We’re Losing the Race for Relevance – How to Stem the Tide

Idea #1 - How to Take Credit for the Industry’s Service Quality Every real estate association I have the pleasure of working with is struggling with how to re-invent themselves. Everybody knows it’s a problem at some level, but yet there has been no fundamental change in the focus, governance or scope of associations in several years. Are we just going to sit by and watch the association business go away?  Should it go away?  Has the value of an association run its course? My fundamental belief is that Associations CAN and DO play an important role in the industry, [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:24:01-07:00August 25th, 2014|Broker-Agent Information, Main category, MLS Insights, Reports|Comments Off on We’re Losing the Race for Relevance – How to Stem the Tide

Greater Alabama MLS Chooses ListTrac for Seller Reports

  Greater Alabama MLS and ListTrac put out a joint press release that you will find below. ListTrac is free, which makes it an attractive product for any MLS. We are keeping a close eye on them to see how it goes. Today, the voice of real estate seems to be the publisher sites - nobody is counting the traffic in the MLS or IDX sites. However, we know from looking at MLS activity, auto-email, MLS consumer website traffic, and, IDX site traffic that - if measured, equates to some significant consumer listing engagement. Under NDA, WAV Group has seen [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:24:02-07:00August 12th, 2014|Main category, Press Releases, Reports|3 Comments

Your Spam Filter May Be a Lead Source

Leads sometimes come from humans. That’s a light joke. The point it is that when technology companies test lead capture and routing systems, they typically test them with stock lead content. Unfortunately, many real human leads do not contain stock text. Real humans write real questions and sometimes use language that may not be whitelisted for your spam filter. **It happens! One of the good ways to check your lead generation and a delivery engine is to compare reports. Look at the lead reports that you get from publishers like Trulia, Zillow, Realtor.com or Homes.com. Look at them carefully and [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:24:03-07:00July 23rd, 2014|Broker Technology Research, Broker-Agent Information, Main category, Marketing, Reports|Comments Off on Your Spam Filter May Be a Lead Source

Video Marketing – Becoming Mainstream

With all the marketing tools at your disposable, what should you use to stand out from the competition? Staying ahead of the curve allows you to maximize your marketing ROI and attract new clients. We are all looking for the secret sauce – the way to differentiate our business from the pack and gain a strong leadership position that none of our competitors will ever be able to match. While we can dream, we can never realize this goal unless we continually look for ways to re-invent our business. To be a star in real estate, we always need to [...]

Value of Buyers Agent Diminishing, Study Reveals

WAV Group has had the pleasure of working with the Houston Association of REALTOR®’s Consumer Research Panel for over a year now. The panel has helped the organization uncover many meaningful insights that have helped share technology strategies, advocacy efforts, and educational efforts. Today, the Houston Association of REALTORS® released the findings of their “DIY: Do It Yourself” consumer research panel study. The purpose of the study was to gauge how important Houston area consumers feel agents are to the transaction.  The survey, which was fielded to the 7,000 consumers that are now a part of the industry’s largest consumer [...]

WAV Group Releases Broker Technology Adoption and Satisfaction Study

WAV Group partner Victor Lund is pleased to release the results of our recent survey to measure what technologies brokers have adopted and how satisfied they are with each. The survey also measured how likely a firm is to replace a technology supplier in 2014. In order to understand how technology plays a role by size of firm, answers were collected in ten groups ranging from firms with 1-9 agents to firms with more than 1500 agents. This report is provided to the industry with our compliments. WAV Group performs this type of research across the real estate industry to [...]

A Potential New Role for the MLS

The home buying process and obtaining a mortgage are inextricably linked. The Mortgage industry has been pushed to the forefront by the recent mortgage crisis, marked by unprecedented rates of loan delinquencies, defaults, and foreclosures.  Recent studies on this topic cite various causes, including risky product offerings, economic conditions, a housing price bubble, adverse selection, and questionable marketing practices Today, MLS organizations are positioned to play a much broader role through their network of subscribers to leverage technology to make the process of buying and selling a home much more efficient and effective. Some of the most innovative MLS organizations [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:24:15-07:00March 13th, 2014|Main category, MLS Insights, Reports, Technology Evaluation|Comments Off on A Potential New Role for the MLS

Agent Responsiveness Study Reveals Critical Flaws in Real Estate Lead Response

A new whitepaper reveals that failure to respond to leads in a timely manner is a major problem for many real estate professionals. The whitepaper is the result of the collaboration between partners at leading consulting firm WAV Group and Weichert Lead Network, the Internet lead generation arm of Weichert, Realtors. What they uncovered was remarkable and could help real estate professionals achieve new levels of service and prosperity. Download the complete report here. In the whitepaper, WAV Group details lead responsiveness results from a sample of 384 different brokers across 11 states. Researchers posed as consumers and inquired about [...]

It’s Time to Re-invent the Search

There’s a fundamental problem in the real estate business today. Since time immemorial real estate ‘searches’ have utilized a property-centric approach that ignores the other 50 percent of the business: the buyers. In the real estate industry, we focus so much on displaying listings hoping to attract a buyer without spending nearly enough time and resources to analyze and understand the market segment that are the drivers of the purchase. This is also symptomatic of the industry’s fundamental focus on the needs of agents, not consumers. Doesn’t it make more sense to focus on the needs of the consumer? The [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:24:27-07:00September 10th, 2013|MLS Insights, Reports, Technology Evaluation|2 Comments

Call for MLS Technology Survey Participants

WAV Group will be fielding the third annual WAV Group MLS Technology survey in September.  We are inviting all MLSs to take part.  This is a free, non-sponsored survey we provide for the benefit of the industry.  The more participation we have the more valuable the data will be for everyone. There is no cost to participate. Each participating MLS will in turn receive three reports: National Results for all MLSs Your Vendor Specific Results (i.e., All results from users of MLXchange); Your MLS Member results in a system generated report Your MLS will receive the reports prior to the [...]

By |2017-12-27T16:47:54-08:00August 15th, 2013|Clients, Main category, MLS Insights, Our Company, Our Services, Reports, Technology Evaluation|Comments Off on Call for MLS Technology Survey Participants

WAV Group Releases 2013 Broker Website Effectiveness Study

Contact:  Victor Lund, Author for: WAV Group 2013 Broker Website Effectiveness Study Phone & Fax. 805.709.6696 Email: victor@wavgroup.com Arroyo Grande, CA July 25th, 2013 – WAV Group (www.WAVGROUP.com), industry leaders of technology, strategic planning, research, business and product development, sales and marketing in the real estate industry, today released a whitepaper entitled “2013 Broker Website Effectiveness Study.” The whitepaper, written by WAV Group, surveyed the Google Analytics accounts of broker websites representing 7,500,000 monthly visitors as the subject for insight on consumers accessing broker websites, and also garnered insights on the impact of social media, mobile, listing syndication and search [...]

Managing Your Training Department

Training, support, and customer service are key features to any organization in real estate. Although these are three separate functions in large organizations, they typically are handled by one or two departments in most real estate organizations. For the purpose of this article, we will discuss this as one department, Training. WAV Group encourages the discipline of measuring satisfaction with the training department whenever a real estate organization performs focus groups, telephone interviews, or user surveys. Frequently the primary reason for dissatisfaction with a product or service is grounded in some part by poor training. Real estate is an adult [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:24:39-07:00March 23rd, 2013|Broker-Agent Information, Main category, MLS Insights, Our Services, Reports|Comments Off on Managing Your Training Department