Shady Discount Broker

As a consumer, I seek to keep myself aware of services offered by brokerage firms across the county. It’s a bit of a passion of mine. A story run byNBC caught my eye: “New Real Estate Technology from Homecast Empowers Home Sellers to Sell Without An Agent.” As I browsed through it, my stomach began to churn a bit. First off, they seem to talk about being a technology company, but most the article talks about how they advertise listings on third party listing websites – specifically Realtor.com, Zillow, and Trulia, but also on the MLS. They offer to represent [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:23:07-07:00August 16th, 2016|Main category, MLS Insights|0 Comments
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Broker with 357 Listings Gets No Leads From Trulia Last Week

WAV Group provides brokers with consulting on online marketing. One of our services includes benchmarking the effectiveness of listing syndication strategies. We have been tracking the performance of a real estate broker’s listings dating back to 2006 by publishing channel. As these reports show, Trulia effectiveness has decreased to a remarkable volume of no leads per week on 367 listings. The same report in 2013 showed between 12 and 25 leads per month. It begs the question “If a third party consumer website is not delivering value, should a broker continue to syndicate?” One thing is for sure, we can [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:23:13-07:00June 14th, 2016|Main category, Marketing|0 Comments
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Trulia in the Zillow Era

As an analyst for many brokerages, franchises, and MLSs, WAV Group looks carefully at reports from publishers to understand dynamics that can be leveraged to enhance performance. Sometimes, we encourage firms to keep their strategy the same. At other times we encourage trying something new or redeploying investment. I like Trulia’s reporting. It is something that other publishers (including their parent company) could benefit from. Below I will provide a discussion about each. Leads – in their purest form, leads count. Even bad leads. If you are a broker and you are not producing leads for your agents, you may [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:23:40-07:00June 25th, 2015|Main category|0 Comments
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MLS Not Ready for Direct Syndication

In no small way, the impact of Zillow and Trulia being disconnected from ListHub has caused troubled waters for many MLSs. Although ListHub continues to manage syndication to a wide number of sites, they no longer support two of the top five. What’s the plan? MLSs are scrambling in every direction today. The biggest issue has been the data license agreement to Zillow. Everything was neat and tidy when ListHub had one agreement with each portal. Now Zillow is faced with hundreds of MLS agreements all with different terms. According to MLS executives, that is Zillow’s choice. Efforts by legal [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:23:45-07:00May 5th, 2015|Broker-Agent Information, Main category, MLS Insights|1 Comment
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Struggling with your Direct Feeds?

Direct to portals, syndication platforms, virtual tour companies, online marketing products…the options for brokers to distribute listings seem endless. They all offer varying features, benefits and service levels, making it hard to determine what will give their businesses a competitive edge. Many brokers are at the mercy of agents using services that distribute listings without their knowledge; creating inaccuracies and liabilities, and eroding their brands. MLSs are in the unique position to offer brokers unmatched listing distribution services through strong data licensing agreements. A key benefit that only MLSs can offer is faster listing updates. When listings are not delivered [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:23:48-07:00March 17th, 2015|MLS Insights, Strategic Planning, Technology Evaluation|0 Comments
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Five Ways to Make a Thoughtful Decision about Direct Feeds

I had the honor of working with the Greater Albuquerque Association of REALTORS® today. They hosted a Town Hall asking for input on whether or not their brokers would like them to negotiate a Direct Feed from the Zillow Group on their behalf.  Michael Bustamante did a great job of framing the issues that need to be discussed and ultimately decided upon. While the issue is anything, but clear cut, there were interesting questions posed that may be helpful for you to use in your market as you try to think your way through your market’s decision about direct feeds. [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:23:49-07:00March 16th, 2015|Main category, MLS Insights, Strategic Planning|4 Comments
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The Real Benefit to Z and T Merger

Big advertisers need big media sites. Zillow is big and Trulia is big, but they are not huge.  The hugest would be Facebook. Think of the Madison Avenue crowd. Both companies have sales staff pitching pretty much the same value proposition. That sales team now turns into one. Zillow CEO Spencer Rascoff pretty much said exactly this in an interview with Jim Cramer, the host of Mad Money (http://business-news.thestreet.com/crookstontimes/story/jim-cramers-mad-money-recap-now-is-not-the-time-for-panic/12861526) “Rascoff noted that when it comes to the Internet, user experience rules. Once you have an audience the advertisers will follow, he said, which is why the Trulia acquisition makes sense. [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:23:57-07:00October 13th, 2014|Main category, Marketing|2 Comments
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Today’s News Summary

News represents change in real estate. It also represents staying the course. There were lots of both today. Not knowing what to expect, the industry unloaded today. Bullets were flying everywhere. The MOVE acquisition by News Corp was the headline - If you look at our post on it, we have added the letter that NAR sent to the membership, the letter that MOVE sent to the industry, and the press release. Taking the temperature on this, it is probably a good thing. The only big concern is that REA group from Australia has investments in the top 3 portals [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:23:58-07:00September 30th, 2014|Main category, MLS Insights|0 Comments
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Coldwell Banker Chooses Imprev

Today's real estate firms, franchise or otherwise, need to provide a robust marketing solution for agents that especially support them with digital marketing tools: Video, virtual tours, eMail marketing, and social media marketing. In an announcement today, Coldwell Banker announced a partnership with Imprev to power their digital marketing suite for all of their franchise companies. There are a number of firms that offer marketing solutions, but the two firms that have dominated the selection among franchise organizations in the past years include Marketleader and Imprev. Strangely enough, until a few years ago, Imprev was Marketleader's partner for their marketing [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:23:58-07:00September 29th, 2014|Broker Technology Research, Broker-Agent Information, Main category, Press Releases|1 Comment
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Trulia Weekly Update Is Released

I don’t really know if this is just something that Trulia is testing or if this is something that they rolled out system-wide, but I received a lovely real estate update this morning It is not a heavy piece, but it certainly popped into my inbox 18 New Listings, 2 open houses, 9 price reductions, download the mobile app, home value lead capture and median sales price. Aside from my first impression of the execution being very positive, it made me wonder…… Where else would this type of daily email be a practical way to touch professionals or consumers? For [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:23:58-07:00September 24th, 2014|Main category, Technology Evaluation|0 Comments
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Allre Causes Brokers To ReThink Strategy

The FSBO dam just sprouted another leak, and brokers better pay attention. If you have not heard about Allre, you better watch the video below right now. It is a collaboration between banks like Prime Lending, Home Insurance providers, home warranty companies, and even a lock box vendor to facilitate FSBO sales. The fee to the consumer is ZERO – nothing. There are no brokerage services at all, so they completely surpass all RESPA regulations. It is 100% FSBO. The only thing that will sit between Allre and success is venture capital. If they attract enough venture capital to attract [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:23:59-07:00September 18th, 2014|Broker Technology Research, Main category, Marketing, MLS Insights|6 Comments
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The End Of War Between Zillow and Trulia

There is a major war going on in the taxi industry today. Uber and Lyft are duking it out. Both companies have deep cash pockets and they are deploying it in marketing and undercutting each other. It is pretty hard to know which service is better as they work hard to drive market share. As Zillow marches toward the stock swap to join forces with Trulia, perhaps a new wisdom of that transaction will reveal itself. They just avoided a very expensive war where the two of them may have killed each other off to reign supreme. It is pretty [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:24:01-07:00August 13th, 2014|Broker-Agent Information, Main category, MLS Insights|0 Comments
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