Welcome Back Mr Foley

What do you do when your $6B company (Fidelity) has an extra $1.5B in cash languishing in your bank accounts? You buy back a company (LPS) that you spun out and you start all over again. If you ever doubted the value of providing software and data services to the financial industry, Mr. Foley just answered it. He is now officially back in the MLS business…. Almost. Deal is not quite done. But wait, there is more. Foley is a self made Billionaire who may perhaps be best known for his personal investing in the wine industry – having purchased [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:24:35-07:00May 29th, 2013|Main category, MLS Insights|0 Comments

Zillow brings 1.2M listings out of the shadow

Since the housing market crash, there has been lots of discussion about shadow inventory. These are properties that are in bank foreclosure or pre-foreclosure that are making their way onto the market. Up until now, this inventory has been slowly released - perhaps strategically by banks who want to contain loss exposure - but more likely as a result of the slow process for foreclosure across America. The only thing slower than a bank's decision making process is the US Court system. Last week, Zillow - one of the three leading search portals in America began to display 1.2Million listings. [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:24:49-07:00October 29th, 2012|Broker Technology Research, Main category|3 Comments

LPS automates court cases

I guess that if you are a technology company that has been spending a lot of time in court rooms, you may as well make the best of it, and fix the court system while you are there. Just kidding. In all seriousness, LPS and CoreLogic have largely escaped all damages for thier role in supporting the bad decisions of lenders. That is a good thing. But LPS did just land a huge deal in their courthouse management systems. They were awarded the contract for managing documents on 425,000 court cases that roll through the Palm Beach County Clerk & Comptroller’s office each year. [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:25:09-07:00March 15th, 2012|Main category, MLS Insights, Press Releases|0 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. […]

The Bigger LPS Paragon 5 Story

LPS, developers of the Paragon MLS system, announced that they have secured an agreement to replace a competitors’ MLS system with Paragon 5. This only happens about 12 times each year. The news is less about just getting a win, but tells a larger story about the future of MLS and how one MLS vendor is positioning for long term success. WAV Group performs upwards of 40 MLS customer satisfaction surveys each year to help MLSs understand what agents and brokers expect from their MLS. The number one complaint is Apple compatibility and Mobile compatibility. LPS knew this many years [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:25:21-07:00December 1st, 2011|Main category, MLS Insights, Technology Evaluation|0 Comments

Great Vendors Embrace Rules

There has been a lot of conversational concern about companies that enter into new verticals of data management and service offerings. Four such instances were announced this year. REALTORS® Property Resource contracts with LPS for data services and LPS subcontracts to Real Estate Digital. Zillow purchased an IDX vendor, Diverse Solutions. MOVE purchased Threewide, the providers of the popular Listhub syndication service. CoreLogic launched a new appraisal tool leveraging MLS data. In every case, the vendor has been virtuous and adhered to contracts and data use rules. In each of these cases, many feared that data could be misused or [...]

Change hurts

Perhaps there is a new chief executive, a new business strategy, an MLS conversion, a new product launch, a merger, a new data share, or a dramatically altered competitive landscape, in the real estate world, big change means big risk. In other words, company performance may rise like a rocket or fall like a rock. The only thing it’s not likely to do is stay the same. Change may be inevitable, but big change is scary, nevertheless. And how you deal with it plays a big role in the outcome. In just the past few weeks, we’ve seen big change in the works [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:25:25-07:00October 28th, 2011|Main category|0 Comments

WAV Group Week in Review September 18 2011

The predominant buzz in real estate this week was focused on successful and unsuccessful buyouts. On the successful side of buyouts, a talented team of managing executives from LPS was able to complete a buyout of non-MLS products and form a new company called RED, an acronym for Real Estate Digital. In a more straightforward buyout, CoreLogic purchased MLS provider Tarasoft, rolling that system under their Marketlinx brand. On the unsuccessful side of buyouts, the Arizona State Association of REALTORS was unsuccessful in its bid to purchase the shares of ARMLS, its first leg in a course to develop a [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:25:28-07:00September 18th, 2011|Main category, MLS Insights|0 Comments

Real Estate Digital Spins Out of LPS Real Estate Group

Real Estate Digital (or RED), announced a management buy-out of select assets of LPS Real Estate Group and the formation of the new company. RED, the new privately-held corporation, will focus on the support of 12 core technology products offered to the real estate industry today: rDesk® Websites, rDesk®  CRM, rDesk®  CMA, rDesk®  IDX, Real Estate & Living Media®, reDataVault, TransactionPoint®, DocCentral, FormCentral, Data Aggregation System, Neighborhood and School Reports and MLS Portal. Executive leadership of the company includes current LPS Real Estate Group President Jay Gaskill, CTO John Hensley, CSO Prem Luthra, and CFO Mike Kovar. The company expects [...]

Marty Reed Promoted at LPS

WAV Group would like to extend a sincere congratulations to our friend, Marty Reed of LPS. LPS Executive Rich Lull announced today that Marty Reed has accepted a new position expanding her role with LPS Real Estate Group’s MLS business. “Marty and team has done an incredible job with the development and launch of Paragon 5, currently being deployed by LPS’s 200+ Paragon accounts, and being presented to a number of MLS’s for consideration for conversion,” says Lull. Effective immediately, Ms. Reed will assume the role of VP ParagonSolutions, taking on responsibility for P&L management of the Paragon suite of [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:25:31-07:00August 17th, 2011|Main category, MLS Insights|0 Comments

Product Manager Position

WAV Group has been commissioned by LPS Real Estate Group to hire a Product Management position located in Orange County, California for their rDesk platform. The ideal candidate for this position will be an enthusiastic individual that possesses that rare but valuable mixture of intellectual curiosity, business acumen, marketing savvy, technical proficiencies, strong communication skills, and attention to detail.  They will be able to drive a team to rally around a vision of a platform that uniquely meets the needs of real estate consumers and real estate practitioners better than its competitors. […]

By |2018-05-03T21:25:32-07:00August 5th, 2011|Clients, Main category, Product Management|0 Comments

Building Member Value with IDX and Websites

Across America, WAV Group has recognized that MLSs and Associations have been working with MLS vendors and IDX vendors to develop property search solutions for their members. These solutions are offered in one of three ways: Free, Freemium, and Premium. What follows is a basic description of how these programs are comprised along with a shortlist of MLSs and their partners.   Free: In some Associations or MLSs, the IDX solution is offered as a complimentary (free) product for agents and brokers. This is unconfirmed, but we think that Rapattoni may have the most subscribers to the free solution. Rapattoni [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:25:32-07:00August 4th, 2011|Main category, MLS Insights|0 Comments