What ever happened to Trade Show Etiquette?

It could be just me. I may have attended too many trade shows. Yet somehow I believe Emily Post would have been appalled if she walked the exhibits at NAR Midyear. To add a little context, I have attended, exhibited, sponsored and run trade shows. In fact, I’m afraid to count the number of miles I have walked on trade show floors, having attended many NAR-FAR-CAR annuals, NAR Midyears, HomeBuilders/IBS, PCBCs, COMDEX, CES, IBC and others. I have also been the lead for many firms exhibiting at these same shows, and have found myself staffing exhibits, including too many hours [...]

One Broker’s Experience with Digital Transaction Management

A broker friend of mine downloaded the WAV Group 2004 Broker Transaction Management study recently and gave me a call. Like every real estate broker in America, she has long adapted her business to online forms. Like most brokerages, she also confesses that they have a forms box of printed forms in every office. A few years ago, she made a decision to purchase digital signatures for all of her agents. Today, she is considering transaction management. Again. This is not her first visit to this consideration, but rather an annual trek that is part of her end-to-end customer experience [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:23:48-07:00March 26th, 2015|Broker Technology Research, Broker-Agent Information, Main category|Comments Off on One Broker’s Experience with Digital Transaction Management

RETS Servers and Direct Feeds

The National Association of REALTORS MLS Issues and Policy Committee made a bold move to require RESO data dictionary complainant by Jan 1, 2016, and RESO RESTful web API by June 30, 2016. Further complicating the matters is the groundswell of considerations with third party portals making requests for MLS direct feeds. Data sharing between MLS systems, RETS Update, and system conversions taking place across the industry today deepen the data transport considerations. Wrapping it all together with a lit match could easily lead to mass hysteria. WAV Group took a look at what the largest MLSs in the nation [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:23:50-07:00February 20th, 2015|Broker Technology Research, Broker-Agent Information, Main category|Comments Off on RETS Servers and Direct Feeds

National Broker Portal Launches Website

The national broker portal project continues to gain momentum as brokers and MLSs agree to participate in the formation of the company to explore the launch of a national MLS consumer facing website with broker governance. Although only a month into the funding period, the group is well on its way to raising the $250,000. After the holiday, the Council of MLSs hosted two online webinars on the topic. The Realty Alliance and The Leading Real Estate Companies of the World also hosted two webinars. This activity was followed by the delivery of information at the CEO Summit as part of [...]

Spending Over $60K Per Month on Zillow

It is not very hard to find out who Zillow's top customers are. Just visit the website and look at the Agent Reviews section. One of those top customers is Samer Kuraishi Group from the Washington, D.C. area. Samer is a second generation real estate agent. The brokerage, A-K Real Estate, Inc. ("A-K") is a boutique 40 agent firm, located about two blocks from the White House, that was founded by his father. Together, they have grown the company significantly, supporting consumers in Maryland, DC, and Virginia. Much of the company's growth has happened over the past few years and was [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:23:51-07:00December 23rd, 2014|Broker Technology Research, Main category|1 Comment

Brokers Out-Marketing Competitors

I attended Luxury Connect last week in Beverly Hills. If you are not familiar with the event, it was expertly delivered by the team from Inman News that is host to the Real Estate Connect conferences held annually in New York City and San Francisco. I don’t think that anyone really appreciates how difficult it is to put on a great event. This group does it with ease and grace even when pitted against seemingly insurmountable challenges. There was so much fanfare about this event, it is speculated that the original property selected for the event was sold! A week [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:23:56-07:00October 29th, 2014|Broker Technology Research, Main category, Marketing|Comments Off on Brokers Out-Marketing Competitors

Revaluate Property Reports

When real estate tech entrepreneur Chris Drayer (see LinkedIn) gets started on something, WAV Group is always willing to take a look. Today we connected with Chris to get an inside look at Revaluate, a big data resource that pulls property attributes from 2000 data sources to tell a property story. Today, Revaluate is in Beta and only available to New York City properties. There is great news and not so great news about this. The great news is that they tackled one of the most challenging cities in America to collect property data. The other great news is that [...]

Moxi Works Real Estate CRM Launches with 7000 Agents

There are lots of startups every year in real estate. Many come and go. Most hunt the largest customers possible and are crushed either by winning the account and not being able to perform or not winning the account and running out of capital. Moxi Works is different. I know these people and what they have been working on. First of all, Moxi Works is not really a startup. It is a new brand on a company that was born out of Windermere, one of those traditional big brokerages who has adapted to technology with a passion. Moxi Works is [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:23:57-07:00October 7th, 2014|Broker Technology Research, Main category|Comments Off on Moxi Works Real Estate CRM Launches with 7000 Agents

News Corp buys MOVE operators of Realtor.com

And so it goes. Move, the operators of the National Associaton of REALTORS portal called Realtor.com have agreed to sell the company to News Corp in an all-cash deal valued at $950 million. MOVE's board of directors were swift to approve the offer, representing a 36% bump in the value of the company. News Corp owns other real estate assets including The Wall Street Journal ( a popular spot for luxury property advertising) and Australian real estate portal - realestate.com.au (part of the REA Group). REA Group will apparently pay for 20% of MOVE, and News Corp will pay the [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:23:58-07:00September 30th, 2014|Broker Technology Research, Broker-Agent Information, Main category, MLS Insights, Press Releases|Comments Off on News Corp buys MOVE operators of Realtor.com

Coldwell Banker Chooses Imprev

Today's real estate firms, franchise or otherwise, need to provide a robust marketing solution for agents that especially support them with digital marketing tools: Video, virtual tours, eMail marketing, and social media marketing. In an announcement today, Coldwell Banker announced a partnership with Imprev to power their digital marketing suite for all of their franchise companies. There are a number of firms that offer marketing solutions, but the two firms that have dominated the selection among franchise organizations in the past years include Marketleader and Imprev. Strangely enough, until a few years ago, Imprev was Marketleader's partner for their marketing [...]

Is your Board out of touch?

Do you sometimes feel like your Board of Directors and key staff are out of touch with what’s really happening in the real estate industry today?  Do you sometimes feel a bit isolated and would like to know if other organizations are facing the same challenges you are?  Is your organization suffering from stifled and cumbersome decision-making? Here’s what can happen when an organization is out of touch.  They can delay decisions because they seem difficult or controversial causing the organization to fall behind or lose its competitive advantage. Boards that do not stay close to trends can enforce outdated [...]

The Lasting Value of Knowing What Your Customers Are Looking for 

The Case for Measuring Customer Satisfaction Regularly MLSs are monopolies right?  They OWN their territory so they don’t have to worry about customer satisfaction.  Few in the industry would ever agree to this statement but in reality, many act as though they are a monopoly – not paying close attention to what their customers are asking for.  Can you honestly say you know what your MLSs strengths and weaknesses are?  Do you know what frustrates your customers or how you might hinders them from selling real estate as effectively as they could?   Do you occasionally get a board member that [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:23:59-07:00September 23rd, 2014|Broker Technology Research, Main category, MLS Insights, Our Services|Comments Off on The Lasting Value of Knowing What Your Customers Are Looking for