“When Greg Robertson talks, people listen. If you’ve heard the co-founder of W+R Studios speak at a real estate conference, you know he can be blunt. His frank and pragmatic nature has made him a successful, respected, and much-loved industry leader. Robertson’s company’s latest bold announcement is lighting the path for others to follow. In June, W+R Studios, creator of Cloud Agent Suite, announced that it would no longer accept RETS (Real Estate Transaction Standard) feeds for new MLS integrations. Cloud CMA and all other products in the Cloud Agent Suite are now only accepting new feeds via the industry’s modernized data sharing standard: the RESO Web API.”
Somewhat older news, but what a great first sentence. ????
“The introduction of the booj platform is arguably the single greatest increase to our value proposition in our history,” Contos added.
While I respect Adam, I’ll argue that when remax.com first launched a “network of broker IDX websites” back in 2006 that was truly a game changer. I was there. See below:
“Liniger and Kristi Graning, RE/MAX vice president, information technology, explained that RE/MAX is increasing staff by 50 people, and that all the regions will have more sophisticated websites. REMAX.com will be the portal, and then consumers will be directed to the region city to have access to all the listings.
“The national network of IDX websites will be seamless to the consumer and we will be compliant with IDX in each MLS,” says Graning. RE/MAX will license technology from Florida-based Siegent, Inc. (eNeighborhoods, Wyldfyre and ReChannel) to aggregate the IDX listings.”
Kristi Graning VP of RE/MAX, Stu Siegel CEO of eNeighborhoods, and Bruce Benham SVP of RE/MAX. Photo Credit: Greg Robertson (circa 2005)
eNeighborhoods was subsequently acquired by Dominion Enterprises, which operates Homes.com. So, effectively remax.com has been “Powered by Homes.com” for about 14 years. All that time, ably lead by Andy Woolley.
In those 14 years, Remax.com is now the top national broker website and the platform, by my calculations, has generated close to 50 million referral free leads to RE/MAX agents.
Dave Liniger showing Stu and Andy his car collection. Photo Credit: Greg Robertson (circa 2005)
Execution is everything. RE/MAX’s booj team has some big shoes to fill. It will be interesting to check out how things are going in the next few years.
