MLSListings Offers RatePlug’s New Mortgage Technology to California Brokers & Agents

Many real estate brokers have modified their strategy with their mortgage affiliations as banks have fled the JVs and other joint arrangements. This has opened the door to MLSs like MLS Listings to partner with RatePlug to display live mortgage rates from leading local lenders. Let’s face it, for most families, it’s not the price of the home but rather the monthly payment that triggers affordability. Agents who can secure the lowest interest rates for their clients can leverage that to put deals together. A great thing about RatePlug is that brokers can invite their mortgage partners to display their rates [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:23:15-07:00May 10th, 2016|Broker-Agent Information, MLS Insights|0 Comments

CoreLogic unveils Trestle: Industry’s first “Data Mart” for MLS content

CoreLogic has unveiled Trestle. Here are the details on the real estate industry’s first “Data Mart” for MLS content, not to mention ongoing RESO compliance – huge news: IRVINE, Calif. —CoreLogic® (NYSE: CLGX), a leading global property information, analytics and data-enabled services provider, announced today the upcoming release of Trestle™ by CoreLogic, a software solution suite that will fundamentally change the offering of multiple listing service (MLS) data to brokers and their vendors. Trestle will be the real estate industry’s first “data mart” to benefit brokers, their technology partners, and the MLSs in which they participate. Chris Bennett, general manager of [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:23:16-07:00May 5th, 2016|MLS Insights, Press Releases|0 Comments

Tech Helpline Offers A Great Suggestion for Agents: Make Internet Explorer your old browser

Tricia Stamper is the Director of Technology Products at Florida Realtors and helps run both Form Simplicity, their popular paperless transaction management software, and Tech Helpline, the #1 help desk for real estate agents and brokers. Tech Helpline is really the “Genius Bar” for real estate if you look at a) how popular it is (600k+ Realtors reached in North America) and b) ask anyone who has had to use the service in a crisis to save a deal what great service they provide. Tricia posted a Blog the other day that is the dream of software developers — not [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:23:16-07:00May 4th, 2016|Broker-Agent Information, MLS Insights|0 Comments

Drip Training

I love a morning call with a report of success. A broker that I am working with moved their chips around the board, renewing a core vendor agreement and adding five new services without any incremental costs. Bust out the champagne, right? Not so fast. The panic moment hits you when you understand that you will be launching five new products. A few of them are background products that support the operation of the brokerage – accounting type stuff. But a few of them are consumer launches and agent launches. Put the champagne away and start to whiteboard out the [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:23:17-07:00April 28th, 2016|Broker-Agent Information, MLS Insights|0 Comments

REDPLAN™ Partners with CMLS

REDPLAN is a non-profit organization of brokers, technology companies, associations of REALTORS® and MLSs who have joined together to protect the copyrighted materials and intellectual property rights of our industry. The organization supports the pursuit of data pirates, scrapers, and other participants of the black market of real estate data. Victor Lund of WAV Group joined the REDPLAN board last year. “REDPLAN is focused on the most important issue in real estate today, protecting the industry’s data,” says Lund. “There are some MLS and brokerage organizations who are very hygienic with their data protections, but most are not. REDPLAN aims [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:23:17-07:00April 26th, 2016|MLS Insights, Press Releases|0 Comments

Blow Away Your Broker Profit Goals

Top 5 Reasons to Leverage MLS Listing Data in Your Brokerage Today MLS data can make a lot of the systems in a brokerage work more smoothly and can create new ways to serve the needs of your clients while helping your brokerage be more competitive. I have been working a lot recently with brokers who are finding new ways to provide better service to their agents, sellers and home buyers by integrating their systems with MLS data in new and meaningful ways. Here are five benefits of integrating your systems with MLS data and how they can help your [...]

Be Uncomfortable

It is pretty well known that Google is now Alphabet – a re-imagined company that is comprised of a variety of businesses around the focus of organizing the world’s information to make it universally accessible and useful. Building a new brand on top of Google was an uncomfortable decision, but there is much to be learned from it. The Alphabet Companies (full list here) Google – Search Engine, Android, Gmail, and YouTube Calico – Healthcare company aimed at extending life Verily – Smart contact lenses X Labs – Research and Development Deep Mind – Artificial Intelligence Access – high-speed internet Jigsaw [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:23:17-07:00April 20th, 2016|Broker Technology Research, MLS Insights|0 Comments

Fox and Roach Reports Success With Buyside

There are a lot of technology applications that look promising, none more so than the recent launch of their Home Valuation System on foxroach.com powered by Buyside™. Fox and Roach is the largest Berkshire Hathaway Home Services company. Their offices cover many regions including Southeastern Pennsylvania, Southern New Jersey and Delaware. In WAV Group broker website effectiveness studies, BHHS Fox & Roach ranks in the top 10 for the most traffic of any broker in America. Last month, they launched the Home Valuation System, built by Buyside™ that created a landing page for every off- market property and IDX listings [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:23:17-07:00April 20th, 2016|Broker Technology Research, MLS Insights|0 Comments

3 Ways for MLSs to Frustrate and Alienate Brokers

SOLDS, VOWS and the RESO Data Dictionary are NOT Optional for MLSs Some MLSs are creating unnecessary and even illegal challenges for their brokers as well as for the technology suppliers that support their brokers, by not complying with NAR rules…some of which that have been in place for YEARS! I hear regularly from brokers and technology vendors that they run into roadblocks all the time when they try to access SOLDs for their IDX feed, a Virtual Office Website (VOW) data feed and most recently, the RESO Data Dictionary dataset. I’m going to start with a little history lesson [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:23:18-07:00April 20th, 2016|Broker Technology Research, MLS Insights|0 Comments

Upstream Update From CMLS

CMLS gets the scoop on this latest UpstreamRE release. Kathy Condon of CMLS was able to connect with UpstreamRE spokesperson Craig Cheatham to catch up on the progress made on the development side in the first three months of the year since the vendor agreement was signed. As a reminder, CMLS is hosting a “bring it to the table” meeting on Tuesday, May the 10th in Washtington D.C. For those of you attending the NAR Midyear meetings – you may want to fly in a day early for this meeting. It’s one of the best ways to get a 360 [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:23:18-07:00April 12th, 2016|MLS Insights|0 Comments

The New Process for RFPs in Real Estate

This change was caused by a quiet revolution. During the Y2K surge that transitioned software from mainframe to browser, there was recognition that the old process of software development was too bureaucratic, slow, and overly regimented. An alternative to traditional project management that emerged in the early 2000s is called Agile software development. They use terms like Scrum, Extreme Programing, Dynamic System Development Method, Feature-Drive Development and many others. The overarching focus of all of these methodologies is to deliver frequent, high quality working software, delivered in “sprints,” which are measured in weeks, not months. The result is continuous improvement. [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:23:19-07:00March 30th, 2016|Broker Technology Research, MLS Insights|0 Comments

Is Real Estate Still in a Slump?

After the crash in the housing market, real estate was hit by the worst recession in our nation’s history. Frankly, brokers took a beating and operated at a loss for a number of years. Since the low point, things have been steadily been improving. There was a lot of speculation that the foreclosure volume in the hardest hit markets were clogging up the supply side. As we turned the corner, these distressed properties were slowly released into the marketplace and they are mostly absorbed. There was a two to three year heyday for brokers and agents who specialized in REO [...]