Howard Hanna and William E Wood Join Together

In a press release today, Howard Hanna and William E Wood have reached an agreement whereby Howard Hanna has purchased William E Wood. The Hanna family of companies now reaches from Michigan through Ohio, down through Pennsylvania extending into Virginia and the Carolinas. Following their successful acquisitions of the past with Smythe Cramer, Realty One, Edward Surovell Realtors and others. They do not have any plans to make changes at William E. Wood. The executive team will remain in place along with the brand. William E Wood is a great company and the Hanna's intended to work hard to keep [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:24:19-07:00January 9th, 2014|Broker Technology Research, Main category, Press Releases, Strategic Planning|0 Comments
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FBI Overstates Mortgage Fraud

President Obama's administration released a report from a year long mortgage fraud initiative conducted by the FBI. This probably hits home with many MLS who have been cooperating with FBI investigators who are using MLS data to detect potential fraud. Sadly, the report was found to be way, way out of line, overstating the scope of the problem by significant margin. According to the initial report, the FBI indicated that they had criminally charged 530 people. The restated report indicated that they only charged 107 people. According to he initial report, the FBI indicated that total losses from the fraud [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:24:30-07:00August 12th, 2013|Main category, MLS Insights|0 Comments
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Roost to share real estate lessons with other professionals

Real Estate agents are mighty in numbers and skilled in communicating thier services to consumers. Eventhough many are critical of REALTORS, they are leaders in many ways - social media being one of them. Today Roost announced that they are planning to extend the same services they provide to real estate agents to other professional ranks. Here is the letter announcing their expansion. I’m very excited today to announce the next generation of Roost.com.  We’ve taken everything we’ve learned in the last year of building Social Marketing products for Real Estate brokers and agents and put it into this product.  And [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:25:46-07:00March 29th, 2011|Broker-Agent Information, Main category|0 Comments
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The entire real estate industry is retiring!

I was reviewing the 2010 National Association of REALTORS Member Profile today and noticed a very alarming fact!  The real estate industry is retiring! Not only has the average age of REALTORS moved from 51 to 54 year old.  While the number of REALTORS that are 60 or older has risen 32% in the past four years, the number of REALTORS that are 39 years old and younger has actually DECREASED 21%!   Not only is the industry concentrated on those that are nearly retirement age, we are LOSING those that are in their prime producing years!   Most MLSs and Associations [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:25:50-07:00March 5th, 2011|Main category|0 Comments
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Google is not out of the real estate listings business

The last few days have been full of Google noise in the real estate blogs and media. From our perspective, it has been a bit comedic. Google made a post on their blog about shutting down Google Base and everyone went into shock. Google Base was never a great idea. It was a project to aggregate real estate listing data because they could not get the listings by their standard methods - indexing. At the time that Google Base was created, Google Robots and Spiders were blocked from indexing real estate listings on nearly all property search websites. Realtor.com blocked [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:25:54-07:00January 29th, 2011|Broker-Agent Information, Main category|0 Comments
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Divided we get conquered!

Can’t we all just get along? Last week at Inman Connect in New York City, I was invited to share the Top 5 questions MLSs should address in the next year.  I reserved one of my five points to one of the key dysfunctions I have observed in our industry - Internal Squabbling.   As the market gets tighter and budgets gets strained, we see more and more examples of discord between real estate organizations supposedly all designed to serve the needs of real estate professionals.  In some regions we see local real estate associations engaging in predatory practices, trying [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:25:54-07:00January 22nd, 2011|Broker-Agent Information, Main category, MLS Insights|0 Comments
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Real Estate Forms are falling apart

As a consulting firm, we see the best and the worst sides of our industry. We see cooperation among likeminded people moving the industry forward, and we see what happens when those same likeminded people begin to disagree. It is not our station to pick sides, but rather like an attorney or a doctor, we advise our clients on the best way to win or get well. On the issue of forms, WAV Group is not on either side - but a mess is a foot; and profit may come in the way of progress. There are a couple of [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:25:54-07:00January 21st, 2011|Main category, MLS Insights|0 Comments
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Are you the “right” kind of board member for your MLS? Is your heart in the right place?

On a recent business trip, I read a book called The No Asshole Rule:  Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving On that Isn’t by Robert Sutton, PHD and Stanford Professor. It is a delightful quick read that demonstrates that “a__holes” destroy companies and the people they mistreat.  Seems obvious enough, but often the “a__holes” are also power mongers who frequently succeed in life (Steve Jobs, for example, is rumored to be one of these!) After finishing the book, I opened the window and took a few pictures of the Grand Canyon, then considered the plight of the MLS CEO. As an [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:25:58-07:00November 11th, 2010|Main category|0 Comments
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Get inspired to use social media to expand your real estate influence

Whenever I need a little boost to remind me how important active participation in social media is, I refer back to the phenomenal video produced by the Socialnomics group. Their video entitled the Social Media Revolution(Refresh) graphically depicts the fundamental shift in the way the world communicates and creates relationships these days.  Those that choose to ignore social media are choosing to ignore a very interesting and important conversation happening with friends and colleagues you know and many you don’t.  The video will help you understand why we cannot ignore social media anymore - it has pervaded every element of our lives. I [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:25:58-07:00November 11th, 2010|Main category|0 Comments
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Divorce and Real Estate

WAV Group performs volumes of research for MLSs and Associations each year.  As part of collecting subscriber and member surveys, we also collect basic demographic data - Male or Female, Age, etc.  Much of this demographic information allows us to associate general age group trends of American demographics and apply them to our understanding of the culture within an MLS or Association.  We have never asked marital status, but I wonder what role that plays in understanding the mindset of today’s REALTOR. One of the research instutitions that we value for information is Pew Research Center.  Today they released a [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:26:06-07:00June 8th, 2010|Main category, MLS Insights|0 Comments
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