Wurzer is “el fuego” lately with his posts. Great stuff, so stop reading all this snarky crap and get educated about the world o’ MLS at his FBS Blog. .
Job security….
WASHINGTON, Aug 22, 2007 /PRNewswire-USNewswire via COMTEX/ — Following is a statement by Lucien Salvant, NAR managing director of Public Affairs:
Numerous news outlets have reported today that membership in the National Association of Realtors(R) has declined. That is false. Membership has increased by nearly 6,000 this year. By the numbers, NAR ended 2006 with a record 1,357,732 members. At the end of July 2007, the most recent figure shows we have risen to 1,363,493 Realtors(R). That figure was provided to the Associated Press, which knowingly chose not to include it and also chose not to run a correction or clarification.
While the media has been focused on a decline in national sales for the past year, all real estate is local. We expect 2007 to be the fifth highest year on record for existing home sales. That historically strong level is supporting our membership base.
According to an outside source, there are about 2.6 million real estate licensees in the United States; about half of them belong to NAR. It appears much of our growth is from non-member licensees choosing to become Realtors(R), with the balance composed of newcomers entering the field. Non-member licensees are drawn to the benefits provided to them through a three-tiered membership in their local, state and National Association of Realtors(R), where there are numerous opportunities to increase their professionalism and specialization through training, networking and education.
The National Association of Realtors(R), “The Voice for Real Estate,” is America’s largest trade association, representing more than 1.3 million members involved in all aspects of the residential and commercial real estate industries.
Information about NAR is available at http://www.realtor.org.
REALTOR(R) is a registered collective membership mark which may be used only by real estate professionals who are members of the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS and subscribe to its strict Code of Ethics. Not all real estate agents are REALTORS. All REALTORS are members of NAR.
SOURCE National Association of Realtors
All the right moves….
Word is Rick Sherwood is leaving FNRES and joining the eNeighborhoods team. Rick spent over 10 years with FNRES (aka Moore Data…VISTA…RISCO…HomeSeekers…FNIS). This is a sort of homecoming for Rick. Back in the day he worked with Andy Woolley and Dave Rifkin at IRIS, LLC.
IRIS, LLC was owned by Greg Robertson and Dan Woolley. Now Greg and Dan run eNeighborhoods. Got all that?
Sir Rick joins Andy’s Enterprises Services sales team, where he will lead the Franchise and Broker effort.
Andy’s team is fresh off a huge win with the California MLS Alliance. With over 80% of California’s listings (2.5M active and off market listings), ten MLS providers comprising of 45 associations with over 150K members make the California MLS Alliance the largest MLS database in the country.
Word is Andy’s team has got something even bigger up their sleeve.
The chess pieces are starting to move again….
What's an MLS sales guy doing at the RETS Conference????
Inman Connect Recap….finally
First off, kudos to Brad for putting together another great show. Yeah, I know Connect can be full of fringe companies and topics but you gotta love the amount of respect Brad gives these entrepreneurs. Coming from a guy who started his business in a garage I can appreciate it.
You also gotta love the city of San Francisco. The restaurants, the bars, the bums, the people, the everything. I grew up in the Mission District on 21st Street and it always feels like coming home when I drive in to the city.
The Palace Hotel, decent. The ballroom has a great vibe but the service wasn’t the greatest. The lobby bar, with its picture of the “The Pied Piper”, has a great vibe too, it was a shame someone reserved half the bar seats one night- the place is small enough already! Rooms were small but nice. Wish they had more private meeting space just too sit down. It was hard to sit down with someone without being in the open and everyone saying hi or waving.
But all the heavies were there. I caught Errol Samuelson, President of Realtor.com, and Move’s skunk works developer Curt Beardsley and the House of Shields one night. (Gotta love House of Shields, a vendor’s dream, a bar within stumbling distance when the lobby bar closes) Alan Dalton was nowhere to be seen and assumed to be in his basement with his soldering gun building the new super secret weapon for MOVE.
The Clareity boys were in full force. Someone told me that they all got black matching tailored suits from a clothing story next door to The Palace- So my nickname for Gregg (Mr. Brown), Troy (Mr. White) and Kevin (Mr. Pink) is going to be The New Reservoir Dogs.
I did see Marty Frame and John Hensley from FRNRES, along with Larry “fingers” Ross, but oddly nobody from FNRES’ MLS group. Word is that management scheduled a sales training session the same days as the conference. Must be contagious for MLS vendors because Wurzer from FBS was busy “…working on stuff our clients need”. Way to go Mike!
Jim Secord from MostHome showed up, hope he didn’t use his personal credit card to get there. And of course all the heavies from Dominion Enterprises, Andy Woolley (eN), Bob Morse (eN), Michael Hayes (eN), Jamie Clymer (Homes.com) and Dave Meyer (eN). What a bar bill!
Speaking of bar bills, for those of you who made it to the eNeighborhoods Inman After Party at Black Magic Voodoo Lounge you know what I mean when I say “OFFFF DA HOOOK!” Michael was slinging drinks like Tom Cruise in Cocktails, only without the spinning bottles and weird grin. Later even Andy “Elephant Hunter” Woolley got it to the act, mixing one of the best Tanqueray and Tonics in the city. Way to grab the right bottle Andy!
The bar was even graced by Inman’s very own Alice Myerhoff. Alice is the Sales Director for Inman News and sells advertising and conference sponsorships. Even more lovely ladies showed up as the RE/MAX International’s very own Fatima and Amy came and showed us all how RE/MAX rolls.
Plus I gotta give a big shout out to Brad Tertell from MLSNI, he loaded the jukebox with serious coin and picked out an awesome mix of tunes for the evening- Brad you might have a career as DJ if this MLSNI thing doesn’t work out!
Most of the other stories I can’t mention or don’t remember.
Even with all this we did manage to get some work done, that’s the great thing about Inman Connect, just mix and stir.
Inman Connect Recap…tomorrow.
Inman Connect, fill in the blanks…..
What the hell was ______ doing with ________? Isn’t she married?
What ever happen to ________? Last year their ______ didn’t stink, and now I don’t see them around anywhere.
What’s up with ________? I still don’t get how they are ever going to make money.
_______________.com? Are they serious?
If you were going to ______ _______ would you have her leave her glasses on or off?
How is ________ going to explain to his membership that they are not a part of the new _________________?
How much money did ______ really make when he sold his company to __________?
It’s been over a year now, isn’t it about time Steve __________ quit his current gig and found another one? new website names available
Geeking out at Inman Connect
So I’m taking the lead from Joel Burslem of Inman and signed up for a Twitter account. According to Joel…
“Twitter is a micro-blogging platform that allows you to answer the question “What are you doing?” online in 140 characters or less.
Over the last few months it has been adopted by thousands of users worldwide to let their friends know what they are up to. Check out Twittervision to see just some of the activity that is happening on the network right now.
Twitter is also a great way for you to keep in touch with colleagues, business contacts and friends at a conference like Connect.
Using your mobile phone you can SMS (text message) your location (iPhone users can use the fantastic application PocketTweets), so people can locate you in the Palace. Using Twitter, you can narrowcast your location to followers and friends so they will always be able to find you.”
So if you want to follow us at Inman Connect Conference check out our profile VendorAlley and add us a friend.
Of course we might not let you know to all the places we’ll be going….