About Victor Lund

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So far Victor Lund has created 1295 blog entries.

Top Articles of the Week

 Beating Zillow at Their Own Game What if I told you that just about everything you find unfair about the way Zillow and Trulia display your listings can be changed? Guess what? An insider understanding of how these sites work has allowed thousands of listing agents to get hundreds of dollars worth of free marketing on these sites without paying a dime.   What is Email Drip Marketing? Chinese water torture is a way to drive someone insane by slowly dripping water on the person's forehead. Drop email marketing is a communication strategy that slowly drips email messages to prospects' [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:24:11-07:00May 9th, 2014|Broker Technology Research, Main category, Marketing, Technology Evaluation|Comments Off on Top Articles of the Week

California MLS Data Sharing Update

California Regional MLS and MLS Listings have reached an agreement to share MLS listing data. This is an important signal of MLS strategy in California for a number of reasons. These MLSs are planning to share data by sending data to each other for display in each other’s system and use by each other’s subscribers without the need to belong to both MLSs. Previously, CRMLS only pursued data sharing through CARETS™, a hub and spoke data share product developed by MRIS. Through this new sharing agreement with MLS Listings, CRMLS now has adopted three initiatives to create a statewide MLS [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:24:12-07:00May 9th, 2014|Main category, Press Releases|1 Comment

RED Real Estate Digital and Cerulean Acquired by Nationstar

Real Estate Digital Acquisition In May, Solutionstar entered into a definitive agreement to acquire substantially all of the assets of Real Estate Digital and its affiliate for $18 million in cash. RED, based in Aliso Viejo, California with 120 employees, is a fee-based real estate services company that provides online marketing, data, transaction management and digital media solutions. The acquisition price represents a 0.7x multiple on RED's estimated full year 2014 revenue. The acquisition is expected to close in the second quarter of 2014 at which time Solutionstar will assume RED's management team and employees. In online marketing, RED has [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:24:12-07:00May 8th, 2014|Press Releases|Comments Off on RED Real Estate Digital and Cerulean Acquired by Nationstar

The Right and Wrong of Broker Data

There is a lot of confusion about real estate listing data today. I believe that the confusion is the cause of agitation that pits technology companies, consumers, real estate agents, pundits, MLSs, Franchises, and Associations of REALTORS against one another. For many, there is a belief that the listing data is free and access should be provided to all. The reality is that the listing data is legally bound to the real estate listing broker who is the custodian and responsible party for that data. Being a custodian, or the responsible party has nearly boundless latitude and altitude. Today’s real [...]

Resourcefulness

If anything put fear back into the real estate industry lately, it was the sluggish first quarter performance. There are few valid explanations for it. Inventory is at a reasonable level and interest rates are low. People should be buying homes like they did last year. Rather than trying to figure it out, it is time to apply a healthy dose of resourcefulness into the business. The best way to do that is audit your expenses and your people. A typical story There are times when WAV Group finds significant problems in a business that management did not see. But [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:24:12-07:00May 7th, 2014|Main category, MLS Insights, Our Services|Comments Off on Resourcefulness

Gurtej Sodhi Appointed Chief Strategy Officer of Crye Leike Group of Companies

Longtime chief information officer, Gurtej Sodhi has been appointed to the senior business leadership of the Crye Leike Group of Companies. His new title strings together Chief Information and Strategy Officer, and Corporate Executive Vice President. This new position at one of America’s leading brokers signals a new strategic direction for large firms. Sodhi’s responsibilities will reach over all of the Crye Leike companies including residential real estate, commercial real estate, mortgage, title, insurance and various other business units. “Information management is changing quickly in real estate and large firms with diverse business units require top level oversight to integrate [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:24:13-07:00May 6th, 2014|Main category, Press Releases|1 Comment

Austin Syndication News Flash

The Austin Board of REALTORS® and MLS made the historic move to turn off listing syndication with Listhub. The choir loft was full of tenored voices eschewing every possible angle of opinion on the strategy. Well, the saga continues with this latest news flash. Austin has entered into a direct syndication agreement with Trulia, governed by a contract that all parties have agreed to. Brokers are in control of their data, and the agreement protects and governs the use and display of that data. Here is the press release. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Austin Board of REALTORS® Partners with Trulia to [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:24:13-07:00May 1st, 2014|Main category|Comments Off on Austin Syndication News Flash

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 [...]

Technology Game Changers

There were two announcements made this week that I think will have some pretty significant impacts on real estate. Wolfnet announced that they are now fully live on the national IDX data feed for Canada. Moreover, every application that Wolfnet offers has now been tailored to the needs of Canadian real estate. Wolfnet has long been a leader in property search solutions in America, notably serving search solutions to every Keller Williams agent in addition to many other brands. Now Wolfnet’s Canadian customer will have access to the same benefits. The second announcement came from W&R Studios, makers of Cloud [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:24:13-07:00April 17th, 2014|Broker Technology Research, Main category|Comments Off on Technology Game Changers

WAV Group Releases Broker Technology Adoption and Satisfaction Study

WAV Group partner Victor Lund is pleased to release the results of our recent survey to measure what technologies brokers have adopted and how satisfied they are with each. The survey also measured how likely a firm is to replace a technology supplier in 2014. In order to understand how technology plays a role by size of firm, answers were collected in ten groups ranging from firms with 1-9 agents to firms with more than 1500 agents. This report is provided to the industry with our compliments. WAV Group performs this type of research across the real estate industry to [...]

Calculating ROI on Syndication to Publishers

WAV Group provides enterprise brokers with a monitoring service to measure their listing syndication strategy. It is a thorny and emotional topic where risks and rewards are balanced delicately. Undoubtedly, this week brokers who do syndicate to publisher websites are reviewing their reports from last month. Here are a few things you should look at. Listing Views Obviously, you want to know the number of times that your listing was viewed on each publisher website. The easiest way to view listings by the publisher is to look at reports from your listing distributer – like Listhub, Point2, reDataVault, etc. If [...]

Protect Broker Data with Anti-Scraping

If you are a broker or an MLS, you must treat your data as an asset. By and large, our industry does a great job of protecting the front door of data access, but the back door of data scraping is wide open. It begs the question, if you care about data protection, why are you only scrutinizing the legitimate data users without hunting for the nefarious and illegitimate data thieves? Thieves that want to steal data send robots out onto the internet to do their pickpocketing, and they do it quite well. Reviewing Distil Networks’ reports with Matt Cohen [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:24:14-07:00April 9th, 2014|MLS Insights|Comments Off on Protect Broker Data with Anti-Scraping