Broker Owned Portal

I have had a lot of interesting conversations with Associations of REALTORS, Broker groups, MLSs and REALTORS about portals. The same conversation has gone on for years. Used properly, they can be productive tools for online marketing. Used poorly, they can be a problem. A chief concern among brokers is that they do not participate in the revenue from the success that portals have. Simply stated, brokers understand that content has value and they recognize that others are realizing that value on the backs of their data assets. Feel free to agree or disagree. Real estate brokers around the world [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:24:04-07:00June 24th, 2014|Broker-Agent Information, Main category, MLS Insights, Press Releases|Comments Off on Broker Owned Portal

Top 5 Articles of the Week

WAV Group partners, Mike Audet, Marilyn Wilson, and Victor Lund are founders of RE Technology and RETechnology.com. Today that site reaches 750,000 real estate agents and brokers through partnerships with more than 90 MLSs who deliver subscriptions to RE Technology as a member benefit. Each week, RE Technology publishes a notification to MLSs that lists the top 5 most heavily viewed articles of the week. This list goes out to our MLS partners who may, in turn, republish the articles in their own newsletter, blog, or develop content ideas for their training or communications programs. Below is the RE Technology [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:24:05-07:00June 24th, 2014|Broker Technology Research, Main category, Marketing, MLS Insights|Comments Off on Top 5 Articles of the Week

Move, Inc. Combats Attack on its Website Services To Restore Operations to Customers and Consumers

SAN JOSE, Calif., June 19, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Move, Inc., (NASDAQ:MOVE), a leading provider of online real estate services, reports that it is continuing to combat the distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack, which has interrupted its websites' operations since it began mid-day June 17. Move's technical team is working around-the-clock with the Prolexic division of Akamai Technologies, Inc., a leading DDoS mitigation service provider; other Internet security experts; and its network service providers to mitigate the attack and quickly restore operations. In connection with the attack, Move received a ransom demand, which it did not respond to. DDoS attacks [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:24:05-07:00June 20th, 2014|Main category, MLS Insights, Press Releases|Comments Off on Move, Inc. Combats Attack on its Website Services To Restore Operations to Customers and Consumers

Coming Soon Listings On Zillow

The cat is out of the bag. Zillow has gone where no MLS has gone before. They have embraced the broker and agent demand for pre-marketing listings. They are entering a place where Zillow will have listing content before listings become available. Consumers are going to love it, brokers and agents are going to love it, and MLSs are going to hate it. The program is called Coming Soon, and allows brokers and agents to market listings on Zillow up to 30 days before publishing it in the MLS. Clean lines and business rules are the cornerstones of the MLS [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:24:05-07:00June 13th, 2014|Main category|3 Comments

Technology Self Audit For Real Estate Companies

If you are a mega broker, with thousands of agents, you will have an IT department that watches over your software and technology infrastructure.  If you are a small or medium size broker, that chore usually falls to you, much like it does for us, in our consulting company.  We watch real estate technology on a daily basis and advise some of the best technology companies in the business on how to improve their product’s user interface, how to put together marketing and communication plans and many other services, and even for us, this is a daunting task.  Every time [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:24:09-07:00June 13th, 2014|Main category, MLS Insights, Technology Evaluation|Comments Off on Technology Self Audit For Real Estate Companies

The Triad of Consumers, People, and REALTORS

There were a few very interesting articles in the Washington Post this week. Unlike industry commentary about the Zestimate, this one took place in public. The Washington Post stirred the pot a bit, as only the politically divided would do so naturally. The battle was epic. At 5:30 AM, David Howell of McNearney Associates published a piece titled “How Accurate is Zillow’s Zestimate? Not very, says one Washington-area agent. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/where-we-live/wp/2014/06/10/how-accurate-is-zillows-zestimate-not-very-says-one-washington-area-agent/ At 5:31, Stan Humphries, Zillow Chief Economist responded in his article titles “How Accurate is the Zestimate? Zillow says the tool is helpful when used the right way.” http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/where-we-live/wp/2014/06/10/how-accurate-is-the-zestimate-zillow-says-the-tool-is-helpful-when-used-the-right-way/ You [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:24:10-07:00June 12th, 2014|MLS Insights, Press Releases|2 Comments

Top 5 Articles of the Week

WAV Group partners, Mike Audet, Marilyn Wilson, and Victor Lund are founders of RE Technology and RETechnology.com. Today that site reaches 750,000 real estate agents and brokers though partnerships with more than 90 MLSs who deliver subscriptions to RE Technology as a member benefit. Each week, RE Technology publishes a notification to MLSs that lists the top 5 most heavily viewed articles of the week. This list goes out to our MLS partners who may, in turn, republish the articles in their own newsletter, blog, or develop content ideas for their training or communications programs. Below is the RE Technology [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:24:10-07:00June 3rd, 2014|Main category, Marketing, MLS Insights|Comments Off on Top 5 Articles of the Week

FBS To Support MLS With Listing Syndication

Since listing data feeds came into existence, they have been the providence of MLS vendors like FBS and their peers. There are also controls that go down to the listing detail level that enables listings to be opted out of things like IDX (with written seller approval in most markets). In a blog post today, FBS CEO Michael Wurzer discusses this functionality that is delivered through a standard feature in FlexMLS called Listing Export. Arizona Regional MLS serving the greater Phoenix, AZ area is among the first FBS clients to use this functionality for a wide range of syndication to [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:24:11-07:00May 28th, 2014|Main category, MLS Insights|Comments Off on FBS To Support MLS With Listing Syndication

Broker AVMs

One of the core services of brokerages and their agents is pricing property. In the olden days, it was less scientific than it is right now. On an individual property, agents deliver CMAs or BPOs. Today, using MLS data, brokers are now automating their services. Sometimes this service is called Automated Valuation Modeling, or AVMs. There is a healthy and robust marketplace for AVMs in the financial services industry. Banks want to know the debt-to-equity ratio on homes they hold mortgages on. They also want to use AVMs as a method to validate home appraisals. The government uses AVMs 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

One Real Estate Tool You Have to Have!

If you are not using retechnology.com on a regular basis or have not logged in lately you are missing some great tools that can help you improve your real estate game immensely.  These are also free tools, the best kind! Over 650,000 agents have access to retechnology.com through their MLS, but not everybody is taking full advantage of this great tool and may not be aware of some of the outstanding features it offers.  Like users of most MLS systems, that only use 10% of what a MLS system can do, many use retechnology.com for certain things like getting information on a [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:24:16-07:00February 25th, 2014|Main category|Comments Off on One Real Estate Tool You Have to Have!

Hybrid Regionalization – Right For Your MLS?

We all know there are too many MLSs in the US and over the years the real market areas have expanded forcing agents to belong to multiple MLSs in many areas.  This means more costs, data inefficiencies and often the need to learn and operate multiple MLS systems.  It isn’t good for brokers, agents or consumers so why hasn’t their been more consolidation of MLSs more quickly? The answer, of course, is protectionism.   Even though consolidation would be in everyone’s best interest there is still a local desire to maintain control and identity at the MLS level.  Brokers also worry [...]