Where Real Estate Gets Its Dirt

Join me at Midyear next week!

NAR_midyear_logo_hp2014_conventionLooking forward to catching up with everyone next week. I want to highlight a few events that I’ll be attending/participating in.

Tuesday

CMLS BRINGS IT TO THE TABLE WORKSHOP : CERTIFIED
May 12, 8 a.m. ?12:45 p.m.

The City Club of Washington
555 13th Street, NW
Columbia Square
Washington, DC 20004

Registration ends today, so hurry and register if you haven’t already. It includes lunch people, get on this!

Wednesday

MLS Association Executives Session
May 13, 3:00 PM to 5:00 PM

I just spoke to Chris Carillo and they have a strong session planned. They have asked me to moderate a panel on Syndication (what else?) at this session. My esteemed panelists include the Cameron Paine, the Jim Harrison and Matt Consalvo. Should be fun so get there early for a good seat.

Thursday

We (W&R Studios) are co-sponsoring the ListHub Party (Cirque du Mystique)
May 14, 8:00PM to 1:00am

Maimasion
3401 Water Street NW
Washington, DC 20007

Also I’ve got a few slots left open for meetings about Cloud CMA and our newest product Cloud Streams. Katie and I would love to give you a demo and show you the latest. Just contact Katie at the link below:

katie@wr-studios.com

See you there!!

CMLS 2014 afterglow and hangover

It was the biggest CMLS conference by attendance and sponsorship. I remember when it was a small group (Northwest Council of MLS), say less than 90, for the whole conference. Compare that to today, where FBS took out over 90 of their customers to dinner on Thursday night. Things have changed. I may be biased but I also have to say it was the best location as well. The weather was perfect. The hotel was fantastic. The food was amazing. You have to give it up to Art Carter, Patty Connor and the rest of the CRMLS staff for pulling off such and incredible event.

Before the event I heard a few people complaining about the agenda. They were wondering why all the “non-industry” speakers. Art Carter made it clear from the beginning, he wanted to craft an event, “I would like to see”. As it turns out the outside speakers were a huge hit. So much so, I bet future conferences you’ll see more of them than less.

Then there were the parties. My company held an “Open House” at our W&R Studios headquarters down on Main Street on Tuesday night. It was a huge hit, even if it required you to go big on the first night. Trulia and Zillow held separate events, one at Red O restaurant in Newport Beach (very che’che’). And of course there was Mini-Kiss event at Hurricanes on Wednesday night (I heard the band was spotted later and a local I-Hop around 1:30am, can you imagine the stares?)

Again, I may be biased, and I think I say this every year, but CMLS 2014 was best CMLS conference ever.

And then Craig Cheatham took the stage.

It was about 4:15PM on Friday afternoon and Art had a big smile on his face. He even commented, “If you are wondering why I have a big smile on my face its because I see so many of out there.” Having Craig Cheatham, the CEO of The Realty Alliance, as the last presenter was no coicendence. It was a master stroke from Art and did exactly what he hoped, keep people in their seats for the entire conference.

It’s hard to blame Mr. Cheatham for what happen next. And I have to give him credit for showing up, the expectations were pretty high. But he seems to be just a messenger, and a poor one at that, to the whims of The Realty Alliance masters he serves. Kind of like a Roger Goddell, with much less pay and prestige.

The Realty Alliance had gotten the MLS industry’s attention with Mr. Cheatham’s declaration last year, of “You’ve got 10 days”. One year later they had nothing to show or really talk about. Mr. Cheatham’s responses were, at best, oblique. I think John Mosey, CEO of Northstar MLS, put it best in a follow up question, Mr. Cheatham’s statements were “clear as mud”.

The subsequent interview was, at best, awkward, at worst insulting and a waste of everyone’s time. It’s a shame because the audience was full of MLS professionals who truly wanted to help make things better. It reminds me of the old saying, “Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.”

But lets move on, and not waste anymore time on these Keystone Cops.

My thanks again to everyone at CRMLS, the CMLS board of directors (you too Sarah), for putting together a truly spectacular event. And see you next year in Kansas City!

You’re invited! The Un-Official Pre-Party to CMLS 2014

lamp-shade-on-headIf you are going to arrive early for CMLS 2014 join Dan, myself and the rest of the W&R Studios gang for an Open House at the W&R Studios World Headquarters!

When?
Tuesday night 9/23/2014
6PM to ??

Where?
W&R Studios
123 Main Street, Suite 201
Huntington Beach, CA 92648
It’s about a 10 minute walk from the Hyatt. Or take a hotel shuttle to Main Street.

What?
Booze, food, swag, vinyl records and a professional ukelele player? What more could you ask for?

If you’re interested please click here to register.

And don’t worry, you have my permission to GO BIG on the first night!

Scottsdale goodness.

I was lucky enough to attend Clareity Consulting‘s MLS Executive Workshop last week.  As usual, Gregg Larson put on a great event.  A perfect mix of fun and learning (and great weather).  Here’s a few highlights.

Of course a lot of the buzz was centered around Errol’s departure to Zillow.  This was announced the first day of the conference and made some interesting conversations at the kickoff cocktail party.  Not sure if Zillow’s timing on this was on purpose, but it certainly got everyone talking.

Gregg started off the conference by mentioning that we all thought that 2014 was going to be a transitional year and so far things are proving out that way.

Along with the normal shtick on pocket listings, syndication, REDPLAN, anti-scraping, I really liked the presentations about MLS providers focusing on their subscribers.  Amy Geddes gave a great presentation on maximizing subscriber experience.  Which along with Matt Cohen’s presentation on Improving Subscriber Communication and even Gregg’s daughter Amanda Larson got in the mix about using social media channels in business.  Maybe its because I recently attended a Email Marketing Summit by Marketing Sherpa but Matt’s presentation really resonated with me, you should read his summary here. I mentioned via Twitter that I think there is room for a consulting agency  just focused on helping MLS providers with membership communication.  So important.

A lot of hub-hub was created by Jon Green‘s informal study of non-MLS listings.  You can read Andrea’s article here at Inman News, although I think her title of “Study suggests MLS played little or no role in nearly half of 2013 home sales” is a bit sensational.   The founder of “Producers Forum”, Eric Trailer, spoke about their agent network and advocated for an off-MLS listings network.  I found his speaking style hard to follow.  To me the issue of off-MLS listings are a fad, not a trend.  As soon as the inventory creeps up to a normal level you’ll find these networks faded away to cocktails hours.  In my opinion they serve more as a marketing vehicle for pretentious sellers and their agents.

Gregg also interviewed Dr. Michael Sklarz from Collateral Analytics.  There has been some controversy about CA and having Michael there to take questions from the audience was a constructive thing.  The main objections I heard were from MLS providers who didn’t think AVMs are the same as a BPOs or CMAs.  Underlying some of that contreversy was that many of the brokers who are utilizing CA were not exactly being forthcoming on the usage of the data to MLS providers when requesting data.  Whether this was due to ignorance or something else remains to be seen.  One take-away, from a vendor’s perspective, is even if you are following all the rules, you have to make sure the clients who have contracted you are also doing the same.

Lisa Larson and Jeff Nieto did a bit of an “App Shoot-Out” that I thought was fun.  About 80% of the apps they previewed I hadn’t heard about and most of them were really cool.  I’m not sure if Lisa has published the list but maybe you can reach out to her or Jeff and get a copy.

Then of course was the presentation of the 13th Annual MLS Customer Satisfaction Survey.  Matt kept the presentation short this year (which I liked) and just went over the highlights.  In a nutshell LPS (now Black Knight Financial Services) and FBS are killing it.  CoreLogic is dealing with some focus problems but promise to fix them by doubling down on Matrix.  Rapattoni looks to be improving on overall customer satisfaction and Solid Earth is heading in the wrong direction, fast.

The event is also known for giving away some of the nicest raffle gifts.  Many attendees left all types of the latest gadgets and gizmos.

 

Dan Sales, Lucky Winner!
Dan Sales, Lucky Winner!

Homes.com did something special this year I thought was a good idea.  They gave away an all expenses paid return trip to conference next year.  That includes, registration, airfare, and hotel.   Dan Sale, CEO of  the Capital Area REALTORS of Springfield, IL was the winner.  A prize I’m sure every attendee, including me, would have loved to receive.

Many thanks to Gregg, Matt and Amanda for putting on a fantastic conference and their wonderful hospitality.

 

 

The real story behind NAR’s decision to shutter HouseLogic.com

Well I wasn’t the only one to call for the National Association of REALTORS (NAR) to face facts and shutdown HouseLogic.com. At NAR last week Dale Stinton made what I think was a very bold decision and declared “Our consumer website is Realtor.com”. While I was a bit colorful in my remarks about the site, Rob Hahn went long, but Danny Frank of the Houston Association of REALTORS (HAR) deserves a lot of credit for bringing the issue to center stage.

Word on the street other factors were involved with this decsion too. One of the strongest was Michele Serro. Michelle was the founder of Doorsteps, recently acquired by MOVE, Inc. Before breaking out on her own Michele spent over 6 years at IDEO, a design company with clients like Apple. I’m told Michele and her team were tasked to come up with a plan to bring HouseLogic in to the fold. And it looks like NAR liked what she and her team came up with. Great to see MOVE firing on all cylinders.

Transcendental data and robots

Brad Inman
Brad Inman
This week I rented a house in Monterey with my sister’s family. It’s an old house built in the early 1900s and is the perfect place for cousins to run around and explore. In between amazing golf, sea kayaking, eating, more eating, and artisanal tequila I thought I’d hammer out a few thoughts about Inman Connect last week.

Inman News

My first thought was about the Inman News brand itself. After a year of some turmoil it seemed that many people were concerned if the conference, along with the site itself would last. In my opinion those concerns are baseless. You can’t agrue that the reporting on Inman News with Paul Hagey and Andrea Brambila has greatly improved. Their in-depth reporting and analysis has been some of the best I’ve seen written. Laura Monroe is also doing a great job on the agent side. David Stein, new President and General Manager of Inman News has also done a good job of shoring up the ship. They have also brought back the Alice Myerhoff (yay!) to help with Sales. So all things considered you can say that Inman News is strong as ever. Which is a good thing, as an industry friend told me, “The industry needs Inman.”

Connect 2013 SF

We sponsored a hospitality suite so I spent most of my days having meetings with brokers, MLS peeps and other customers. I did get to see the dot loop and CAR session (more on that later) and I was on the “app store” panel for the MLS track. So I didn’t get to see all of the sessions I would have liked to. But after talking to a few people at the show they felt the content was some of the best in years. Sure the telepresence robots are a bit too futuristic but remember this is Inman Connect, we are to open our minds to buying houses at Starbucks and our faces on an iPad rolling down a hallway.

I also heard from many that the woman who co-moderated most of the sessions needed to turn it down a bit (and I’m not just talking her microphone level). As I sat on the “app store” panel, ably moderated by Dave Charon from MRIS (he should do more of this, he is good at it), an audience member ask about how to make MLS data more “transcendental”, that got more than a few smiles (and laughs) from everyone. I’ll have to put that on jargon watch.

dotloop vs. C.A.R.

The session with Austin Allison and Joel Singer was on everyone’s mind. Most had made room in their schedule to attend the session. It didn’t disappoint. If I had to declare a winner I would say it was a draw with a slight edge to Austin from dotloop. He did a masterful job of demonstrating the issue with props; a cassette tape, a boom box and an iPod. But he lost me when he went on a personal diatribe of all the “sacrifices” he made starting the company (nobody cares Austin). Joel from C.A.R. was mostly on the defensive, and seemed physically irritated by some the questions from the audience. I still think both sides have room to grow on this issue. I was buoyed by conversations I had with Marnie Blanco who recently joined dotloop. Marnie is a smart person, and I know she doesn’t make decisions lightly. I think dotloop would benefit greatly by her experience and reputation by being the main company spokesman at these types of events and in the press.

Et al…

Trulia held a great party with mixologists at the ready to prepare your favorite drink (or a drink you never heard of.). And of course the RE Technology party, located next door to the famous Mitchell Brother’s Theatre (in case our Uber driver said, you “wanted to pull an audible”) was at the ready with a live band (Did you hear that John Heithaus has left MRIS and now spliting his time between BuyerMLS and his record label? Whoa!), for anyone that wanted to get their groove on. Unfortunately I couldn’t attend the ListHub party which is always a good time.

In summary

It’s a great time for real estate. The market is up, and lots of companies investing time and money in the space. It reminds me of a framed quote I saw on a real estate agent’s wall in her office. The quote read as follows:

“God please let there me another hot real estate market, and I promise not to blow all the money this time.”

Indeed.

See you at Inman Connect

Looking forward to see many of you at Inman Connect in San Francisco next week. I get there tomorrow evening. I’m also participating in a few sessions.

Dan and I will be at the CEO Summit at the Four Season on Wednesday morning. I will be helping lead a discussion on CRM around 10:00am. So if you got an invite I’ll see you there.

The agenda is jammed pack with some pretty cool stuff, here’s a few things I wanted to highlight.

Wednesday, July 10th

Welcome Address: 1:30PM -Hilton Union Square
I try to never miss Brad Inman‘s Welcome Address that starts at 1:30PM at the Hilton. His talk is “Be Future Proof. Own Tomorrow.”

Face Off: Working Through the Gnarly Details of the Digital Transaction: 5:10PM -Hilton Union Square
Joel Singer of CAR and Austin Allison of dotloop go at it. Should be fun.

Cocktails@Connect: 5:30PM Hilton Union Square Grand Ballroom A
Never go big on the first night.

Thursday, July 11th

MLS Success Track

Lots of goodies here. I like them all.

I’ll be on the panel of “The MLS “App Store:” Vision or Delusion? at 2:20pm, Dave Charon from MRIS is moderating. Lots of good panelist including Mike Wurzer, Amy Geddes, Katie Wethman, and Chip McAvoy.

My company, W&R Studios, is also hosting private meetings at our hospitality suite at the Hilton (where we are giving away the best Gift Bags in the industry for all our meeting participants). We have a few open spots on Wednesday and Thursday afternoon. So if you are a Broker looking to differentiate yourself or MLS provider looking for a way to generate non dues revenue, email me and we’ll schedule a time to hook up. greg [at] wrstudios [dot] com.

See you there!

NAR Midyear recap link pack

IMG_4290What a week. The meetings, the parties, the dinners, and the drama is over. Or has it just begun? Here are a few takeaways.

CMLX was a hit!

The Council of MLS'(CMLS) new certification program, CMLX, was held last Tuesday. I spoke to several who attended and the feedback was terrific. I know that a lot of people put a tredmendous amount of effort to get this thing off the ground so congrats to all of them for pulling off a successful program. You can find out more here.

Quote of the week:

Dale Stinton

“You can’t ever talk about a national MLS without getting into trouble. You can’t talk about the number of associations without getting in to trouble. You cant ever talk about professional standards without getting in to trouble,” Stinton warned. “What I’m here to say on behalf of leadership is we’re ready to get in trouble.”

When I read this quote the first time I had to quickly check VendorAlley.com to see if Dale had stolen the brass balls on the right. They’re still there.

The big news you didn’t hear about.

There was some HUGE news that didn’t break at the conference. I’m surprised that the secret was kept. More on this later in the week.

Unleash the hounds.

Was it confusing to anyone else to hear early in the week that people loudly applauded “taking back realtor.com” to then hear this past weekend NAR may let realtor.com “do more“.

BOD Policy

The real reason NAR included MLS public facing websites as a basic service.

This may be obvious to everyone else, but imagine if the NAR Executive Committee amendments stuck and MLS providers could no longer charge members or promote their public facing websites. What would that have meant for realtor.com? Isn’t that NAR’s “public facing website”? Or was that the final goal of big brokers all the time?

Real Estate is back! Lets party.

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My thanks to ListHub for throwing a great party. Cloud CMA was a co-sponsor and the party was off the hook!

photo-3
Speaking of parties…

It’s John Heithaus’ rock and roll fantasy, we just live in it! Once again John’s band got everyone’s groove on at the RETechnology party. Thanks to John and Victor for throwing another great event.

Inman Connect New York – Vendor Alley Recap

GRReporting Live From Brooklyn:

Inman Connect NYC ended yesterday. I’m staying until next week due to a few Cloud CMA presos I’m doing with MLSLI on Tuesday and Wednesday. I decided to stay in Brooklyn to change it up a bit. So far, I love this place. A great mix of people, sights and sounds.

RECAP

Reviews were mixed on the new venue. While there was a lot to like about the new hotel I think people missed being in Times Square. And a tweet about the elevators being too slow got a lot of comments.

I was only to able to see the first day of sessions, including Brad Inman’s keynote. Brad looked pumped up and energetic when he held up what looked like a 7 inch thick stack of real estate forms, contracts and transaction documents bound by paper and binder clips, and rubber bands. “This is what we are going to war with for the next few days” and then dropped the bundle of paper with a big thump on the stage. Great stagecraft. Even better was the naming, regardless of whether you agree with the premise I must of heard the phrase “latte vision” about a hundred times during the conference.

There were a lot of presenters that first day I enjoyed but If I had to pick one/two it would be the father and son team Jon Steinberg (President & COO, BuzzFeed) and his dad Richard Steinberg, (Executive Managing Director, Wurburg Realty Partnership & “Selling New York” HGTV star.) Richard talked a bit about being a salesperson, and how that it is a necessary and a profession he was proud of, my favorite quote, “It’s possible to be an ethical salesperson and still be successful”. True dat.

The other presenter I thought was very strong was Reshama Saujani, founder & chair of “Girls Who Code“. She was inspiring and a bit controversial, once stating “If you teach one girl to code, she will teach four, If you teach one boy, he will teach zero.”

I also met a lot of new people while moderating the Technology Panel on Thursday. One thing I am super impressed with is how smart these new batch of entrepreneurs really are. Especially the ones coming from incubator programs. Tony Cappaert from Contactually and Caren Maio from Nestio come to mind. They are so fresh and filled with optimism, I felt like a jaded old man. I wish all of them good luck, success and a strong liver.

Another trend from my panels was a new sense of transparency. Many of the vendors shared (with a little prodding) their sales practices, churn rates and other best practices. This is something that I a big believer in and was great to see live.

Unfortunately I missed a lot of parties due to conflicts with other parties, or plans. I did make the party we sponsored with John Heithaus and his “Superstar Factory All-Stars”. I love a live band and these guys brought it. Great fun.

I did hear a lot of rumors and a bit of gossip but I’ve run out of time, I’ve got tickets to go see Glengarry Glenn Ross on Broadway tonight (Al Pacino is playing Jack Lemmon’s role in the film), so I gotta go. And remember…

“COFFEE IS FOR CLOSERS!”

Speaking of NYC….

I also wanted to invite anyone who is attending Inman’s Real Estate Connect to join us at The Culture Club on Thursday night. The event will be hosted by our industry’s very own, John Heithaus and his Superstar Factory All-Stars. My company, W&R Studios, is co-sponsoring this event (along with RED-Real Estate Digital, Instanet Solutions, BuyerMLS and MRIS.) this year and would love you guys to come. Live music and dancing, what more could you want. So consider this your VIP invitation.

More details can be found here: Thursday Night Live feature the Superstar Factory ALL-STARS

Sponsored By Paragon Connect