WAV Group is releasing this thesis to establish a conversation about how listing syndicaiton can be improved to allow third party websites to continue their effective job as a marketing tool for broker listings. We welcome your comments. To begin downloading the paper with our compliments, please click here
The FDIC is rolling out QRM. It is a new banking rule that requires that a bank must put aside a 5% retention on any loan that does not include a 20% downpayment. I do not have a PHD in Economics, but I can imagine a few implications that may crop up as a result of QRM. If banks must retain 5% as a result of QRM, they will need to make fewer loans either as a result of consumers not being able to put down 20% or as a result of the bank needing to retain the 5%, reducing their [...]
In a letter today, Jeffrey Wheeler announced that he is stepping down from his role of President and Chief Operating Officer of Coldwell Banker United. Over the past five years Mr. Wheeler has successfully managed one of the great brokerages South Carolina, among the best Coldwell Banker franchises in the nation and around the world. Real Trends ranks Coldwell Banker United as the 4Th largest brokerage in America. Although details of the next chapter of Wheeler’s life was not detailed in the letter, you can imagine that he will continue to deliver his brand of inspired leadership [...]
Real Estate agents are mighty in numbers and skilled in communicating thier services to consumers. Eventhough many are critical of REALTORS, they are leaders in many ways - social media being one of them. Today Roost announced that they are planning to extend the same services they provide to real estate agents to other professional ranks. Here is the letter announcing their expansion. I’m very excited today to announce the next generation of Roost.com. We’ve taken everything we’ve learned in the last year of building Social Marketing products for Real Estate brokers and agents and put it into this product. And [...]
LPS launched their new real estate group website over the weekend.Http://www.lpsreg.com. The site is rich with information for their four primary product consumers: Brokers & Franchisors; Real Estate Agents; MLS; Data and Media. Drilling into any product group allows you to visualize the solutions. This is an interesting tactic - they are focused on solutions rather than products. Once a user selects the solution that meets their needs, the products that fill that need appear. I like the site. Hugely improved over the last site. 1000Watt Consulting worked with LPS to put all of the pieces together, even added some [...]
I am exactly 111 pages into Gary Vaynerchuck’s new book, The Thank You Economy. The book talks about the role that Social Media plays in corporations. Usually a good business book gets my juices going on page 1. This one took me awhile to find a new thought. Nevertheless - I would say that the book is a must read. As the earlier post suggests (I was Linkedin user 153,000ish), I am bullish on social media. My passion dates back to my first electronic rolodex, then to my first palm pda, and so on and so forth. I like to [...]
Mobile Search has been a keynote service by MLSs now for many years. The first platform that saw significant adoption was Most Home (now called Kurio). With the emergence of the smartphone, the Mobile Search industry has sprouted mobile search companies like weeds. RE Technology has a list of80 companies providing mobile applications. The typical business model for MLSs purchasing mobile applications is a fee per member per month. Some service providers offer a basic version and a pro version for those who want to generate non-dues revenue. Today, Smarter Agent looks to change all of that. They are launchiing [...]
Trulia provided WAV Group with information about their Trulia Direct Reference product today. They have 3 MLSs who intend to put the solution into beta. The goal of the program is to improve data accuracy at Trulia by accessing a data file from the MLS to match against the Trulia data set. WAV Group has echoed the outspoken disappointment that brokers have about data quality on third party websites. This program provides a thesis to help clear up the problem, but questions remain - namely - will the MLS data trump other business rules? Will participation in the program remove [...]
Over the past few weeks I have been doing a lot of work with both vendors, brokers and agents evaluating different technologies. In some cases this involved helping vendors improve their products and on the other side involved helping brokers and agents choose new products. Something that hit me over and over again in both cases was the fact that our industry has over engineered products over and over again. Why? Because we don’t really listen to what users want. We think we know better. We understand all of the complex features that need to be included in websites, and [...]
I just returned from speaking at the Leading Real Estate Companies of the World conference in Las Vegas. Leading RE is an amazing group of independent brokerages from across the nation and the world. The Leading RE network represents the largest non-franchise organizations from every marketcenter - I think they have about 600 broker members. Admittedly, my talk to the brokers likely represented the most boring session at the conference - Data Licensing, Listing Syndication, and an explaination of new IDX policies from the NAR MLS Policy committee. Notwithstanding, a few hundred broker owners joined the meeting indicating that they [...]
WAV Group facilitates dozens of MLS strategic plans each year. Once resounding question heard from Associaiton Shareholders and Broker Participants is “How do we generate more non-dues revenue outside of our ranks.” Last night, a new revenue source came to mind. As we all understand, distributing listings to IDX vendors and managing IDX contracts is heavy lifting. Most MLSs charge vendors anywhere from $500 in small MLS markets to $10,000 per year in large markets for RETS access to MLS data. Agents and brokers bear this fee as an added cost of the services they buy from vendors. What did [...]
Whats next for real estate? Back in the olden days, just after the MLS book lost its appeal and was replaced by the MLS - a rather interesting new product launched for agent and broker websites called IDX - internet data exchange. The idea behind it was that broker participants of an MLS could display the listings of other participating brokers on each other’s websites. This led to an explosion of broker websites. Everyone has one. After awhile, democratically minded MLS boards gave consideration to the agents and extended IDX privileges to them in most markets, as long as the [...]
