CoreLogic Expands Real Estate Division with Clareity Purchase

Exciting news was announced today! Clareity has been purchased by CoreLogic. CoreLogic purchased the security company and the consulting company. Gregg and the entire Clareity team became part of the CoreLogic family effective today. WAV Group congratulates both companies. What it means for the industry….. I reached out to a few people to get their opinions and here is what I found. Inman News Summary – For the most part, this acquisition will be business as usual for all clients of Clareity. For obvious reasons, a lot of the comparative services that Clareity has provided will be carefully considered – [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:22:42-07:00August 8th, 2017|Main category|0 Comments

Redfin Case Study Shows that Web Traffic does Not Drive Sales

If you ask any REALTOR® about the relationship between online website traffic and sales volume, they will tell you that there is a direct relationship. The conviction among Realtors® is that companies that have the most amount of consumer website traffic sell the most amount of homes. This belief has stirred the root of Realtor® emotions, causing them to vilify the Zillow Group. A new entry of concern is Redfin®, a company that has long battled with Zip Realty® for online website domination. Redfin’s IPO has been a great success that is causing competing brokers to contemplate their future in [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:22:42-07:00August 8th, 2017|Main category|0 Comments

zavvie Breaks with the Status Quo at the Big Tech Show

Inman Connect SF is next week, and it’s so great to see the spirit and spunk that a startup called zavvie is bringing to our industry’s biggest real estate tech conference. The headline of the news release they issued this week touting their appearance at Connect SF: “Real Estate Startup zavvie Breaks with the Status Quo at the Big Tech Show.”  The subhead is nearly as sassy: “Taps Top Pros for Inman Connect to Educate Agents, ‘Debunk’ Tech Hyperbole.” Turns out zavvie will be at Startup Alley and they are sponsoring one of the coveted “Learning Lab” tracks in Parlor 8 at [...]

By |2018-08-20T12:55:51-07:00August 3rd, 2017|Main category|0 Comments

Imprev Hosts Stellar Learning Labs at Inman Connect SF

One of the greatest innovations that Brad Inman added to Inman Connect in recent years is a hidden treasure that not everyone may be aware of: the Learning Labs. These are held on Wednesday and Thursday afternoons, August 9 and 10, from 2:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. Learning Labs have become, in my experience, one of the best places where agents and brokers can learn tangible business practices that can be implemented immediately. A company that perfected the Learning Lab concept out of the gate is Imprev, a pioneering sponsor of the Inman Labs. Imprev, America’s largest real estate marketing [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:22:43-07:00August 2nd, 2017|Main category|0 Comments

BrokerSumo’s Simplified Commission Management Platform Helps Brokers and Teams Retain Top Agents

Sacramento, California—August 1, 2017— BrokerSumo, a leading back office, commission management and accounting platform for real estate brokerages and agent teams, is helping smaller brokers and real estate teams compete successfully for top producers by simplifying the management of commissions to make sure they are paid accurately and promptly. As real estate agents change firms faster than ever,[1] keeping accurate and current commission data has required spreadsheets and manual calculations, and even the largest agencies with IT staff and full-time accounting support struggle to keep agents happy.  Small, independent brokers and real estate teams have been at a competitive disadvantage for attracting [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:22:43-07:00August 1st, 2017|Main category|0 Comments

Ben did it again: A Look at America’s #1 REALTOR®

America’s number one real estate agent isn’t from Manhattan or Beverly Hills. You won’t find him when you’re filing through the programming guide for HGTV, and he’s never graced the cover of Real Estate magazine. He doesn’t cater to the rich and famous. Ben Caballero is the broker-owner of HomesUSA.com®, based in Addison, Texas, and sells new homes to Texans for more than 60 top builders in Dallas-Ft. Worth, Houston, Austin and San Antonio. Ben is not only arguably, real estate’s most successful agent, he may well be its most unconventional one. The World’s Most Successful Agent On the success side, [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:22:43-07:00July 25th, 2017|Main category|0 Comments

Don’t Miss Leveraging High-Quality Content to Engage Online Consumers

WAV Group will be hosting a free webinar on August 1st at 10:00 am PDT focused around how MLSs like the Georgia MLS and leading brokers like Century 21 Dumont are leveraging video to drive consumer engagement. The webinar is designed to address the needs of MLSs and Large brokers with more than 100,000 website visits a month. If you operate a big site, you will want to attend. We will hear about how MLSs and brokers are partnering with This Old House, and how they are leveraging their extensive library to enhance the consumer experience, extend visitor time on site, [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:22:44-07:00July 17th, 2017|Broker-Agent Information, Main category|0 Comments

Did you miss RESO, RETS Standards, and You: News from the RESO Certification Front?

MLS data services for brokers, agents, and their technology providers are changing at a very rapid pace. The RETS Standards that are used by an estimated 97% of IDX and VOW solutions are converting to the RESO Web API. Being informed about this conversion is vital to the effective management of data feeds. WAV Group Partner, Victor Lund is joined by CEO of the Real Estate Standards Organization, Jeremy Crawford as he discussed the challenges and opportunities he’s hearing first-hand from brokers and technology vendors as they move toward receiving standard feeds. Did you know that RESO certification must be [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:22:44-07:00July 13th, 2017|Main category|0 Comments

Zillow Protects Broker Data

WAV Group supports brokers and MLSs in constructing data licensing agreements with users of data records that belong to the broker. When a company like Zillow ingests broker data, likeZILLOW340x230 all recipients, they must adhere to the data license agreement which typically requires that you cannot allow the data to be used by a third party. The blog McMansionHell.com is learning the hard way that using data from Zillow without proper authority is a copyright violation that Zillow will pursue. Not only will Zillow pursue the violation, but they may be contractually bound to pursue the violation. The media around the case is [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:22:44-07:00June 28th, 2017|Main category|0 Comments

Chalk’s “The Confident House Hunter” Wins National Book Award

  We told you about “The Confident House Hunter: A Home Inspector’s Tips for Finding Your Perfect House” by America’s new favorite home inspector Dylan Chalk just before it hit the bookstores and Amazon last year. Well, Dylan just won the Silver Award at the 11th Annual Robert Bruss Real Estate Book Awards, held during the National Association of Real Estate Editors (NAREE) conference in Denver last week. In my column from July of last year, I called his book a breakthrough in capturing “A Better, Different Way to Buy” a home. Now he has won one of the highest awards for real estate authors available. The [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:22:45-07:00June 21st, 2017|Main category|0 Comments

Zillow is a Broker – So What?

“Berkshire Hathaway Home Services, NRT, Redfin – all brokers. Do brokers drop out of IDX because they are selling homes in their market? Brokers share their listings with these large firms everyday. If Zillow joins the list, what’s the diff?” This is the conversation starter that an investment banker had with me today. I appreciate having conversations with people in the capital markets. Bankers see the world differently. They believe that markets shape themselves and that great companies lead markets. Perhaps Zillow Group has its heart in its current service offerings today. The company protests against becoming a brokerage, but [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:22:45-07:00June 21st, 2017|Main category|0 Comments

Did Zillow® Open the Door to Their Own Demise?

One of the greatest philosophers of all time was Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831). For brevity, let’s call him Hegel and be thankful to the University of Berlin where he lectured. I will suspend with the deep philosophy I learned in college and summarize Hegel as the author of a triad of historical development referred to thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. In our observation, the MLS is the thesis, Zillow® is the antithesis, and what happens next will be the synthesis. Moreover, I will argue that Zillow may have opened the door to their demise with the Instant Offers™ test. Thesis [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:22:45-07:00June 14th, 2017|Main category|0 Comments