Does Your Website Work for the Visually Impaired?
Zillow is getting sued for being inaccessible to the visually impaired. A lawsuit was filed against Compass too. Are you next?
Zillow is getting sued for being inaccessible to the visually impaired. A lawsuit was filed against Compass too. Are you next?
Who is getting to the listing appointment first? Is it a traditional broker the first call for a listing appointment, or do consumers reach out to iBuyer programs like Zillow, Redfin, Keller Williams, Realogy, OpenDoor, Mark Spain, or others first?
A tremendous amount of energy and money has been invested into moving consumers from a digital experience into an agent relationship. Consumer research performed by the National Association of REALTORS® regularly indicates that consumers start their process of buying or selling online before connecting with a Realtor®. I do not think anyone denies it.
Our industry loves shiny objects! We’re also looking for the next goose that is going to lay golden eggs at our feet. This year the promise of greatness has been tied to technology investments. From Open Door to Compass to Keller Williams and a whole bunch in-between, brokerages are lining up to claim their rightful place as a technology company.
Sometimes Zillow Group does something that aggravates the industry, like displaying agent reviews. Other times Zillow does things that not only aggravate the real estate industry, but they point to profound best practices that are a roadmap to success. When brokers pay attention, they can learn a lot.
I have been reading articles about Zillow Group’s positioning on Upstream and the forms licensing policy of the California Association of REALTORS® with great interest. My take away is that Zillow Group is doing and saying exactly what they should be doing and saying to positively impact Zillow’s market opportunities in real estate. Remember, Zillow has industry relations people and government relations people that want to fight tooth and nail for every advantage they can get. It’s business.
Real Estate is a fickle industry, cycling back and forth from favoring buyers to favoring sellers. It does not take an economist to develop a strategy for when to advertise for buyers and when not to. Certainly, real estate is in a condition of buyer saturation today. Brokers and agents who are advertising for buyers are mismanaging their advertising spend.
Since its early days, Zillow Group has maintained a position that the consumer interest is best served by allowing listings from all sources, including For Sale By Owner, to be posted to their site. This may be, in part, why Zillow sites had up to 187 Million unique users visit their sites last year. Recently, WAV Group has noticed a new type of broker support that is in line with this policy.
It is always interesting to me when I hear about a company I have never heard of raises a pile of cash. Qualia, a real estate technology company that aims to make the closing process better for consumers just closed a series B round, led by Menlo Ventures, with participation from 8VC and Bienville Capital.
If you know anything about Hunt Real Estate Corporation, you know that they are a family owned and operated brokerage with high integrity and a fierce approach to competition. Since 1911 they have been a market leader in upstate New York, cities like Buffalo, Niagara Falls, Rochester, Syracuse, Albany, and the many Southern Tier communities that border Pennsylvania. They recently expanded into the Boston marketplace though a significant acquisition. We have known the Hunt family since Marlyn and I lived in Orchard Park, NY. We became friends though our interactions at The Buffalo Club and The Country Club of Buffalo. At the time, Marilyn ran marketing at Fisher-Price and I was spinning up my first start-up companies.
Eric and Janelle Boyenga are a husband and wife real estate team working with buyers and sellers in one of the most technology focused markets in the world for two decades. California’s Silicon Valley is not only the epicenter of global technology, but also real estate technology. To position their company, the Boyenga Team comfortably promotes themselves as Property Nerds. They aim to deliver the best digital experience to their clients with an abundance of software applications. They target their services to engineers and other employees of online companies like Google, Facebook, Sun Microsystems, Apple, and the many leading technology [...]
Homes.com signs direct agreement to receive REBNY’s Residential Listing Service feed Norfolk, Va. (August 9, 2017) – Homes.com®, the leading online real estate destination and provider of real estate marketing solutions, has announced that the Real Estate Board of New York (REBNY) will join Homes.com’s Data Partnership Program through a direct syndicated feed agreement with REBNY’s Residential Listing Service (RLS). The new partnership will offer the more than 600 New York City residential brokerage firms, comprised of 12,860 agents participating in REBNY’s RLS, the option to display their listings on Homes.com and utilize free exposure to their audience of more than 14 [...]