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Listing Bits Episode 64: An IT Geek Turned Broker’s Take on Tech – with Georgia Purpura of Urban Nest Realty

January 18th, 2021

What can technology vendors do to better connect with the agents and brokers we hope to serve? And what can we learn from the perspective of a computer engineer turned REALTOR about how to approach real estate professionals and what kind of tech solutions they need?

Georgia Purpura is Managing Broker at Urban Nest Realty, a mid-size independent brokerage out of Las Vegas, Nevada, where she specializes in helping agents grow their business. She is also very involved in the local association, most recently serving as Chair of the MLS. Georgia has been a licensed agent for 12 years, acting as broker for Keller-Williams Southwest before joining Urban Nest in 2018. Prior to real estate, she earned her degree in business and information technology and spent eight years working as a computer engineer.

On this episode of Listing Bits, Georgia discusses how her background in IT has served her well in real estate, explaining how she evaluates technology solutions and what vendors can do to market their software more effectively. She offers advice for vendors and brokers on creating a business model that mitigates agent churn, challenging us to focus on producers rather than subscribers—casting a deeper net as opposed to a wider one. Listen in for Georgia’s insight on how modern agents learn about technology tools (and how that’s evolved over the years) and get her take on the top technology needs in the real estate space.

What’s Discussed: 

Georgia’s background in computer engineering and how that tech experience has served her well in real estate

How Georgia learned about tech tools early in her career from sales meetings and through the local association

How modern agents learn about tech tools through word-of-mouth on social media

Georgia’s advice for vendors around marketing to top producers who can create influence for you

Why vendors should lead with the problem they’re solving for in pitching agents and brokers

How Georgia evaluates tech based on its potential to shorten the sales cycle and save time or money

Georgia’s criticism of how brokers have gone about increasing profitability by having the biggest army (rather than the best)

How real estate brokerages and software vendors can build a business model that mitigates agent churn

The top technology needs Georgia sees in the real estate space

–Integration among tech solutions (strategic alliances)

–Agent retention and engagement tool for brokers

Connect with Georgia:

Urban Nest Realty

Email georgiapurpura [at] gmail [dot] com

Resources:

Joe Versus the Volcano

Our Sponsor:

Cloud CMA

Guessing the end game

December 9th, 2020

Jeff Corbett the XBroker on Divorcing Real Estate Commissions

“Second, the three class-action suits ostensibly have an end game in mind: Divorcing real estate commissions,meaning that a home seller should negotiate listing commissions with a listing agent while a home buyer should negotiate buy-side commissions directly with a buyer’s agent. While this seems like an awfully commonsensical thing to do, the implications for the real estate sales industry would facilitate more transformative change than any technology-based innovation. “

If you’re like me you read about these lawsuits and you’re not sure if you should be overly concerned or not. Jeff does an excellent job of walking us down the path of what may or may not be the future in a world where buy-side commission rates are brought into the sunlight. SPF 2.5 anyone?

#ICYMI Friday 10.2.20

October 2nd, 2020

Sheeesh is it October already!!??

CMLS has been going on this week, and Day 3 focused on race and real estate. Great panels, so proud that CMLS put this out there. As uncomfortable as these topics are we need to bring them out in the open. One of the best panels was the Author of Color of Law, Richard Rothstein.

Speaking of CMLS, David Charron was inducted into the CMLS Hall of Fame. One of the best moments caught on Zoom this year.

UtahRealEstate.com put a deadline on old RETS feeds.

Zillow co-founder and former CEO Spencer Rascoff and dotLoop founder Austin Allison are launching Pacaso, a place where families can partner to buy second homes. Love this.

Rob and argue what exactly a Zillow actually is?

Don’t miss my Industry Update on Monday (October 5th) as I close out CMLS.

And this kind of shit has got to stop! It has no place in our industry.

Join me and Katie Lance on Facebook Live, Sept 25th 11am PT

September 24th, 2020

Looking forward to being interviewed by Katie about my new book, The Art of the CMA. Katie was a big help with the book and very generous with her time. The interview starts this Friday at 11AM PT, September 25th.

Click here =>>> Facebook Live with Katie Lance

So, I’m officially an author…

September 10th, 2020

Well, to be clear, a “self-published” author. But hey, you gotta start somewhere. I got my first run of books from the printer and have set up a website where you can buy them. Check it out.

TheArtoftheCMA.com

You can also purchase the book on Amazon. But they take a hefty cut so ordering through my website ensures the money goes directly to the children. In this case, my children, not Jeff Bezos.

I would appreciate any way you could promote the site. Bulk discounts are available. So they make a great gift for your board of directors, or your favorite REALTOR. ????

Why did I write a book? I’ve had a few ideas of books I’ve wanted to write, and still want to write, but in the end, someone once said, “write what you know” so I took that advice.

And one thing I’ve learned, nobody writes a book alone. And I have a lot of people to thank. First off Charles Warnock. I had started to write this over 2 years ago, without much success, but things started to move once Charles came on board to help me stay on track, give me honest feedback, new ideas, and make anything I wrote even better. Thank you, Charles. I also have to thank Dan Woolley my co-founder and partner in crime for close to 30 years. I wouldn’t have one ounce of success if it wasn’t for Dan. Sharran Srivatsaa was gracious enough to write the forward to my book. I met Sharran through Rob Hahn and if you don’t know him you should, he has been a big influence on me and was very encouraging during this process. Stefan Swanepoel is a big inspiration and gave me a lot of great advice and honest feedback. Victor Lund saw an early draft and was very kind and gave me a blurb for the back of the book. David Charron was great through this whole process. He read a copy of the book early on and cheered me on. I think David was expecting a lot of f-bombs in the book, while my wife Jenn was telling me to take them all out! Also, I want to thank Brian Boero from 1000watt who was very generous with his time. Whenever I read anything that Brian writes, I almost always say, “God, I wish I wrote that”, or “I wish I could write that good.” Brian had some key feedback that helped us a lot. Go sign up for 1000watt’s blog now.

I have a lot of great stories, ideas, and inspiration from Brad Nix, Katie Lance, Chris Smith, Brad Inman and Tom Ferry in the book. I stole from the best.

I dedicated the book to Maggie, Eddie and Dan. Maggie and Eddie, along with Dan were my first co-founders at IRIS, LLC. We had no idea how to build and run a software company but Lightning -Easy MLS Access and Lightning CMA Plus laid the groundwork for everything in my career.

Last but not least I want to thank my family. Jennifer, my wife, put up with the clicking sounds of my keyboard on a lot of early Sunday mornings.

And thanks to all of you in this industry who have given me your friendship, support, and allowed me to do what I love.

W+R Studios’ Co-founder, Greg Robertson Releases Debut Title, The Art of the CMA.

New book helps real estate agents and brokers let go of fear and compete in a new world of proptech.

September 10, 2020 (HUNTINGTON BEACH, CA) – Software entrepreneur, blogger and podcaster, Greg Robertson has released his first book, The Art of the CMA. A 28 year veteran of the real estate technology industry, Greg is sharing his experience of helping create real estate’s most popular Comparative Market Analysis (CMA) tools including the recent Cloud CMA Live. Throughout his career, Greg has had thousands of conversations with agents and brokers nationwide on how they can leverage real estate’s most versatile tool, the CMA. The CMA is powerful in that it highlights their unique knowledge to compete both offline and online in a new world dominated by ever-changing business models and huge real estate portals.

“Artificial intelligence is just that, artificial, it’s not real” stated author Greg Robertson. “All real estate is local, and when it comes to something as crucial as pricing a home, nothing beats the eyes, ears, and nose attached to the brain of a good agent. There is far too much time and energy spent in the industry hating on real estate portals, iBuyers and new business models who are “trying to destroy us.” It is only when agents let go of fear that they can clearly see what a huge opportunity this new era in real estate brings.”

The new book includes a forward by industry thought leader Sharran Srivatsaa and bonus content of the results of the W+R Studios’ 2020 Survey of Best Practices for CMAs and Listing Presentations.

For more information and to purchase the book, please visit, http://TheArtoftheCMA.com. Bulk discounts for teams and brokers are available.

About The Authors
The Art of the CMA was written by Greg Robertson with Charles Warnock. Greg has been in the real estate technology industry for over 28 years. He is the co-founder of W+R Studios, a privately held software company. Greg is on the “Power 200” (https://www.realestatealmanac.com/executives/), a list of the most influential people in real estate. He has served as a director on the Council of MLS (CMLS) (https://councilofmls.org/), an organization dedicated to improving the Multiple Listing Service industry. He publishes the popular real estate technology blog, Vendor Alley (https://vendoralley.wpengine.com/). He also hosts two podcasts, Listing Bits and Industry Relations. Greg lives in Huntington Beach, California with his wife Jennifer, their three kids, and dog Molly.

About W+R Studios‍
Founded in 2008, W+R Studios is a privately held web software company located in Huntington Beach, California. The company focuses on creating the next generation of web-based software solutions for the real estate industry. Their flagship product, Cloud CMA, part of the popular Cloud Agent Suite, is licensed to over 500,000 real estate professionals all over North America.
By providing a “less is more” approach to software design, elegant user interfaces, and using the latest in agile programming, W+R Studios’ software applications are at the same time powerful, yet accessible to everyone. Co-founders Dan Woolley and Greg Robertson have over 28 years of experience each developing and marketing real estate software solutions.

C.A.R. closes the loop

September 1st, 2020

California Association of Realtors® (C.A.R.) Standard Forms Now Available Directly Within Dotloop – No Uploading Required

“This is an important addition to dotloop’s transaction management platform and one that will provide enhanced value for both current and future California-based users,” says Marnie Blanco, dotloop VP, Industry Relations. “With direct access to C.A.R.’s Standard Forms, California-based agents, transaction coordinators, teams and brokers can now ensure their transactions close in the most seamless and efficient means possible.”
California agents will no longer need to download and import forms into the dotloop platform, thereby saving them valuable time.”

Great win for Zillow and their dotloop users. No mention of any financial terms. I still remember being there when Austin Allison was on stage with Joel Singer debating the use of these copyrighted forms on dotloop. Austin thought it was perfectly okay to use these copyrighted forms in dotloop without permission or license. When I asked Austin how many songs he had on his iPod that he actually paid for, I got a few laughs from the audience but Austin looked confused.

Hard to believe this all went down seven years ago. I wonder if he is going to crack open a Cab tonight and pour one out in celebration.

Unboxing video – The Art of the CMA

August 10th, 2020

I got a copy of my first book, “The Art of the CMA”, in the mail on Friday. I made a quick video to memorialize it.

We have done a ton of proofreading to make sure there are no obvious errors, but we also wanted to check to see the layout and print quality on the physical book itself before ordering any copies of the book in bulk.

Looks like everything is checking out so I will be placing my first order today. If you are interested to know when the new book comes out you can visit www.TheArtoftheCMA.com and sign up to be notified.

I have many people to thank but will wait when the book is available to everyone, plus I have something fun in mind for the official launch. Stay tuned!

Fear and why iBuyers Offers and Zestimates belong in your CMAs

August 5th, 2020

Jay Thompson, writing on Inman News, Why iBuyers and Zestimates belong in your CMAs

“Greg Robertson, W+R Studios co-founder, was attacked, called clueless, and challenged as to whether he had any industry experience (yes, almost three decades worth.) IBuyers, also highlighted in the headline, got one mention. Nothing else in the survey report was discussed. A few commenters waded into the fray showing understanding of why they at least look at Zestimates and sometimes mention them in listing presentations. The vast majority of commenters sounded off on the evils of Zillow and the Zestimate.”

I will say I am “clueless” about many, many things. My wife will tell you as much.

Sorry this post is a little long, but I think it touches on a lot of issues (not to mention a shameless plug for my company ????).

Jay, as you may know, is a former broker (The Phoenix Real Estate Guy) and worked at Zillow in Industry Relations for some time. His article is in response to an article published on Inman News about W+R Studios’ announcement of the results of their inaugural survey, 2020 Best Practices of CMAs and Listing Presentations.

Here’s more from Jay…

“No one, including Zillow, W+R Studios or me, is saying the Zestimate should be used as a comparable in your CMA. Of course it shouldn’t be, that’s not its intent or purpose. But to ignore it is to ignore something your clients are looking at and wondering about. Address it upfront, leave out your personal feelings about Zillow, and put any objections to rest early in the process. The listing presentation is the ideal time to address it with sellers, and the CMA is the perfect place to have it on record. “
Emphasis mine

Cloud CMA pioneered ways of including Zestimates to compare against actual sold prices from the MLS data as part of a Cloud CMA report. This has since been copied by other vendors. I was surprised by the amount of push-back we got when we introduced it. Many MLS organizations (after pushback from their members) made us turn the report page off by default, or in some cases, turned off altogether. But every time I sat down, one on one, with a broker or MLS executive and showed them how the report page worked, they understood, “wow this is great, agents are going to love it.”

This happens all the time. Many agents and brokers just hear/read “Zestimate” or “iBuyer” and begin to see red.

As we can see in the survey results and the comments on the article there is still a lot of fear out there. And as Mr. Hurbert once wrote, “fear, is the mind-killer”.

Flash forward to a little less than a year ago when W+R Studios introduced a way of including iBuyer Offers (with Opendoor) in Cloud CMA. We were met with the same type of fear and got a lot of push back and false claims.

“You’re going to put agents out of business!”
“Shame on you Cloud CMA!”

And those were the polite ones. I took these comments hard. We put many of our partner MLS organizations in a tough spot. They began to get calls from their members that “Cloud CMA was sending our CMAs to Opendoor!” (not true). The misinformation got so bad we had to create a document refuting some of the most outrages claims.

But we held firm because we knew, to paraphrase Jay, the listing presentation is an ideal time to address iBuyer Offers, and the CMA is a perfect place to have it on record.

Dan and I are always looking for new ways to innovate, and we are willing to take risks and keep our customers ahead of the curve. Even if these ideas seem crazy or counter-intuitive at the time.

The main thing that got us through the periods I wrote about above was, in the end, our customers (MLS organizations, brokers, and agents) trusted us.

In a recent “Friday Flash” blog post, titled “What are you saying” Brian Boero, CEO of 100watt wrote:

“Honestly, I am glad we have arrived at a point where there are no more red lines to transgress. I used to get revved up about this stuff too. Now, Zillow buys, owns and sells homes, Realtor.com charges referral fees, and yet good agents, teams and brokers continue to do their thing. “

Unlike Brian, I don’t think we are there yet. We still need to get over our fear of these new (old?) models, which as Rob Hahn and I discuss in recent Industry Relations podcast point out, keep turning more and more towards agent inclusion. We need to focus our energy on more positive things. We have a lot more to worry about than Zestimates and iBuyers.

I just hope the industry can take the advice of what a wise old hippie once said…

“You gotta let that shit go, man. Let it go.”

W+R Studios’ 2020 Survey of Best Practices for CMAs and Listing Presentations

July 29th, 2020

Got a few nice write-ups on a recent survey W+R Studios put out.

From Andrea Brambila of Inman News – Most agents aren’t including Zestimates, iBuyer info in CMAs

“W+R Studios, whose flagship product is comparative market analysis software Cloud CMA, fielded the survey “2020 Survey of Best Practices for CMAs and Listing Presentations” online from May 18 to May 31. The company sent the survey to its 298,520 Cloud CMA agent and broker subscribers, of which 3,325 completed the survey. Survey respondents hail from 46 states nationwide.

“Any agent creating a comparative market analysis wonders whether they are ‘doing it right’ or is curious about what other agents include or don’t include in their CMA. This survey gives agents an inside peek at the best practices of what goes into creating a winning CMA,” said Frances Wiseman, director of marketing for W+R Studios, in a statement.”

I was also surprised that most agents were not including Zestimates in their CMAs. Less so about iBuyer offers, since the number of iBuyer markets is still limited.

From Victor Lund of the WAV Group – Survey Results: Best Practices for CMA

“A powerful data component that is affirmed by the report is that agents interrogate all listing statuses in their CMA. Active listings are important to understand what is available to buyers today, but pricing is particularly influenced by pending, sold, expired, and withdrawn listings. The CMA may be one of the reasons why homes are selling so much faster (lower days on market) than ever before. It is hard for a listing to hide when the listing price is too high. Surprisingly, the report indicates that the properties included in a CMA range from 5 to 11. Agents focus on the Days on Market Comparison more than 61% of the time, making it one of the most vital calculations in the CMA report.”

Yup, Days on Market (DOM) is a huge deal for agents. Which I know is a battle at most MLS organizations.

Check out the full results here. If you are at an MLS organization this would be a perfect thing to share, since a lot of agents wonder whether they are doing a CMA “right”.

I would love to hear any suggestions to make the report better for next year. Are there any questions you want to ask? Let me know.

The Art of the CMA

June 18th, 2020

So I wrote a book. I’m self-publishing it. I’m getting some final feedback on the copy/content and finishing up the images, but in the next few weeks, we will be sending it to the printer. So, I’m looking for some feedback.

But first, let me tell you a story. I began writing the book almost two years ago. One of my favorite artists is John Coltrane. My son’s name is Cole, which was a compromise I made with my wife. Which should give you an idea of how much of a geek I am.

John Coltrane used to live in Long Island, NY. MLS of Long Island (MLSLI) holds a tech fair every year in October and his house isn’t far from the hotel I stay in. So each year I’ve driven by it. There’s a plaque outside the house that memorializes it. It’s not Graceland or Paisley Park. It’s was just the humble home of a great artist.

For inspiration, I wrote the first words of my book outside that house. Since then I’ve struggled, started, and stopped multiple times. Then, last year I was attending a trade show on content marketing in Cleveland and ran into an old colleague/friend of mine, Charles Warnock. I hired Charles years ago to run marketing at eNeighborhoods and now had a consulting business called Content Marketing Factory. We have been keeping in touch but had a chance to catch up with a couple of drinks at the conference. Charles mentioned he was co-authoring a book on enterprise innovation and digital transformation. Immediately I told him I was working on a book too, and was having trouble completing it and staying focused. He was excited by the idea of the book. So I struck a deal with Charles and he has been invaluable in helping me get the book completed.

So I’ve been working with the graphic designers on my team to create the cover of the book. I’ve decided on a layout and now I’ve narrowed it down to 3 different versions of that layout. So I’m looking for feedback on these three final designs. That’s where you come in.

The name of my book is “The Art of the CMA”. I’ll write more about the concept and content of the book in a later blog post.

Design #1

This the basic layout. I’m using Neutra (pronounced noy-tra) as the main font. It’s named for a famous Architect, Richard Neutra. Neutra is used in a lot of signage. It’s the same font I used for our building signage at W+R Studios building and the original W&R Studios buttery soft t-shirts. I like the fact that the font is tied to dwellings. The public library in Huntington Beach was designed by him, right before he died and his son took over the project.

The green I use is the same green as Cloud CMA. But I only mention Cloud CMA once in the book.

The sub-headline “Winning Listings by Mastering Real Estate’s Best Marketing Tool” isn’t final, but I haven’t come up with anything better.

And of course, the illustration is of a house, with a dollar sign symbolizing the value.

Design #2

In this version, we have added multiple colors to the line color of the illustration. Like an artist’s palette. The feedback I’ve heard so far is that it looks too close to a company logo during “Pride” month. Not that there’s anything wrong with that…

Design #3

Here the artist’s palette vibe and color are more prominent and we changed the color of some of the copy.

So there you have it. I’ve created a quick poll that you can fill out below. Or write something in the comments or just send me an email. I’m beyond excited about this project and happy to have all of you share in its creation.