Edina Realty and Broker Syndication Choices

The news of Edina Realty pulling their listing from Realtor.com have been rippling through the industry since announced. There are probably a small handful of brokers who have done the same, but that is about it. This became newsworthy because Edina Realty is a big broker – really big. Moreover, the parent company, Home Services of America is second only to NRT in terms of being the largest brokerage in America. NRT has about 750 offices and 250,000 sides. Home Services have about 300 offices and does about 125,000 sides. There is a lot at stake for syndication and online [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:25:00-07:00May 25th, 2012|Broker Technology Research, Main category, Marketing, Strategic Planning|Comments Off on Edina Realty and Broker Syndication Choices

Keys to RPR Adoption Case Studies Released Today

WAV Group provides consulting services to MLSs and Associations to develop strategies and plans for business success. Today, WAV Group is introducing a series of Case Studies developed for NAR’s REALTOR® Property Resource or RPR®. These Case Studies outline best practices for driving adoption of RPR as a REALTOR® benefit. WAV Group developed these best practices by evaluating RPR  “power users” and “power promoters” of the software. Download MLS Case Study.  WAV Group has followed the introduction and rollout of REALTOR® Property Resource (RPR) closely since it was officially introduced and then launched in September 2010.  In previous papers, WAV Group [...]

CRMLS Partners With Homes.com for Full Offering

Today’s real estate technology companies are partnering with MLSs at an unprecedented rate. This trend is brought about by natural gravity. The MLS is the primary source of fundamental technology for real estate professionals. WAV Group is beginning to see a number of MLSs pursuing a variety of strategies for offering non-core MLS services. Historically, MLSs only pursued site licenses for technology for their members, paying a price per member per month. This trend expanded as emerging products like Listhub, Property Panorama, and Listingbook began to offer Freemium services, where the MLS offered a free basic version of the product, [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:25:04-07:00May 3rd, 2012|Broker Technology Research, Broker-Agent Information, Main category, Marketing, MLS Insights, Press Releases, Strategic Planning|Comments Off on CRMLS Partners With Homes.com for Full Offering

Century 21 Announces Deal With Market Leader to Provide Tools to Century 21 Agents Throughout the US

Century 21 announced today that it will provide its U.S.-based real estate professionals with new tools from Market Leader including marketing, lead follow-up and a full CRM platform.  Market Leader and the CENTURY 21 marketing team worked together to define a customized solution, leveraging a number of the integrated building blocks that make up Market Leader’s comprehensive software platform. The base system that will be provided to all agents at no cost while advanced capabilities will be available for high-end producers at a small premium. PRESS RELEASE […]

By |2018-05-03T21:25:09-07:00March 13th, 2012|Broker-Agent Information, Main category, Press Releases|Comments Off on Century 21 Announces Deal With Market Leader to Provide Tools to Century 21 Agents Throughout the US

Syndication as in insolent teen

I received a call yesterday from a sage MLS executive. He saw the article in RE Technology about Sandicor adding a new syndication field into their MLS. We had discussed this a few years ago after some broker focus groups. At the time, the brokers did not seem to care too much about syndication, so the idea did not go anywhere. That changed. Adding the field is on the agenda at their next board meeting. He is probably not alone. Aside from that, he shared with me his vision for how syndication is going to play out in the long [...]

Non Dues Revenue for MLS

WAV Group Webinar Feb 15th at 10:00am PST   This WAV Group webinar will focus on a panel discussion about the topic of non-dues revenue. Numerous MLSs around the country have launched or are in the process of launching these programs to provide lower cost business solutions to MLS subscribers. According to the recent CMLS survey - 54% of today's MLSs offer some form of non-dues revenue. "These companies are pushing the boundaries of their non-dues revenue programs," says Marilyn Wilson, WAV Group Partner. Topic: Why MLSs pursue non-dues revenue Different options for generating non-dues revenue How it is positioned to their [...]

LPS sells tax solutions to Lereta

LPS saw the spin off of their Agent-Broker products division in a management led buy out last September. The new company formed is called Real Estate Digital. Today, it was announced that the LPS Tax company was sold to Lereta. This company has nothing to do with the data that is licensed to RPR or MLSs.  This is a tax services company totally separate from the Applied Analytics Data Solutions company that licenses public records and serves MLS. These are interesting times. We will keep you posted on what we hear. […]

Real Estate Digital to build new MLSLI Consumer Website

Although Real Estate Digital is a new brand in the real estate industry, the management and owners of the company are industry vetrans whose consumer website prowess dates back to the first consumer property search solutions. Real Estate Digital was formed when former LPS company executives formed the new company with assets acquired from LPS early in the fourth quarter of 2011. Since Real Estate Digital began standing on its own, they have shown a remarkable, albeit somewhat predictable ability to transition customers over to the new company and continue the growth of the products under their new brand (THINK [...]

Smarter Agent throws arrow at Zillow and others

Brad Bloomberg of Smarter Agent is a fighter, and I like that. He takes a position and battles from his corner of the ring. Today, he released a blog post on their company website goes nose to nose with Zillow, Trulia and REALTOR.com. Given that his company is suing them all for patent infringement (another story) – they will never be friends anyway. But this new war is one about his view of listing syndication. Post Title : Listing Aggregators like Zillow, Trulia and Realtor.com can Erode the Value of your Business. The money quote: ……(syndication) “devalues the business of.. [...]

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 |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 on Great Vendors Embrace Rules

Change hurts

Perhaps there is a new chief executive, a new business strategy, an MLS conversion, a new product launch, a merger, a new data share, or a dramatically altered competitive landscape, in the real estate world, big change means big risk. In other words, company performance may rise like a rocket or fall like a rock. The only thing it’s not likely to do is stay the same. Change may be inevitable, but big change is scary, nevertheless. And how you deal with it plays a big role in the outcome. In just the past few weeks, we’ve seen big change in the works [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:25:25-07:00October 28th, 2011|Main category|Comments Off on Change hurts

CMLS News: Clareity Safe Syndication and RED reDataVault

Today, October 4th, 2011 two vendors announce separate but complementary solutions leading up to the Council of MLS conference: CMLS. Both companies issued press releases of software that effectively works together to handle data syndication. Safe Syndication is a new product launch and reDataVault is a 2.0 release. Both reDataVault and Safe syndication have similar goals in mind – they both seek to support MLSs in managing data outside the walls of the MLS. reDataVault actually distributes data, Safe Syndication does not..  reDataVault goes a bit further by automating the process of managing RETS/IDX/VOW/DataLicense agreements. Safe Syndication has a document repository, but is not a transaction [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:25:26-07:00October 4th, 2011|Main category, MLS Insights|Comments Off on CMLS News: Clareity Safe Syndication and RED reDataVault