Social Networking is entering the real estate market place casually.  It seems that for many agents and brokers, participating in these networks is “nice to have” not “have to have."  It is understandable.  Aside from a few dozen isolated examples, social networking has not generated much new business for real estate practitioners. Today I learned about a new social network titled blip.fm.  It allows people to become DJs, sharing music favorites online.  To get started you simply create a user name and enter in your email address.  Pick a few bands or songs that you like, and blip.fm will instantly [...]

New online tool is a huge success so far with Connecticut agents and their buyers and sellers. Listingbook™ announced today that it has launched its system in Connecticut, with the Greater Fairfield County Consolidated MLS (GFC CMLS), expanding the ever growing footprint of Listingbook deployed across the nation’s leading MLSs.  Listingbook is a freeimum service - free to the MLS and members for baseline VOW services, and a small fee is charged to agents who upgrade to the premium service product (includes branding, preimum website, enhanced CMA and reporting). The addition brings more than 8,000 REALTORS® to the companys agent [...]

Hyper-V and Melio clustered file system enable real time infrastructure for the largest Multiple Listing Service in New England. Sanbolic announced that MLS Property Information Network, Inc.(MLSPIN) has deployed Melio clustered file system in conjunction with Microsoft Hyper-V for their new data center. By allowing virtual servers running as file and web servers to concurrently access shared data on SAN storage, Melio FS enables the data center to dynamically respond to changes in web traffic. MLSPIN is the largest MLS in New England and one of the top ten in the nation. It provides service to more than 30,000 real [...]

The WAV Group blog and website is normally visited by 1,500 to 2,000 people a day - mostly people download our industry white papers or come here to read our blog. On August 22nd, something unusual happened.  Leading technology blog Tech Crunch ran a post about the differences between IDX powered listing websites and feed powered websites.  As a result, our combined blog and website traffic jumped to over 20,000 visitors!  Although half of the traffic came directly from Tech Crunch, the other half came from hundreds of blogs that re-published the story. If you are interested in viewing the Roost [...]

This is really off topic for our blog, but so many of our twitter firends are having trouble upgrading their itunes and iphone to version 2.0 Steps to upgrading to iPhone Firmware version 2.0 (w/App Store) 1. Go to Apple Menu -----> Then "Software Update..." and install iTunes 7.7. 2. Go here and It should autcoatiallcy start the download for the new firmware. 3. Once it is finished make sure the file ends in ".ipsw" if you find it ends in ".zip" just erase the .zip from the extension 4. With your iPhone connected to your computer, go to iTunes where [...]

ONJAX LLC. and  realPING Agree To Embed Click To Talk Across Platform Unique Conversion Tool to be enabled in the Enterprise Productivity and Lead Generation System. Yorktown, VA. July 18th, 2008. realPING a Virginia based technology company reached an agreement with ONJAX LLC, a leading solutions provider to offer the realPING urgency tool to their brokers and agents they support. realPING is a VoIP-enabled 'CLICK TO TALK NOW' service that allows professionals to instantly respond to a consumer inquiry. Statistics from the National Association of Realtors indicate that 78% of the time, consumers will 'deal' with the first agent that [...]

Terabitz ( http://terabitz.com), a technology company that helps real estate brokerages engage online homebuyers and sellers with innovative technologies, today announced that it has entered into a technology and content agreement with FrontDoor.com (http://frontdoor.com), the real estate site powered by HGTV. FrontDoor.com features over three million real estate listings, video features from HGTV experts and a comprehensive suite of tools, guides and content. The deal with FrontDoor.com centers on two Terabitz components: A beta version of the company's iPhone home search application and Neighborhood Explorer, which delivers rich local data in an elegant map interface. FrontDoor's new iPhone application, which can [...]

The market is off.  How far off varies by market and niche.  Nevertheless, everyone is challenged - agents, brokers, franchisers, franchisees, and MLSs.  Here is a list of tangible ideas that may help you in your business today.  To sum up the recommendations - focus on enhancing agent quality rather then building the largest army. According to some at the RIS CEO Exchange, we have gone from a volume of 7 Million transactions in 2005 to 5 Million transactions forecasted for 2008.  How should brokers respond to manage their companies effectively in this market?  Manage with urgency! William Keleher, Broker/Owner [...]