Making Vendor Partnerships Work

The tragedy of software in real estate is lack of adoption by agents. Brokerage firms and MLSs who invest dearly in technology solutions start out with the hope that agents will use it and success will come. Since hope is not a strategy, more work is required to find success. First of all, there is a difference between a site license and a user license. As you enter into partnerships with vendors, consider user licenses. That will bind both the vendor and the company to a mutual goal of driving agent adoption of the application.  Companies should not pay license [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:23:25-07:00January 21st, 2016|Broker Technology Research, Main category, Our Services|0 Comments
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Stop Buying Technology

It’s the season. WAV Group is fielding satisfaction surveys to determine how agents and brokers use or don’t use technology offerings. We even encounter a curious situation where we are measuring satisfaction with broker solutions and MLS solutions in the same market. Sometimes the easiest answer to a strategy is the simplest. What WAV Group sees today is that less is more. Too many technology solutions is real estate have feature creep. Regardless if it is a broker CRM or the MLS system – they are too complex.  In real estate technology, usability trumps functionality. Change is Hard The most [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:23:27-07:00December 16th, 2015|Broker Technology Research, Main category|0 Comments
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Top 10 Ways to Become a Truly Broker-Centric MLS.

Ever since the now infamous Gripe List was published, MLSs have been scrambling to find out they can better serve their MLS Customers.  I was honored to moderate a panel of brokers at the highly successful RESO conference last week as part of the first business track. I asked them what they believe an MLS must do to become broker-centric. Since there is no official definition of what a broker-centric MLS is I thought I would take a crack at it to get the conversation going. The following list is a compilation of their answers along with interviews we conducted [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:23:29-07:00November 11th, 2015|Main category, MLS Insights|1 Comment
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Boost Your Member Satisfaction by offering RE Technology

Real estate agents and brokers are overwhelmed by technologies. Telemarketers pitching the latest and greatest gimmick inundate them. We have been changing this since 2010 and now serve 750,000 MLS and Association subscribers with straight shooting information. Let's meet at NAR to discuss this top rated solution for your area. Trust the Real Estate Technology Leader RE Technology is an online source where agents and brokers can learn about how to use technology to win more listings, sell homes more quickly, and maintain stronger relationships with past clients. Currently agents and brokers have access to thousands of articles and product [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:23:29-07:00November 11th, 2015|Broker Technology Research, Main category, Our Services|0 Comments
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Broker Public Portal Update – October 2015

Many participants in the Broker Public Portal project were in attendance at the Council of MLS annual meeting in Kansas City. It was an extraordinary event, and one could not walk away without a sense that brokers and MLSs are communicating and working together better today than ever before. The BPP, LLC leadership in attendance was able to have meetings with prospective and partner MLSs, providing status updates on our progress.  We also spent the day before the conference to make progress on two fronts – the data license workgroup and the technology workgroup. Data License Workgroup Update Representatives from [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:23:32-07:00October 27th, 2015|Main category|0 Comments
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Upstream Agent Record

Many assume that Upstream is only about listings. In fact, there are six database categories that are contemplated for the application that solve a lot of problems for brokers of any size. The Need For A Single Agent Record Depending on the brokerage, the Agent Record – their office address, office phone, bio, headshot, cell number, social media profile, et. al. Agent Records are used in a lot of applications across the brokerage. Here is a partial list, but a common list for a brokerage of 1 agent in 1 MLS market. Broker Website/Agent Website MLS MLS Consumer Site Mobile [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:23:32-07:00October 22nd, 2015|Main category|2 Comments
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Getting The Word Out Through Agents

WAV Group works with a number of different company types. We work with large brokerage and franchise organizations, technology firms, MLSs, and Associations of REALTORS. Our specialty is enterprise strategy and enterprise systems. For a long time now, we have seen our customer segments struggle with communications. “Agents Don’t Read” The chief complaint with communications in our industry is that agents don’t read. At WAV Group Communications we call that stinking thinking. Agents do read, but only things that they consider to be important to them. Most communications strategies are deployed through bulk email with open rates that rarely go [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:23:33-07:00October 15th, 2015|Broker Technology Research, Main category|0 Comments
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Better Market Reports

Graphs, Actives, Pendings, Recently sold, yadda, yadda. I have been reviewing the market reports across a variety of brokerages recently. They all seem to be missing the same little touch of information – an AVM. What Is A Market Report? The definition of a market report is hard to pin down. They are automated reports that tend to change based upon the state of the consumer. If the consumer is actively looking to buy or sell, the market report is like a listing alert. If the consumer is not in the market, the market report is like a stock portfolio [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:23:33-07:00October 13th, 2015|Broker Technology Research, Main category|0 Comments
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Brokers Must Immediately Audit Mobile

Mobile traffic is 50% for most brokers today. Sadly, the mobile solution that you purchased a year or two ago is probably behind the times. Not only does your website need to be “responsive” to any mobile browser, but you'd better have a damn good app too. The first thing that you should do is try it. Make sure that you download your app, and use it every time you need to look up something on property. Moreover, be sure to use the mobile browser. This consumer experience is lost on most brokerage operating principles. The second thing to do [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:23:33-07:00October 12th, 2015|Main category|1 Comment
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Broker Public Portal License Agreement

WAV Group is providing consulting services to the Broker Public Portal project. This project seeks the collaboration of MLSs and Brokerages in developing a national MLS consumer-facing website that adheres to the Fair Display rules for property search. Since starting the project in January, the company has developed and filed its LLC governance, elected the board of managers, and is running three parallel projects. The first two projects include Brand development (work contracted out to 1000watt Consulting), and Request for Proposal (being done by a workgroup of the Board). The third project is the development of the data license agreement [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:23:37-07:00August 11th, 2015|Broker Technology Research, Main category, Our Services|0 Comments
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Is Zillow A Great Broker?

Zillow is not a broker. Well, technically they are registered as a brokerage in many states and hold brokerage licenses, but they do not market themselves as a brokerage. The point is that they provide a lot of broker-like support for agents that are noteworthy and remarkable. There are plenty of brokers who can take a page out of their book and improve their business. Specifically, brokers can learn from the way that Zillow provides technology tools and communicates and trains agents. Wth the acquisition of of a transaction management solution they complete a broker-like set that includes agent websites [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:23:38-07:00July 23rd, 2015|Broker-Agent Information, Main category, Our Services|3 Comments
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Instanet Provides Remote Add-Edit to 100000 Agents

There has been a lot of discussion about the challenges of separating listing add/edit from MLS systems. This has long been the practice is many MLSs and this announcement today adds yet another to the list. Instanet Solutions Implements New Listing Upload Interface for NWMLS NWMLS members reduce redundant data entry using InstanetForms® in TransactionDesk® June 3rd, 2015 Austin, TX - Northwest Multiple Listing Service (NWMLS) members can now create an MLS listing from a listing input form in TransactionDesk®. With one click, the data entered in the listing input form is processed and uploaded to the MLS as an [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:23:43-07:00June 3rd, 2015|Main category, MLS Insights|1 Comment
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