Victor Lund, Author at WAV Group Consulting

Bad broker strategy found everywhere

Having been to the parade of broker meetings in Las Vegas, there is one conclusion that stands about the strategic direction of real estate brokerages. Strategy is lagging the market shift for far too many brokerage owners. Oddly enough, the topic was not even discussed. I worked elbow to elbow with brokers through 2012 as we lived and rejoiced through a market rebound. Buyers returned to the market to buy homes with little support from the tight lending standards of mortgage banks. Prices rebounded enough to put sellers into the market. Broker's profits rebounded and discretionary spending budgets emerged. The [...]

By Victor Lund|2018-05-03T21:24:40-07:00March 14th, 2013|Main category|1 Comment

Monetizing Listing Data…Is it Possible? Let’s find out in 2013

To Syndicate or not to Syndicate, that is NOT the question! WAV Group Response What an exciting day in real estate media. 1000Watt Consulting is having a spirited discussion blog to blog with Dale Ross of NAR's RPR. And, in an exciting development, Zip Realty did a data accuracy study that somewhat mirrored the WAV Group data accuracy research performed for brokers, Redfin, Windermere, and Long and Foster. They concluded that 30% of the listings on Zillow and Trulia are not on the market. To keep things rolling along, my friend Saul Klein from Yardi published a spirited article about [...]

By Victor Lund|2018-05-03T21:24:40-07:00March 6th, 2013|Broker-Agent Information, Main category, Marketing, MLS Insights, Product Management|1 Comment

Move releases the new Realtor.com Brand

We have seen some re-branding released recently from leading real estate consumer brands. Today we see the release of the new Realtor.com – where home happens. Last year saw the rebirth of Century 21 – Stronger, Bolder, Faster. These are very well recognized consumer brands. MOVE EVP Marketing, Barbara O’Connor and her team took a close look at the Realtor.com brand within a year of her arrival at the company. I am excited to see how this new treatment works out. I can assure you that they have likely exhausted focus groups to predictably make a selection that reaches their [...]

By Victor Lund|2018-05-03T21:24:40-07:00March 5th, 2013|Main category, MLS Insights|2 Comments

IRES MLS Launches Tablet Solution

WAV Group MLS Customer Satisfaction Surveys have demonstrated that agents want the ability to access all of their MLS services on the iPad or other tablet device. It is refreshing to see IRES MLS in Colorado take on that need and address it by launching their own iPad app for members. IRES built their iPad application themselves, proving that some MLSs with strong developers can accomplish the delivery of MLS services on an iPad quickly and cost effectively. The IRES app supports the most meaningful and highly used features of the MLS service, including full listing search of all MLS [...]

By Victor Lund|2018-05-03T21:24:40-07:00March 4th, 2013|Main category, MLS Insights, Press Releases|Comments Off

Brokers harvesting business from their data

Real estate brokerages are way behind in the curve of excellence in lead management. This report is not about best practices of routing leads to agents, it is focused on measuring lead quality, and appending lead information with business intelligence that will convert more leads to drive more revenue. WAV Group’s brokerage business is focused on enterprise brokers, 500 agents or more – and usually a brokerage that also has some type of relationship with a mortgage or an insurance company. We use the term “home services” or “ancillary services” to refer to a brokerage that provides a full suite [...]

By Victor Lund|2018-05-03T21:24:40-07:00February 25th, 2013|Broker Technology Research, Broker-Agent Information, Main category, Marketing, Suveys and Research|3 Comments

Indiana Regional MLS Is Born

In a press release yesterday, Indiana Regional MLS announced the selection of LPS as the vendor for consolidating 13 MLS systems into one. The effort was led by Kevin McQueen of Focus Forward Consulting. McQueen successfully managed to get 13 different MLSs serving an aggregate of 5000 subscribers to combine their MLS. The subscribers should be very excited about this. It is likely to reduce their costs and improve their services. There will be some bumps along the way as they accomodate change - but this is a great opportunity to advance the industry. Well done by all! There is [...]

By Victor Lund|2018-05-03T21:24:41-07:00February 23rd, 2013|Main category, MLS Insights|1 Comment

Is the MLS In Danger?

I do not really know Alain Pinel as well as I would like to. He sold the company that bears his name and pursued other interests. He is back now and runs the Luxury division of Intero Real Estate, one of Alain Pinel Real Estate's chief competitors in San Jose, along with Coldwell Banker and others. What I do know of Alain Pinel I like and respect a lot. I have a similar level of respect for the maverick efforts of Intero, who used passion combined with technology (AgentAchieve) to launch a powerful brokerage in a very competitive marketplace. In a [...]

By Victor Lund|2018-05-03T21:24:41-07:00February 20th, 2013|Broker Technology Research, Main category, MLS Insights, Strategic Planning|4 Comments

METROLIST® SELECTS CORELOGIC® MATRIX™ MLS SYSTEM––Colorado’s Largest MLS to Provide New Product Suite to 15,000 Real Estate Professionals–

IRVINE, Calif., February 6, 2013—CoreLogic® (NYSE: CLGX), a leading residential property information, analytics and services provider, today announced that it has entered into an agreement with Metrolist, Colorado’s largest multiple listing service (MLS) and provider of REcolorado, to provide the CoreLogic Matrix MLS system to 15,000 Colorado real estate professionals. For more than 25 years, Metrolist developed and hosted its own proprietary MLS systems. “The pace of innovation has profoundly accelerated since the company was originally founded in 1984 and we found that a transition to a vendor-based product suite made a lot of sense,” commented Metrolist President and CEO, [...]

By Victor Lund|2018-05-03T21:24:41-07:00February 13th, 2013|Broker-Agent Information, MLS Insights, Press Releases|Comments Off

Are my listings going everywhere – Zillow Front Door

Whenever an announcement like the Zillow-Front Door announcement is made, brokers have questions about their data and where it is going. We call this the issue of re-syndication, and whenever an announcement is made made about one party sending data to another party - brokers should know. Zillow is not re-syndicating to HGTV's Frontdoor.com website. The first thing that I would suggest to any broker providing data to any publisher is to have a contract with the publisher that defines what they can or cannot do with your data. Most of the franchisors like REALOGY, Keller Williams, RE/MAX, and others have such [...]

By Victor Lund|2018-05-03T21:24:41-07:00February 13th, 2013|Broker Technology Research, Main category, Marketing|2 Comments

Where is the Genius Bar for Real Estate Tech?

There is no doubt that consumers trust an expert more than they trust themselves. If you look back at breakthroughs that have lead to consumer success and major increases of consumption and adoption, it always occurs when the vendor provides a local expert. Apple was not the first company to figure this out. There are many examples, but certainly Rite-Aid did it with an in-store pharmacist; Home Depot did it with in store builders and remodelers; and Best Buy did it in technology. What Apple did was take it all to a new level with product super heros. The Strategy [...]

By Victor Lund|2018-05-03T21:24:42-07:00February 11th, 2013|Broker Technology Research, MLS Insights|Comments Off

Zillow to power HGTV

I have always been a fan of HGTV’s strategy to marry their television audience and content with property search. I do not watch TV much, but I do tune into HGTV from time to time and have run some analysis on the comprehensiveness of the listing data on their site. From our point of view, HGTV did not go far enough to put timely calls to action into programming to drive the television audience to search for homes on their property search portal. This is my opinion, not grounded in any facts. Suffice it to say that Zillow is going [...]

By Victor Lund|2018-05-03T21:24:42-07:00February 8th, 2013|Broker Technology Research, Main category, Press Releases|Comments Off

Listing Input Forms Rise Again
Gallery
Listing Input Forms Rise Again

Broker Technology Research, Main category, MLS Insights

Listing Input Forms Rise Again

If you are like me, you recognize that it was not very many years ago that agents relied on completing a listing input form as a primary method to submit a listing to the MLS. Indeed, in many markets today, MLSs still allow agents to fax in their listing, or broker administrators enter the listing for the agent. This is all happening at a time when many agents are clamoring for MLS listing input using their mobile device or tablet. In a tale of new school meets old school, Instanet is providing a new listing input service; the very service [...]

By Victor Lund|2018-05-03T21:24:42-07:00January 31st, 2013|Broker Technology Research, Main category, MLS Insights|4 Comments

About Victor Lund