Broker Technology Research Archives

Why Innovation Fails To Change Real Estate

Every year, real estate sees the launch of beautiful products, offering awesome features, advantages, and benefits. Excellent marketing programs back them and the press creates a jubilee – Innovator of the Year! Then the product launches, and the industry shrugs its shoulder. It is the conundrum of new product development and innovation for real estate. Most of these companies are doing everything right. They are doing research, spotting trends, holding focus groups, testing usability, and modeling lovely financials. If they can only get 1% adoption of this, or 3% of that, revenues will be awesome. There are 1 Million real [...]

By Victor Lund|2018-05-03T21:25:14-07:00February 21st, 2012|Broker Technology Research, How to Make Strategic Planning Really Work in your MLS, Main category, MLS Insights, Product Management, Strategic Planning, Suveys and Research, Technology Evaluation|9 Comments

Howard Hanna Syndication Announcement

Another shoe is going to drop today. Howard Hanna, one of America’s largest brokerages will announce their new listing syndication strategy. This is an important announcement because it brings forth a new chapter to the ongoing saga of finding an online advertising paradigm that balances the broker’s needs with the publisher’s needs, in the best possible way. Howard Hanna has spend the past 15 – 18 months studying. They study their website. They study the website of similar size brokerages. They have studied publisher websites. They became experts. Howard Hanna has been testing. Howard Hanna ran lots of experiments with [...]

By Victor Lund|2018-05-03T21:25:15-07:00February 13th, 2012|Broker Technology Research, Main category, Marketing, MLS Insights, Strategic Planning|8 Comments

Syndication as in insolent teen
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Syndication as in insolent teen

Broker Technology Research, Main category, MLS Insights, Strategic Planning

Syndication as in insolent teen

I received a call yesterday from a sage MLS executive. He saw the article in RE Technology about Sandicor adding a new syndication field into their MLS. We had discussed this a few years ago after some broker focus groups. At the time, the brokers did not seem to care too much about syndication, so the idea did not go anywhere. That changed. Adding the field is on the agenda at their next board meeting. He is probably not alone. Aside from that, he shared with me his vision for how syndication is going to play out in the long [...]

By Victor Lund|2018-05-03T21:25:15-07:00February 10th, 2012|Broker Technology Research, Main category, MLS Insights, Strategic Planning|11 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

Earthcomber sues real estate mobile app developers

Mobile real estate applications are the largest growth area in real estate technology. This is why so many people are attending online school to learn app development. Like anything expanding rapidly, there is big opportunity at stake, and pioneers who filed patents for methods of delivering mobile solutions are working hard to protect their intellectual property. We saw a similar pattern in real estate when mapping was experiencing great growth in real estate. As you may recall, that ended with the National Association of REALTORS® negotiating an industry wide settlement widely known as CIVIX. In that settlement, a combination of Associations, MLSs, and [...]

By Victor Lund|2018-05-03T21:25:16-07:00January 20th, 2012|Broker Technology Research, Main category, MLS Insights|Comments Off

How Listhub’s Real Estate Network Works

It is not uncommon for detailed questions to arise whenever there is major change afoot in the real estate industry regarding data. Listhub’s announcement of the launch of the Real Estate Network precipitated many questions regarding a broker’s ability to manage and control websites that display their data. The Listhub Real Estate Network includes the opportunity for any broker to publish listings on Century 21, Coldwell Banker, RE/MAX, and the Realty Executives websites. WAV Group has researched this topic of the Real Estate Network with executives from Listhub and we have great news to report. They did it right the [...]

By Victor Lund|2018-05-03T21:25:17-07:00January 17th, 2012|Broker Technology Research, Main category, MLS Insights, Strategic Planning, Technology Evaluation|5 Comments

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

New White Paper: What Does The Future Look Like For MLSs?

In this white paper, we explore what the future may look like for MLSs and steps they can take to make sure they position themselves ideally for their market. It’s not a one-size fits all answer. To download the complete report, click here! MLSs have come a long way over the years and we have seen what were once small, localized operations formed by associations and brokers morph into more and more large regional organizations. We have seen technology expand at exponential rates with the Internet and with that technology we have seen changes in the real estate market at [...]

By WAV Group|2018-05-03T21:25:18-07:00January 9th, 2012|Broker Technology Research, Main category, Reports, Strategic Planning|2 Comments

Smarter Agent throws arrow at Zillow and others

Brad Bloomberg of Smarter Agent is a fighter, and I like that. He takes a position and battles from his corner of the ring. Today, he released a blog post on their company website goes nose to nose with Zillow, Trulia and REALTOR.com. Given that his company is suing them all for patent infringement (another story) – they will never be friends anyway. But this new war is one about his view of listing syndication. Post Title : Listing Aggregators like Zillow, Trulia and Realtor.com can Erode the Value of your Business. The money quote: ……(syndication) “devalues the business of.. [...]

By Victor Lund|2018-05-03T21:25:18-07:00January 7th, 2012|Broker Technology Research, Main category, Marketing, Sales Advisory, Strategic Planning|3 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