MLS Mobile Game Changer – Smarter Agent

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 [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:25:46-07:00March 24th, 2011|Broker-Agent Information, Main category, MLS Insights|Comments Off on MLS Mobile Game Changer – Smarter Agent
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Trulia Direct Connect

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 [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:25:46-07:00March 15th, 2011|Broker-Agent Information, Main category|Comments Off on Trulia Direct Connect
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Products that get adopted keep it simple! Vendors that make them, look and listen.

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 [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:25:46-07:00March 11th, 2011|Broker Technology Research, Broker-Agent Information, Main category, MLS Insights|Comments Off on Products that get adopted keep it simple! Vendors that make them, look and listen.
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The Real Goal of RPR and CoreLogic

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 [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:25:47-07:00March 11th, 2011|Broker-Agent Information, Main category, MLS Insights|Comments Off on The Real Goal of RPR and CoreLogic
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MLSs and Brokers miss out on revenue opportunity

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 [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:25:50-07:00March 7th, 2011|Broker-Agent Information, Main category|Comments Off on MLSs and Brokers miss out on revenue opportunity
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The next horizon for real estate websites

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 [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:25:50-07:00March 4th, 2011|Broker-Agent Information, Main category, MLS Insights|Comments Off on The next horizon for real estate websites
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Twitter for Real Estate continues to emerge

In the world of twitter, I feel like an ancient.  I started playing around with in June of 2007 and framed it up for the real estate industry in March of 2008 with a post calledTwitterstate: Twitter for real estate. That post has received 76,404 visits - making it one of the WAV Groups more popular posts. When did twitter launch? Twitter launched in July of 2006. WAV Group is not a social media consulting firm, but we understand it, we use it, and to a great extent, we encourage our customers to use social media to communicate to customers. [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:25:51-07:00February 22nd, 2011|Broker-Agent Information, Main category|Comments Off on Twitter for Real Estate continues to emerge
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Midwest Real Estate Data LLC (MRED) launches Cloud CMA

The following press release from Midwest Real Estate Data, LLC announces they are now offering Cloud CMA to their 40,000+ members.  Cloud CMA allows user to blend data from multiple sites such asGoogle, Zillow, education.com, Walk Score, and Yelp to create customized presentations.  Cloud CMA is web based so it can be launched from any computer or mobile device with web access. Midwest Real Estate Data LLC (MRED) launches Cloud CMA LISLE (February 16, 2011) - Midwest Real Estate Data LLC (MRED) has announced that W&R Studios’ Cloud CMA product is now live and fully integrated with its connectMLSTMsystem.  All [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:25:51-07:00February 17th, 2011|Broker Technology Research, Broker-Agent Information, Main category, MLS Insights|Comments Off on Midwest Real Estate Data LLC (MRED) launches Cloud CMA
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GSEs NAR Profit and Welfare

What happens next in the financial markets of the mortgage industry is up in the air. Our current system is a failure when markets go down. It cripples our industry, the financial markets, and millions of consumers. The National Association of REALTORS released their reform recommendations. As one of the chief lobbying groups in Washington DC, you can bet that government is listening. They highlight the issues. Government Sponsored Entities are problematic. Anytime you have an artificial business that shares profits when times are good, and gets bailed out by taxpayers when times are bad - risk of collapse is high. [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:25:51-07:00February 17th, 2011|Broker-Agent Information, Main category, MLS Insights|Comments Off on GSEs NAR Profit and Welfare
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Yardi takes over listing syndication of California Regional MLS

CRMLS, formerly MRMLS and participant in the Los Angles Data Sharing initiative “CARETS” has announced a partnership with Yardi Systems division, Point2. Under the partnership, Point2 will syndicate CRMLS lsitings on behalf of all 23 member associations and their 26,000 agent members. Point2 has indicated that they syndicate to 60 web portals. WAV Group favors listing syndication when done properly, and both Yardi(Point2) and Move (Listhub) are looking to clean up many of the issues that have not been addressed since the practice was first deployed by Threewide (Listhub). Syndication solves a real issue by removing the challenges to getting [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:25:51-07:00February 16th, 2011|Broker-Agent Information, Main category, MLS Insights|Comments Off on Yardi takes over listing syndication of California Regional MLS
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IRIS Mobile Announces New Mobile Suite

Press Release from Iris Mobile: Iris Mobile Enhances the Mobile Solutions for Today’s Real Estate Market Rolling Meadows, Illinois - February 14, 2011 - Iris Mobile Corporation, announced today that it has released an enhanced version of its suite of real estate mobile marketing solutions that includes text-messaging, web-to-mobile, QR codes, branded mobile apps, and branded mobile web marketing. Iris Mobile’s real estate product, Iris Listings, is currently available to REALTORs in Northern and Central Illinois and is growing its MLS partnerships. The enhanced Iris Listings now offers QR codes mobile marketing built seamlessly into the existing text-messaging marketing platform.  [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:25:52-07:00February 12th, 2011|Broker Technology Research, Broker-Agent Information, Main category, Press Releases|Comments Off on IRIS Mobile Announces New Mobile Suite
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Indexing is Scraping – Here is the Proof

I constantly find myself in arguments/debates about indexing vs. scraping of real estate listings from websites. Despite my blue face, the debate goes on. In an effort to provide evidence that indexing is scraping, I have created this summary and video that will provide evidence of my case. The importance of this discussion is to key into two conflicting issues related to MLS rules and regulations. Specifically, the MLS rules and regulations for IDX websites indicate that the website must try to prevent scraping, but indexing by recognized search engines is ok. I say potato, potato. They are the same [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:25:52-07:00February 12th, 2011|Broker-Agent Information, Main category, MLS Insights|Comments Off on Indexing is Scraping – Here is the Proof
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