Technology Evaluation Archives

Is the MLS responsible for the Syndication Mess?
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Is the MLS responsible for the Syndication Mess?

Broker-Agent Information, Main category, Strategic Planning, Technology Evaluation

Is the MLS responsible for the Syndication Mess?

I give a lot of credit to the Council of MLS for their commitment to understanding the issues with listing syndication and formulating an effort to fix it. In the first place, the failure of many MLSs to understand listing syndication has been the cornerstone of the problems that exist today. Here is a little history lesson. In the beginning, only a few brokers with their own IT staff were able to supply a feed of their listings to publishers. When a broker has hundreds of listings or tens of thousands of listings like Howard Hanna, Prudential Fox and Roach and [...]

By Marilyn Wilson|2018-05-03T21:25:10-07:00March 9th, 2012|Broker-Agent Information, Main category, Strategic Planning, Technology Evaluation|2 Comments

A Discussion on Virtual Brokerage

We have the opportunity to work with many different software companies providing great products to the real estate industry. Some of these companies are geared to serve both the traditional real estate model as well as a virtual brokerage. It is clear to us, as well as these software providers, that the future of real estate companies will be different. It will be leaner, lighter and in many cased “virtual” with a heavy emphasis on the broker providing great, integrated software products to agents that often work remotely. I wrote at length about this shift in the white paper, “The [...]

By THE WAV GROUP|2018-05-03T21:25:14-07:00February 23rd, 2012|Broker Technology Research, Broker-Agent Information, Main category, Marketing, Reports, Technology Evaluation, Virtual Office Website Series|Comments Off

Why Innovation Fails To Change Real Estate

Every year, real estate sees the launch of beautiful products, offering awesome features, advantages, and benefits. Excellent marketing programs back them and the press creates a jubilee – Innovator of the Year! Then the product launches, and the industry shrugs its shoulder. It is the conundrum of new product development and innovation for real estate. Most of these companies are doing everything right. They are doing research, spotting trends, holding focus groups, testing usability, and modeling lovely financials. If they can only get 1% adoption of this, or 3% of that, revenues will be awesome. There are 1 Million real [...]

By Victor Lund|2018-05-03T21:25:14-07:00February 21st, 2012|Broker Technology Research, How to Make Strategic Planning Really Work in your MLS, Main category, MLS Insights, Product Management, Strategic Planning, Suveys and Research, Technology Evaluation|9 Comments

MLS iPad apps have NOT gone far enough yet

Recently, WAV Group has completed several customer satisfaction surveys from around the country in the Southwest, Mid-West, Southeast and Mid-Atlantic regions. In every case there has been a lot of discussion and requests for more MLS access via smartphones and especially for iPads and other tablet devices. While many MLSs think of their iPad application as a property search tool, agents want their MLS iPad apps to go much further than that. Even for those that have launched Tablet solutions, there are two major areas of dissatisfaction that MLSs need to address to make mobile MLS applications truly useful for [...]

By Marilyn Wilson|2018-05-03T21:25:14-07:00February 19th, 2012|Main category, MLS Insights, Suveys and Research, Technology Evaluation|3 Comments

Integrating MLS tools into Agent Browsers

Until today, MLSs have been walled Internet gardens. The MLS is accessed through the browser, but is entirely separated from the rest of the open Internet. iMapp just released an innovation that may begin a trend to change all of that. With iMapp, real estate agents with accounts may install a search plugin into their browser. This plugin puts a layer of MLS tax data on top of any website. With the search plugin, agents can look up tax on any property address found on any website – this includes the MLS, Agent and Broker Property Search Websites, Consumer property [...]

By Victor Lund|2018-05-03T21:25:15-07:00February 6th, 2012|Main category, MLS Insights, Product Management, Strategic Planning, Technology Evaluation|4 Comments

How Listhub’s Real Estate Network Works

It is not uncommon for detailed questions to arise whenever there is major change afoot in the real estate industry regarding data. Listhub’s announcement of the launch of the Real Estate Network precipitated many questions regarding a broker’s ability to manage and control websites that display their data. The Listhub Real Estate Network includes the opportunity for any broker to publish listings on Century 21, Coldwell Banker, RE/MAX, and the Realty Executives websites. WAV Group has researched this topic of the Real Estate Network with executives from Listhub and we have great news to report. They did it right the [...]

By Victor Lund|2018-05-03T21:25:17-07:00January 17th, 2012|Broker Technology Research, Main category, MLS Insights, Strategic Planning, Technology Evaluation|5 Comments

Why Dominant MLSs are Vulnerable
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Why Dominant MLSs are Vulnerable

Main category, MLS Insights, Technology Evaluation

Why Dominant MLSs are Vulnerable

Today, there are numerous MLSs that have become dominant companies relative to their smaller competitors. In the world of survival of the fittest, one would assume that the large and strong eat the small and weak. But this is not necessarily true. For the purposes of this writing – I am using the term MLS to refer to MLS vendors and Regional MLSs. Most MLSs in the United States grew through merger and acquisition than through organic growth. As these companies began to reach dominant scale, they realized that they could provide agents and brokers quality MLS services more efficiently. [...]

By Victor Lund|2018-05-03T21:25:18-07:00January 9th, 2012|Main category, MLS Insights, Technology Evaluation|1 Comment

RE Technology Plans Joomla 2.5 Launch

Real estate technology portal, RE Technology (www.RETechnology.com) is working to utilize the benefits provided by the Joomla community to develop their second generation website on the new Joomla 2.5 platform. RE Technology, a business education and product research portal for the real estate industry is among the most visited Joomla websites in the world. Other major companies developing on the Joomla include Tesco, the third largest retailer in the world, Avis, Nikon, Citibank (intranet), and Harvard University. ‘The new Joomla 2.5 is being released this January” says Chris Murtagh, lead developer on the RETechnology.com website. “We are excited to deploy [...]

By Victor Lund|2018-05-03T21:25:19-07:00January 6th, 2012|Main category, Press Releases, Technology Evaluation|Comments Off

The Bigger LPS Paragon 5 Story

LPS, developers of the Paragon MLS system, announced that they have secured an agreement to replace a competitors’ MLS system with Paragon 5. This only happens about 12 times each year. The news is less about just getting a win, but tells a larger story about the future of MLS and how one MLS vendor is positioning for long term success. WAV Group performs upwards of 40 MLS customer satisfaction surveys each year to help MLSs understand what agents and brokers expect from their MLS. The number one complaint is Apple compatibility and Mobile compatibility. LPS knew this many years [...]

By Victor Lund|2018-05-03T21:25:21-07:00December 1st, 2011|Main category, MLS Insights, Technology Evaluation|Comments Off

MLS Staff and MLS Users See MLS Technology Differently

WAV Group recently completed our 2011 MLS Technology Survey where we received feedback from nearly 11,000 respondents, from 66 MLSs around the US and Canada. Most importantly, the feedback was from both MLS staff which is always important, and the actual users. In fact, we only included results for MLS systems that had both staff and user ratings. The results were very interesting! We will be publishing an Executive Summary of the results next week for download but one of the more interesting things we noted was that MLS staff and MLS users see their technology quite differently and [...]

By THE WAV GROUP|2018-05-03T21:25:22-07:00November 23rd, 2011|Clients, MLS Insights, Our Services, Reports, Suveys and Research, Technology Evaluation|Comments Off

Great Vendors Embrace Rules

There has been a lot of conversational concern about companies that enter into new verticals of data management and service offerings. Four such instances were announced this year. REALTORS® Property Resource contracts with LPS for data services and LPS subcontracts to Real Estate Digital. Zillow purchased an IDX vendor, Diverse Solutions. MOVE purchased Threewide, the providers of the popular Listhub syndication service. CoreLogic launched a new appraisal tool leveraging MLS data. In every case, the vendor has been virtuous and adhered to contracts and data use rules. In each of these cases, many feared that data could be misused or [...]

By Victor Lund|2018-05-03T21:25:22-07:00November 22nd, 2011|Broker Technology Research, Main category, Marketing, MLS Insights, Product Management, Strategic Planning, Technology Evaluation|Comments Off

CMLS reviews pending IDX policy changes

I am a big fan of CMLS, the acronym for the Council of MLS. The Council does more than any other organization to support best practices among MLS service providers. Today, CMLS hosted a member webinar that provided a 360-degree overview of the pending IDX rule change, a consideration that will be discussed and submitted to the NAR Board of Directors for approval at the NAR Convention in Anaheim. The suggestions to the NAR Board of directors from the call were simple. Cathy Holefelder of Heartland MLS provided a great summary of the call and suggested this synthesized overview. – [...]

By Victor Lund|2018-05-03T21:25:23-07:00October 31st, 2011|Broker Technology Research, Main category, MLS Insights, Strategic Planning, Technology Evaluation|Comments Off