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.
Too often public relations activities rely on the “spray and pray” method these days. It’s just too easy. First, there’s the availability of cheap digital news wire services to blast out a news release for a few hundred dollars or less. If you want to get some quick online news cover and links to post to social media, it’s just a few clicks away. Second, creating email lists of reporters and bloggers has never been more accessibility. So much so, I would venture to guess reporters are suffering from unsubscribe fatigue.
It seems like every week we’re hearing about a new announcement from a large brokerage or franchise telling us they are spending millions on technology and re-positioning their brand story around their technology suite.
The Miami Association of REALTORS® (MIAMI) and Multiple Listing Service supports 46,000 primary subscribers and more than 4000 out of area secondary subscribers. Miami have an insatiable curiosity to identify and launch products that will help their brokers, teams, and agents be more successful.
You’re sitting in your board room thinking through a tough decision that needs to be made. Many of the board members are passionate, engaged real estate professionals who have lived in the local area for their entire careers.
As a leading consulting firm, WAV Group operates deeply inside the complex technology stacks of MLSs, Brokerages, Franchises, REALTOR® Associations, and technology firms. From this experience, we recognize the pain that these groups face because of the lack of connection between the systems and applications that agents and consumers need. Upstream aims to deliver a better data management foundation for the data that brokers are entrusted for safe handling.
If you know anything about Hunt Real Estate Corporation, you know that they are a family owned and operated brokerage with high integrity and a fierce approach to competition. Since 1911 they have been a market leader in upstate New York, cities like Buffalo, Niagara Falls, Rochester, Syracuse, Albany, and the many Southern Tier communities that border Pennsylvania. They recently expanded into the Boston marketplace though a significant acquisition. We have known the Hunt family since Marlyn and I lived in Orchard Park, NY. We became friends though our interactions at The Buffalo Club and The Country Club of Buffalo. At the time, Marilyn ran marketing at Fisher-Price and I was spinning up my first start-up companies.
The smartest technology companies and most progressive MLSs are leading our industry to a new era of efficiency and profitability. They are making it easy for start-ups to expand quickly from market to market and serve the innovation needs of brokers. These leaders are supporting well-established companies to evolve their data platforms and opening the door for standardization in EVERY market in the country.
We are excited to have David Gumpper on the team here at WAV Group. Since joining our firm, he has been actively supporting our brokerage, MLS, and technology clients with a wide variety of systems audits and systems integrations.
In talking with various people inside brokerages, I hear the same challenge time and time again. "My data is all over the place and I have no way to figure out what it means." Driving information out of your data is Business Intelligence (BI). There are free or low-cost solutions to help analyze data in your control and derive the answers needed to make better business decisions.
