WAV Group will be hosting a free informational webinar on Thursday 10th May at 10am PST to display the benefits for MLSs and Brokerages to participate in the This Old House Real Estate Network. TOHREN will introduce Condo.com, an existing partner to demonstrate benefits and assist in illustrating how real estate firms can participate.
Very few people understand the difference between the data that is in the Native database of an MLS and the data that is shipped out of an MLS. The Real Estate Standards Organization (RESO) has created a Data Dictionary of fields and field enumerations for data being shared with brokers and technology providers. The Native data in the MLS – the data that the broker’s agent enters into the MLS system is custom to every MLS. Not anymore! My Florida Regional MLS (MFRMLS) is among the first MLSs in the country to adopt the same RESO language in their Native MLS. Here’s why this is important.
Redfin. KW. Keyes. Metrolist. Executives with these four real estate industry-leading firms just joined the BPP Board of Managers. It's akin to the automobile industry announcing that representatives from Tesla, GM, Audi and Johnson Controls just joined a Board that's collaborating on their industry's most pressing cutting-edge initiative. This is a blue-chip list of leaders of today and tomorrow by any measure: Bill Miller, CEO of Metrolist Services, Inc. Kathleen Manchin, Director of Industry Relations/Corporate Counsel of Keller Williams Realty International Chelsea Goyer, VP of Recruiting, Partner Programs & MLS Relations of Redfin Christina Pappas, District Sales Manager of The Keyes Company [...]
I am still stunned by the number of people I meet in the real estate industry, including prospective clients, who really don’t understand what Public Relations is. More importantly, many people often have misconceptions about what PR can do. Most often, PR is confused with activities and outcomes that are entirely in the realm of Advertising.
Rate Lock is not a common term in real estate, but it is pretty easy to understand. And, once you understand it, you will appreciate why trade volume in real estate is going to continue to stay low for a long time, and possibly why the stock market is in for a continued rise. Today’s homeowners are probably in a loan product that is somewhere around 3.31% to 4%. If they decide to sell, they will need a new loan product that will probably be around 5%. That difference of 1% or 2% is what causes the “Rate Lock” effect.
The real estate industry has adopted new standards for managing Multiple Listing data feeds, converting from the Real Estate Transaction Standard (RETS) to the new RESO Web API. For years the brokerage group has lobbied the National Association of REALTORS® to require that all Multiple Listing Organizations deliver data to brokers and their technology providers using Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). Today, these new data feeds are now available and they are delivering more value than brokers imagined.
Homes.com recently put RESO Standards to the test. What is the real business value of RESO Data Standards? A new Homes.com Case Study shed some serious light on the subject. They have proven that moving to standardized data and the RESO Web API is saving them thousands of dollars in development time, allowing them to redeploy that energy to more innovative endeavors. We hear often that “nobody” is asking to leverage RESO data standards in local MLS data feeds yet. This exciting news is going to change that.
This Flashback Features series unearths profiles from the past of real estate and technology leaders. A version of this story was first published in California Real Estate magazine. This profile of Gary Keller, founder of Keller Williams Realty International, is from 2004.
One of the tools in the Public Relations’ publicity toolkit to communicate for decades has been a paid newswire. PR Newswire and Business Wire early on dominated the business in the U.S. What people don't realize is that the reason one used a paid newswire has evolved with technology and our times. Initially, the popularity of newswires was fueled by federal regulations that required public companies to meet specific disclosure laws. With the digitization of news and the expansion of the Internet, firms like Marketwire and PRWeb emerged (and much later, GlobeNewswire), and so did the value proposition of newswires. Technology firms became the client of these more Internet-focused firms, and the value proposition became SEO.
It is always interesting to me when I hear about a company I have never heard of raises a pile of cash. Qualia, a real estate technology company that aims to make the closing process better for consumers just closed a series B round, led by Menlo Ventures, with participation from 8VC and Bienville Capital.
I will always vividly remember riding to a meeting with a large broker in Marin County, California back in 2002ish. We were discussing the brutal competition among brokers in Marin County. At the time, Keller Williams did not have much of a presence in San Francisco or Marin. I was wondering why Keller Williams had failed to grow as they have in other markets. Moreover, Century 21 was conspicuously missing from the market altogether. Coldwell Banker was huge, along with Pacific Union. A bunch of independent brands like Frank Howard Allen and Melissa Bradley Real Estate were performing well in upper Marin. Decker Bullock held their own with the large firms in Southern Marin.
Too often public relations activities rely on the “spray and pray” method these days. It’s just too easy. First, there’s the availability of cheap digital news wire services to blast out a news release for a few hundred dollars or less. If you want to get some quick online news cover and links to post to social media, it’s just a few clicks away. Second, creating email lists of reporters and bloggers has never been more accessibility. So much so, I would venture to guess reporters are suffering from unsubscribe fatigue.
