Broker-Agent Information Archives

NAR Will Face Its Greatest Foes

Our industry, and every industry faces foes. Some foes that challenge industries are ideological, some economical, some ethical, and some natural. Certainly, the real estate industry faces each of these foes today. Who will be the leader that guides the people, the agents, the brokers, the association executives, the mls executives? Remember this leadership statement? “Let every nation know… that WE shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” More than any political speech, this was the voice of a committed leader. In [...]

By Victor Lund|2018-05-03T21:25:11-07:00March 8th, 2012|Broker-Agent Information, Main category, MLS Insights|Comments Off

RE/MAX renews VOWS with Homes.com

Divorce happens in life and in business. Keeping a relationship together over a long term requires faith and dedication. When issues arise, strong partnerships raise to the occasion. Online competition is fierce today. RE/MAX is crushing all other franchises in America in terms of visits and page views, but there are new competitors now – publishers. It is harder to stay competitive unless you have a great team. There is always fear in any relationship. Fear that something could be better if you were partnered elsewhere. My goodness – look at the divorce rate in America. But today’s post is about a [...]

By Victor Lund|2018-05-03T21:25:11-07:00March 6th, 2012|Broker Technology Research, Broker-Agent Information, Main category, Marketing, Press Releases|Comments Off

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 Victor Lund|2018-05-03T21:25:11-07:00March 6th, 2012|Broker Technology Research, Broker-Agent Information, Main category, MLS Insights|Comments Off

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 Victor Lund|2018-05-03T21:25:11-07:00March 6th, 2012|Broker Technology Research, Broker-Agent Information, Main category, Marketing, MLS Insights|Comments Off

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 Victor Lund|2018-05-03T21:25:13-07:00March 6th, 2012|Broker Technology Research, Broker-Agent Information, Main category|Comments Off

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 [...]

By Victor Lund|2018-05-03T21:25:13-07:00March 5th, 2012|Broker Technology Research, Broker-Agent Information, Main category, Press Releases, Strategic Planning|3 Comments

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