Broker-Agent Information Archives

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, [...]

By Victor Lund|2018-05-03T21:25:13-07:00February 29th, 2012|Broker Technology Research, Broker-Agent Information, 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 WAV Group|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

Illinois Bans Real Estate Agents

Catchy headline. What the State of Illinois is doing is similar to what Colorado, New Mexico and possibly other States have already done. All real estate agents will need to become real estate brokers to retain their license. Brokers who manage agents will need to become Managing brokers. Oh, and did I mention that the state licensing fees go up 83%. Many view this move simply as a way to tax professionals. Illinois real estate agents have until March 15th to complete the training (15 hours) and take a competency test to meet new rules. By the way, the 83% [...]

By Victor Lund|2018-05-03T21:25:14-07:00February 14th, 2012|Broker-Agent Information, Main category, MLS Insights|3 Comments

LPS sells tax solutions to Lereta

LPS saw the spin off of their Agent-Broker products division in a management led buy out last September. The new company formed is called Real Estate Digital. Today, it was announced that the LPS Tax company was sold to Lereta. This company has nothing to do with the data that is licensed to RPR or MLSs. This is a tax services company totally separate from the Applied Analytics Data Solutions company that licenses public records and serves MLS. These are interesting times. We will keep you posted on what we hear. […]

By Victor Lund|2018-05-03T21:25:16-07:00February 1st, 2012|Broker Technology Research, Broker-Agent Information, Main category, MLS Insights|1 Comment

Balancing exchange rates in listing syndication

Online listing syndication presents complex strategic challenges to real estate brokerage in America today. The structure of economic trade between real estate brokers and publishers has many variables that are often misunderstood and often hard to measure. At the heart of the conversation is an unresolved understanding of the exchange rate in listing syndication. Even people with business analyst certification may be baffled. Do brokers subsidize the success of publishers by providing listings? Do publishers subsidize brokerages by providing willing homebuyers? Some of the policies by publishers to create revenue have been deemed to be very damaging by some real [...]

By Victor Lund|2018-05-03T21:25:16-07:00January 29th, 2012|Broker Technology Research, Broker-Agent Information, Main category, Marketing, MLS Insights|6 Comments

Frugyl launches with great buzz and fanfare

A new company launched yesterday called Frugyl. It is the child of Jimmy Mackin and Chris Smith, creators of the “What should I spend My Money On?” Facebook Group. This will be of interest to those with analyst careers. The goal of Frugyl is to crowd source information and satisfaction on real estate tools and services used by real estate agents. Additionally, Frugyl will endeavor to provide group discounts on products purchased as a group. The Frugyl site had a great start yesterday when they announced the launch on Facebook. They exhibited excellence in social media marketing that many technology companies would be well [...]

By Victor Lund|2018-05-03T21:25:16-07:00January 27th, 2012|Broker-Agent Information, Main category|2 Comments

Consumers Prefer Referrals

WAV Group Research does a lot of consumer research on behalf of MLSs and Associations. We also do research for State Associations of REALTORS and the National Association of REALTORs. One of the best member benefits is the research that is provided to the real estate professional by these groups. The National Association of REALTORS has a great research team. The data that they publish on consumer attitudes about Real Estate and the process of buying and selling homes using a REALTOR are awesome sources of education, training, and strategic development for your business. One of my favorite ways to [...]

By Victor Lund|2018-05-03T21:25:17-07:00January 18th, 2012|Broker-Agent Information|Comments Off

What real estate can learn from Zappos cyber attack

Zappos, a division of Amazon focused on online shoe sales announced that their customer database of 24 million customer records was hacked over the weekend. Fortunately, the credit card database was not accessed. This is a huge problem for Zappos. They will now need to go through a process of getting all 24 million customers to update their password, and notify each user that their username and password have been stolen. The implications of this hacker stealing this information is far reaching. Many consumers use a familiar username and password for accessing commonly used websites. If you have ever set [...]

By Victor Lund|2018-05-03T21:25:17-07:00January 16th, 2012|Broker Technology Research, Broker-Agent Information, Main category, MLS Insights|2 Comments

MOVE launches the Real Estate Network for Franchises

Franchise Networks have taken the first step to declare their independence from the MLS rules and regulations, and third party listing websites. Today MOVE, operators of REALTOR.com and the Listhub listing syndication network, announced that they have created a data sharing solution called the Real Estate Network. Participant in the network include the two largest REALOGY networks of Century 21 and Coldwell Banker along with Realty Executives and RE/MAX. Under the terms of the agreement, the four participating Franchise Organizations will reciprocate in a listing data share of property listings for public display each other’s franchise websites. New Century 21 [...]

By Victor Lund|2018-05-03T21:25:17-07:00January 11th, 2012|Broker Technology Research, Broker-Agent Information, Main category, MLS Insights, Press Releases, Strategic Planning|10 Comments

Listing Publishers Are Not Responsible For Your Bad Data
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Listing Publishers Are Not Responsible For Your Bad Data

Broker Technology Research, Broker-Agent Information, Main category

Listing Publishers Are Not Responsible For Your Bad Data

A crazy phone call came my way today from a large third party listing website. It does not matter which one. The person was very concerned that the industry is on a mission to stop brokers and agents from syndicating listings to them. Nothing could be further from the truth. Marketing listings is a fundamental obligation that the listing firm delivers as a service to the seller. Certainly online advertising is a component of fulfilling that obligation. WAV Group has been very outspoken about problems with listing syndication. We have done countless studies that measure the percentages of inaccuracies on [...]

By Victor Lund|2018-05-03T21:25:19-07:00January 5th, 2012|Broker Technology Research, Broker-Agent Information, Main category|Comments Off

Inman Agent Survey
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Inman Agent Survey

Broker Technology Research, Broker-Agent Information, Main category, MLS Insights

Inman Agent Survey

Inman News is running a survey right now to understand today’s real estate agent. It would be a good idea for you to share this survey with your agents so that you can benefit from the results. http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/freeagent The survey collects baseline demographic data and transaction data to understand how age, location, years in the business, certifications and other profiles of an agent predict behavior, success, and excellence in real estate. Are there differences between NAR members and non-members? Are their differences between Franchises and independent brokerages? […]

By Victor Lund|2018-05-03T21:25:19-07:00December 22nd, 2011|Broker Technology Research, Broker-Agent Information, Main category, MLS Insights|Comments Off

Mobile Passes Print in Consumer Engagement

WAV Group joined the parade of consults declaring the death of print media in late 2006. Inman News confirmed its death during their conference in San Francisco in 2007 (one of my favorite events of all time). Believe it or not, print actually made a bit of a comeback in 2010. Nevertheless, the Internet is the place that consumers increasingly spend their media time. The new news is that people are actually spending more time on their mobile phones today than they are spending interacting with print media. According to eMarketer, time spent on mobile devices is now an average [...]

By Victor Lund|2018-05-03T21:25:20-07:00December 12th, 2011|Broker Technology Research, Broker-Agent Information, Main category, Marketing|2 Comments