have launched Tablet solutions, there are two major areas of dissatisfaction that MLSs need to address to make mobile MLS applications truly useful for [...]

MLS Domains Association acknowledges likely competing bid for MLS Name

MLS Domains Association acknowledges likely competing bid for .MLS Operator of real estate website MLS.com appears poised to apply to ICANN Minneapolis, February 20, 2012: MLS Domains Association announced today that at it will likely not be making the only application to ICANN for the new .MLS top-level domain on the Internet. ICANN is the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers and is responsible for managing top-level domains worldwide. Its window for applications for new TLDs is open from now until April 12, 2012. “We know of one other likely applicant,” said Bob Bemis, president of the Association. […]

By |2018-05-03T21:25:14-07:00February 17th, 2012|Main category|Comments Off on MLS Domains Association acknowledges likely competing bid for MLS Name