5 Ways to Eliminate “Headless Agents” on Your Listings

When was the last time you got a friend request on Facebook from someone who hadn’t bothered to upload a profile photo and was still using the grayed-out floating head instead? I’m hoping it was a while ago, but maybe you can remember how you felt when a faceless person reached out to touch you.  When I get one of those I simply delete the request and move on. If someone doesn’t care about enough about their friends and colleagues to even upload a picture I’m not really interested in connecting with them. Do you see how consumers may feel [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:22:46-07:00June 13th, 2017|Broker Technology Research, Broker-Agent Information|Comments Off on 5 Ways to Eliminate “Headless Agents” on Your Listings
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Big Data Can Drive Bigger Broker Margins

WAV Group spends a lot of time consulting with brokers on how to re-margin their business. We published a paper in 2013 called Harvesting Business From Broker Data.  That paper characterized the methods that we developed with a number of brokers to harvest business from across the enterprise of title, mortgage, residential, relocation, insurance, commercial, and property management businesses. It has worked very well for many brokers to recapture repeat transactions and new business though cross sell. In many ways, the rethinking that went into the thesis around harvesting business across the enterprise was the first intellectual break from the [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:22:46-07:00June 9th, 2017|Broker Technology Research, Broker-Agent Information, Strategic Planning|Comments Off on Big Data Can Drive Bigger Broker Margins
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How Loyal Are YOUR Customers?

It is critical for MLSs and Brokers to measure the relationships they have with their customers.  While most MLSs do not have DIRECT competition, they have tons of indirect competition.  MLSs compete against companies that generate leads for agents since that it one of their key roles. They compete against training companies providing CE credit and teaching about technologies. MLSs also compete. MLSs also compete with companies that provide ways to aggregate and distribute real estate listing information for the purposes of monetizes the information flow.  While MLSs have survived well in the real estate ecosystem, some are more well-regarded than [...]

By |2018-08-11T03:34:48-07:00June 6th, 2017|Broker-Agent Information, MLS Insights, Suveys and Research|Comments Off on How Loyal Are YOUR Customers?
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5 Technical Benefits to Upstream

  I think that a lot of people are confused about Upstream. Some people think that it is a consumer-facing site like the Broker Public Portal/Homesnap. Others think that it is some kind of brokerowned MLS. It is none of those things. It is a database for brokers to create, store, and distribute data. For the most part, every large firm and franchise organization is doing this today, but as an industry the process is broken. Every broker who is managing their data is doing it in different ways, and their data is not interoperable with applications without custom integration, data [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:22:47-07:00June 6th, 2017|Broker Technology Research, Broker-Agent Information, MLS Insights, Technology Evaluation|Comments Off on 5 Technical Benefits to Upstream
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The Problem With Real Estate Is That Nobody Cares About Quality

As a Founding Partner at WAV Group consulting, I have the opportunity to talk to fund managers about their investments in real estate. Some investors are focused on supporting public companies such as Realogy, RE/MAX and others are betting against them with short positions. The truth is that we do not ever know the position of the investors when they ask questions. We just answer them as best we can. On a call this morning, I was asked a profound question about customer experience in two parts. Part 1. What brand has the highest customer satisfaction rating? Part 2. What [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:22:47-07:00May 31st, 2017|Broker-Agent Information, Strategic Planning|Comments Off on The Problem With Real Estate Is That Nobody Cares About Quality
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HomeSmart Acquires Large Colorado Brokerage in Exponential Growth Move

HomeSmart has acquired Cherry Creek Properties, a large real estate brokerage serving the Denver, Colo., metropolitan area, the company announced Wednesday. The acquisition makes HomeSmart the No. 1 real estate firm in the state based on agent count, according to the company. The addition of Cherry Creek Properties’ 1,500-plus agents brings the firm’s total agent count to over 13,000, and widens its reach to 123 offices in 16 states. HomeSmart and its franchises’ closed sales volume, combined with Cherry Creek Properties’, totaled more than $14.6 billion in 2016, with more than 53,000 in closed transactions, according to RISMedia’s Power Broker [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:22:47-07:00May 31st, 2017|Broker-Agent Information, Press Releases|Comments Off on HomeSmart Acquires Large Colorado Brokerage in Exponential Growth Move
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Your MLS is a Lead-Generation Machine – But Do Your Members Know That?

Think about this for a second: The more highly qualified leads that an MLS generates all represent clients who are serious about buying or selling a home. It makes sense. If those buyers are smart enough to be looking at an MLS or brokerage website instead of combing a portal at 2 a.m. for a home, then they’re probably a more serious buyer or homeowner looking at whether the time is right to sell their home. So why do MLSs insist on selling their ability to generate serious business opportunities short?  MLSs are lead-generation machines that give brokers a bounty [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:22:49-07:00May 25th, 2017|Broker-Agent Information, How to Make Strategic Planning Really Work in your MLS, MLS Insights|Comments Off on Your MLS is a Lead-Generation Machine – But Do Your Members Know That?
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Pacific Union Delivers On International Reach

WAV Group has been studying broker website effectiveness for more than a decade. One area of interest is global reach. When we look at Google Analytics, we study traffic to understand the level of visibility that brokers are achieving for their websites internationally. Over the past 12 months, Pacific Union International has been living up to their name by expanding their international reach. Driving International Reach International reach has largely been a listing tool in real estate. Even in global cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago or New York, we see that 85% of buyers come from the immediate [...]

By |2018-08-14T03:57:45-07:00May 25th, 2017|Broker Technology Research, Broker-Agent Information, Main category, Marketing|Comments Off on Pacific Union Delivers On International Reach
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Top 5 Ways to Transform Your Office Managers Into Sales Success Coaches

None of the brokers we’ve worked with believe that their office managers are doing what they are supposed to be doing — sales training. Instead, they act more like den mothers. When they could be working on sales coaching or recruiting, office managers are consoling agents who lost big deals, troubleshooting broken printers, or retrieving lost MLS passwords. It’s too easy for office managers to spend the day putting out a series of small fires. Its easy to use all of those daily tasks as excuses for not focusing on the most important roles that managers are responsible for. The [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:22:49-07:00May 25th, 2017|Broker-Agent Information, Product Management, Strategic Planning, WAVes of Change|Comments Off on Top 5 Ways to Transform Your Office Managers Into Sales Success Coaches
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ELM STREET TECHNOLOGY ANNOUNCES STRATEGIC ACQUISITION OF CONSOLIDATED KNOWLEDGE

May 23, 2017 – Greensboro, NC – Today, Elm Street Technology (EST) announced the acquisition of Consolidated Knowledge, a technology platform provider to the residential real estate and multi-family industries. This acquisition is the next step in EST’s ongoing efforts to consolidate the real estate industry’s leading technology and marketing service providers. Today’s announcement is the latest in a series of strategic moves EST has made in recent months to create a portfolio of marketing and technology products and services that, when integrated, offer a single technology solution providing lead generation to client retention services for agents, teams, brokers and [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:22:49-07:00May 23rd, 2017|Broker Technology Research, Broker-Agent Information, Press Releases, Strategic Planning|Comments Off on ELM STREET TECHNOLOGY ANNOUNCES STRATEGIC ACQUISITION OF CONSOLIDATED KNOWLEDGE
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LIBOR and BNAR getting serious about REALTOR(R) safety

Did you know that nearly 1/3 of REALTORS(R) STAY in situations where they feel unsafe as they strive to make a sale.  Nearly 4 in 5  do NOT ask for Identification/Verification before meeting a client.  Just about everyone (88%) of agents are alone when showing a home to new prospect. Bottomline, many agents put themselves at risk REGULARLY.  While real estate is an amazing industry that provides exciting career opportunities to nearly 2 million people every year, it’s a job that deals with the public.  By definition, it puts agents at risk. The Long Island Board of REALTORS® and the Buffalo [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:22:50-07:00May 16th, 2017|Broker-Agent Information, Press Releases|Comments Off on LIBOR and BNAR getting serious about REALTOR(R) safety
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Fixing Real Estate with People and 2.0 Technology

In Colorado there’s a modern brokerage called 8z Real Estate that has become known for its collaborative work environment and home to top producing teams that support one another. And despite all the competition – after all it is in RE/MAX’s backyard – it’s become a dominate player on Colorado’s Front Range. Most recently, 8z Real Estate garnered the attention of The Denver Post, which selected Boulder-based 8z Real Estate as the “Top Workplace” of 2017 for midsize companies in Colorado. And 8z and its founder Lane Hornung were also recently profiled in a Colorado Business Magazine story “8z Real [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:22:51-07:00May 9th, 2017|Broker Technology Research, Broker-Agent Information|Comments Off on Fixing Real Estate with People and 2.0 Technology
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