June
2016
ISSUE
No. 83

WAV Group Report
By Victor Lund

WAV Group provides brokers with consulting on online marketing. One of our services includes benchmarking the effectiveness of listing syndication strategies. We have been tracking the performance of a real estate broker's listings dating back to 2006 by publishing channel. As these reports show, Trulia effectiveness has decreased to a remarkable volume of no leads per week on 367 listings. The same report in 2013 showed between 12 and 25 leads per month...  READ MORE!
By Kevin Hawkins

One of my favorite research rituals is the annual release by Mary Meeker of her Internet Trends Report, the latest of which was issued on June 1. Meeker was catapulted into the financing world spotlight as the lead manager at Morgan Stanley for Netscape's IPO in 1995. Later that year, she and Chris DePuy at Morgan published The Internet Trends, and it quickly became the definitive digest of the current state of the Internet, as well as discerning big-picture trends ...  READ MORE!
By Victor Lund

The pessimist MLSs among you will look upon the title of this article with raised hairs. The lens that we have adopted here is for a single focus. Namely, to search for specific context within the databases of Upstream that may be of value to MLSs. Remember, Upstream does more than manage listings, but it does  start with the MLS destination in mind. The MLS does not need to change their business rules, or modify their data schema. They need only disclose to their brokers what their rules and schema are and accept a broker load as is common among nearly every large regional MLS today. With MLS participation, Upstream will, in turn, create and maintain an environment that will allow for data management that will adhere to the MLS's requirements... READ MORE! 

A few months ago I spoke to the owner of a start-up company who was completely convinced that consumers do NOT trust their real estate agents to help them find service providers. He believed that agents were not the best group to help a home buyer secure all of the services they need to complete a transaction. He passionately believed that consumers believe that real estate agents are dishonest and do not have the best interest of their clients in mind...  READ MORE!
By Victor Lund

Real Estate is not just an online thing. It's a global thing. People buy houses all around the globe, and in many nations - the notion of online real estate is hot.  In the small nation of England, companies valued at £312m, or £40m Housesimple along with easyProperty and eMoov are all trying to make a go of it with significant venture backing. Online real estate is ripe for the taking...  READ MORE!

Bob Rosecrans and Michael Koval at Pixces Consulting Group are a little more subtle in addressing this subject in their new White Paper "Real Estate Brokers: Is your CIO future proofing your business?" But the title of the paper's first chapter really says 
it all: "I love my CIO but..."  ...    READ MORE!
By Marilyn Wilson

Doesn't it seem like life just keeps getting faster and faster?  It forces us to put our head down and just DO all the time.  We're not always thinking about where our organization is focused or why they are even focused on it.    We're so busy surviving the day to day that sometimes we can't see the forest for the trees!...   READ MORE!

Companies across the real estate spectrum who are selling to their competitors are having fantastic results. The process of expanding your communication strategy to include competitors is found to drive more new business than ever imagined...  READ MORE!
By Kevin Hawkins

When I was growing up in Chicago in the 1960s, professional boxing was a big sport that my dad followed and heck, like a lot of kids, I enjoyed many of the things my parents did. My dad exposed me at a very young age to a gold-medal Olympic boxer named Cassius Clay, who would later changed his name to Muhammad Ali....   READ MORE!