Technology Adoption Strongest with Top Producers

MLSs face many decisions about what technology services to offer to their members.  Budgets are tight and decisions need to be better justified than ever before. MLS technology committees and leadership need to sift through hundreds of products and multiple presentations before deciding what types of products make the most sense for their members. It is a difficult and expensive task to provide meaningful, relevant and contemporary product offerings to help agents and brokers better serve the needs of their clients.  The first annual WAV Group MLS Technology Adoption study was designed help MLSs better understand the types of technologies being [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:24:50-07:00October 10th, 2012|Main category, Reports, Technology Evaluation|0 Comments

Great Companies Execute Effectively

Marilyn Wilson's post yesterday set off a storm. The DMV, known for its historically horrid service experience has changed their ways. They do a good job, at least here in San Luis Obsipo, CA. When WAV Group is providing strategic planning support to an MLS, Association, Technology company, or broker - we measure stuff. There is usually a comparison chart created that shows a checklist of features or service offerings that compares company or product A vs. company or product B, C, and D. This is an important exercise and the information drawn from this type of benchmarking is helpful [...]

RE Technology weekly traffic

In a way, RE Technology is a sand box for WAV Group. We get the opportunity to look at patterns of behavior and communications among real estate agents and brokers on a macro level and a micro level. Recently, we began to modify activities to determine how it may impact RE Technology readership. Our latest test was to change the time that the RE Technology daily digest goes out. The RE Technology daily digest is an interesting communication tool. Only agents who opt into getting the RE Technology newsletter receive it. Most agents choose to access RE Technology content through the message [...]

Defense of Commissions

American business is founded on the principal that pricing for a product or service is based upon what a willing seller will accept, and what a willing buyer will pay. This happens on an individual basis with each transaction, and price fixing is not allowed. Recently, Casey William Hyland who purchased a home from a Home Services of America brokerage, Semonin REALTORS brought a suit challenging the 6% commission rates on real estate transactions. His claim indicated that the 6% rate was price fixing and is a Sherman Anti Trust Act Violation. When there are multiple transactions of commerce, pricing [...]

Brokers pulling out of IDX

Game changers happen when businesses test radical strategies. When a company breaks from the pack they learn things that none of their competitors learn. They understand a strategy that nobody else as any experience with. They grow their business wisdom and often find new ways to edge out the competition. By studying the impacts of strategies like withdrawing from listing syndication; launching single listing websites or virtual tours; and, withdrawing from IDX, marketers can learn volumes about how these strategies impact their online strategy. Listing Syndication Strategies that work WAV Group has been studying listing syndication strategies for more than [...]

CoreLogic 2012 User Group Meeting and Summit

WAV Group partner, Victor Lund will be attending the 2012 CoreLogic User Group Meeting and Summit in Chicago next week. The event looks to be information-filled with presentations that provide insight in guidance into the future developments of MLS systems that power about half of America's MLS. Some of the topics include updates on the ongoing development of the core functionality in Fusion MLS, Matrix, and Tempo. These systems are deployed to many of the largest MLSs in the country. CoreLogic will also be releasing information on advances in Mobile, Fusion CMA, Social Media, Fusion Contact Management, Fusion Stats Pro, [...]

Edina Realty and Broker Syndication Choices

The news of Edina Realty pulling their listing from Realtor.com have been rippling through the industry since announced. There are probably a small handful of brokers who have done the same, but that is about it. This became newsworthy because Edina Realty is a big broker – really big. Moreover, the parent company, Home Services of America is second only to NRT in terms of being the largest brokerage in America. NRT has about 750 offices and 250,000 sides. Home Services have about 300 offices and does about 125,000 sides. There is a lot at stake for syndication and online [...]

MLSs and the Marketing Center

MLSs have long been a marketing center in some small way. Agents working with buyers and sellers create reports that are organized to provide listing information to clients. The reports are very useful, but aside from the ability to insert a broker logo, agent photo, and contact information, the design of these reports often falls short of achieving the goal of a well-branded and unique marketing piece. Some MLSs have begun to partner with providers to enhance or augment this MLS system functionality, and offer marketing systems that have full feature functionality. MRIS, Metrolist Colorado, MLSListings, MLSLI, and a handful [...]

PWR Launches 10K Reports

The Minneapolis Association of REALTORS developed a company called 10K a few years ago. The mission of the company is to offer REALTORS outstanding market analytic reports. They have been canvasing the country offering the product through MLSs and REALTOR Associations. Pacific West Association of REALTORS (PWR) is a large and recent new customer for 10K. WAV Group had a Q&A session with Lalaine Castillo, PWR VP Marketing and Communications to understand the strategy behind their vendor selection. Question:What differentiated 10K from other stats vendors? Answer:10k understands the business of REALTOR associations and our members,  having deployed similar solutions for [...]

CRMLS Partners With Homes.com for Full Offering

Today’s real estate technology companies are partnering with MLSs at an unprecedented rate. This trend is brought about by natural gravity. The MLS is the primary source of fundamental technology for real estate professionals. WAV Group is beginning to see a number of MLSs pursuing a variety of strategies for offering non-core MLS services. Historically, MLSs only pursued site licenses for technology for their members, paying a price per member per month. This trend expanded as emerging products like Listhub, Property Panorama, and Listingbook began to offer Freemium services, where the MLS offered a free basic version of the product, [...]

Two Brokers Go YouTube on Syndicaiton

Listing Syndication has become one of the more polarizing business topics in the real estate industry. Everyone seems to have a view, and many groups are trying to figure out how to fix it. There is no doubt that some companies are benefiting from syndication, but most find only little or moderate success. We seem to be hitting an inflection point with syndication where a lot of change is about to happen - slowly I suspect - like all real estate trends. The Council of MLS published two surveys this week - one for consumers and another for professionals. They are [...]

REALTOR.Com Shoots across bow of Trulia and Zillow

The industry knows the dirty little secret. Many third party listing websites are full of garbage data. In a major online marketing effort, REALTOR.com is telling this story. Inaccurate listings are not appearing here and there, but more than half the "for sale" listings on many sites populated from syndication are duplicates, already sold, expired, pending, or bank owned homes that are not for sale at all. Bad real estate listing information is bad for the real estate industry. So many of these sites claim to be consumer centric, but they blatantly and knowingly allow data to be fed to their [...]