More Brokers Offering More Services

WAV Group consults primarily with enterprise brokerages who offer full services. We frequently refer to full services as home services, not to be confused with the Berkshire Hathaway company of the same name. Home services refer to the variety of needs that a customer has during a real estate transaction and beyond. In the residential real estate, this may take the form of Mortgage Services, Homeowners Insurance, Title Insurance, Home Warranty. Some residential companies even offer contractor services, maintenance services, landscaping services. Resort areas have brokers who offer concierge services where they will clean your home before and after your [...]

RE Technology Top 5 Articles of The Week

Each week, RE Technology publishes the top 5 most read articles. These articles may be republished by MLSs and Associations in newsletters or blogs for free. If you are not offering RE Technology as a member benefit, join more than 82 MLSs currently offering the service. There is never any charge. The top article of the week was submitted to RE Technology from listing syndication service provider Listhub, a product of MOVE, Inc. Agents Need To Leverage Marketing Remarks In The MLS More Effectively Since the information you enter in the MLS is the source of the marketing content that is [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:24:29-07:00August 24th, 2013|Broker Technology Research, Broker-Agent Information, Main category, Technology Evaluation|Comments Off on RE Technology Top 5 Articles of The Week

Top 5 Ways to Become More Relevant with Consumer Research

The real estate industry suffers from what I call the “lowest common denominator” phenomenon. Every one of the business models in the industry – associations, MLSs and brokerages are built on attracting and retaining as many agents as possible.   Many real estate entities collect monies every month from every participant – regardless of their productivity.  While these models each have their own reasons to exist, they have created a major problem in my view.  Real estate organizations are so busy attracting sales professionals that many ignore the needs of the most important group – the customer. It’s no wonder that [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:24:29-07:00August 16th, 2013|Broker-Agent Information, Main category, MLS Insights, Suveys and Research|Comments Off on Top 5 Ways to Become More Relevant with Consumer Research

Improving Second Tier Help Desk Performance

The Help Desk experience has been a cornerstone of innovation in business over the past decade. An enormous amount of investment has been placed on every corner of allowing consumers to help themselves. WAV Group routinely consults with enterprise brokers, MLSs, and large real estate technology companies on streamlining help desk to improve customer service and reduce costs. We have developed a new paradigm around encouraging self-help that you may want to consider. The customer who uses automated self-help tools like product FAQs and video before calling for support is normally the most dissatisfied customer. About the self-helper The self-helper [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:24:30-07:00August 13th, 2013|Broker-Agent Information, Main category, Technology Evaluation|Comments Off on Improving Second Tier Help Desk Performance

Leads are for Losers!

If America’s real estate agents and brokers had to build their business on online leads, they would be out of business. On all accounts, online marketing and lead generation tactics over the past decade have left brokerages with lighter wallets and little to show for it. Recently, the world’s largest real estate organization, REALOGY posted that they had generated 1.56 Million leads over the past 6 months for 239,000 agents. It is not really fair to double that number and annualize it to 3 million per year because November through January is a pathetic lead generation period. Regardless, even at [...]

Trulia To Collect More Agent Data

To optimize your online effectiveness in the real estate business, you need to think strategically. This is the kind of strategic thinking that WAV Group works with brokers and franchises on every day. When a company that does a great job at online marketing and search engine optimization focuses on a strategy like enhancing agent information, we pay attention. Typically, when Trulia, Zillow, Realtor.com, or homes.com makes a change, it is with intent to find improvement. It's the way everyone should think. Why Agent Profiles Are Important When consumers search, they use keywords. In our broker website effectiveness study, we learned [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:24:31-07:00August 5th, 2013|Broker Technology Research, Broker-Agent Information, Main category, Our Services|Comments Off on Trulia To Collect More Agent Data

Not All eSignature Platforms are Created Equal Webinar

Are your electronically signed documents compliant with the laws governing electronic signatures? If you’re not sure, you MUST attend this webinar. While using eSignatures comes with many benefits such as saving the time, money and hassle of driving around town to obtain a signature it also requires that agents, brokers and MLSs be thoughtful about their choice of providers. In this webinar, you will hear from eSignature providers DocuSign and Authentisign, along with Russ Bergeron of MRED, on best practices, what you need to know and how important it is to do your homework. Not all eSignature solutions are the [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:24:31-07:00August 5th, 2013|Broker-Agent Information, Main category, Our Company, Our Services, Technology Evaluation|Comments Off on Not All eSignature Platforms are Created Equal Webinar

Realogy has a great second quarter

There were times that I looked up at the largest brokerage in America and the largest Franchisor in America and wondered if it was built to last. They have been struggling through a rough patch with the rest of our industry, but they had the added pressure of managing the erratic public stock market and a challenging corporate lending environment. WAV Group does not have any broker clients that trade as public companies. WAV Group consulting has omitted Realogy franchise and NRT performance from benchmarks among brokerages over the past few years. They were fighting battles that private brokerage was [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:24:31-07:00July 30th, 2013|Broker Technology Research, Broker-Agent Information, Main category|Comments Off on Realogy has a great second quarter

Instagram Quickly Becoming a Value Brand-building Video Tool

Anybody who has children has probably known about Instagram for a while now as a photo sharing social media site.  It is by far my 10-year-old daughter’s favorite method for sharing her life with her friends. Two weeks ago, Instagram began offering the ability to share short videos on their site and it has exploded. In just two weeks there have been amazing brand video ads for corporations placed on the site.  You can check them out here.  From what I could see with the videos I reviewed so far, there are a few ways that real estate companies and [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:24:32-07:00July 5th, 2013|Broker-Agent Information, Main category, Marketing|Comments Off on Instagram Quickly Becoming a Value Brand-building Video Tool

A new tenor to integrated solutions for brokerage

I was in Seattle a few weeks ago visiting a broker when I encountered the Trulia team in the airport heading over to Market Leader. During the entire flight home my head spun with ideas about how these two companies would blend their talents to serve consumers and the real estate community better. We have clients who leverage these companies to their fullest, and others who don't. It has never been the providence of a consultant to champion one strategy over another. Helping others execute the strategy that is right for their business to maximize their opportunity is our charge. [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:24:32-07:00June 25th, 2013|Broker Technology Research, Broker-Agent Information, Main category, Marketing|Comments Off on A new tenor to integrated solutions for brokerage

More MLSs launch FIND search from MOVE

Move spread the news this morning that MRED (Chicago) MLS PIN (Boston and most of Mass) and SFAR (San Francisco) have all entered into agreements to offer the FIND product. If you are not familiar with FIND, it is a product that was the early candidate for the National Association of REALTOR's Property Library. It ties all of the active listing data on Realtor.com to a suite of extensive property attributes ranging from demographic data to flood maps to airplane fly over zones and noise. The Find products sits at the top of the page when the agent is logged [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:24:33-07:00June 17th, 2013|Broker-Agent Information, Main category, MLS Insights|Comments Off on More MLSs launch FIND search from MOVE

It’s a Kid’s World – Are you ready?

I just watched a fascinating documentary called Consuming Kids highlighting how advertisers are tapping into the ever-growing purchasing power of children under the age of 12. According to the film, children directly control $40 Billion in spending and indirectly influence over $700 billion in spending. The documentary goes on to talk about how brands are trying to create relationships with kids as soon as they can to create life long relationships. They are trying to create young “super” consumers that will be committed to purchasing their products throughout their lifetime. In my days at Fisher-Price, we never thought about the [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:24:34-07:00June 12th, 2013|Broker-Agent Information, Main category, Marketing, Strategic Planning|Comments Off on It’s a Kid’s World – Are you ready?