It’s been only a little more than a year since First American Financial Corp spun off CoreLogic, (June 2010) and now this? It sounds like they are bit spooked by the market. Which is a shame. I think this period is going to separate the men from the boys.
Some will see uncertainty/panic, and some will see opportunity.
CoreLogic forms committe for possible sale
http://www.housingwire.com/2011/08/29/corelogic-forms-committee-for-possible-sale
If you didn’t get the memo it looks like NAR is cutting down the number of days of exhibiting at NAR Midyear from 3 days to 2 days.
The new trade show days/hours are the following:
Wednesday, May 16, 2012 10AM – 6PM
Martinis at Midyear Reception 4PM – 6PM
Thursday, May 17, 2012 10AM- 6PM
To put things in perspective here’s what the days/hours were this past May.
Wednesday 10AM to 5PM
Thursday 9AM to 5PM
Friday 9AM to 2PM
I like the fact the show doesn’t start till later (10AM), but I’m not sure how staying till 6PM is going to help any.
Sue Gorley states:
“With the new schedule, exhibitors will have the opportunity to network and schedule private meetings with attendees on Tuesday and Friday all day, and before 10:00am/after 6:00pm on Wednesday and Thursday. Note that NAR will enforce the “no suite meetings” during official Expo hours.”
I personally think the “no suite meetings” during official Expo hours is bullshit. Plus a lot of people looked at Friday for heading home. It will be a tough adjustment to convince vendors and customers to stay for a 3PM meeting on Friday.
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Dear 2012 Midyear Exhibitor,
Based on your feedback in surveys and discussions, we are pleased to announce a change to the 2012 Midyear Legislative Meetings & Trade Expo.
You have told us that exhibit hours at Midyear are longer than needed, Friday is a less productive day, and you would like to see exclusive hours for attendees to come to the Expo.
As a result, we have changed the 2012 Midyear Expo schedule to:
Wednesday, May 16, 2012 10:00am – 6:00pm
Martinis at Midyear Reception 4:00pm – 6:00pm
Thursday, May 17, 2012 10:00am – 6:00pm
NAR is clearing the schedule of programs from 5:00pm-6:00pm each day, providing you two exclusive hours for the Expo.
With the new schedule, exhibitors will have the opportunity to network and schedule private meetings with attendees on Tuesday and Friday all day, and before 10:00am/after 6:00pm on Wednesday and Thursday. Note that NAR will enforce the “no suite meetings” during official Expo hours.
We will continue to offer the same great advertising and sponsorships including traffic building opportunities such as Cash In & Win and food & beverage events on the Expo floor.
While the price for booth space will remain the same, the new two-day schedule and changes will help exhibitors to increase their ROI and reduce costs with one less expo day, providing longer straight time move-out hours on Friday and a reduction in daily costs such as cleaning and other services.
We appreciate all of the feedback from you and we hope that the changes in 2012 will be positive and profitable!
Thank you for support and for exhibiting at the 2012 Midyear Expo.
Sincerely,
Sue Gourley
Vice President, Conventions
Hearing the news today that Steve Jobs was resigning as CEO from Apple felt like someone punched me in the stomach. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs have always been heroes of mine.
Unlike that of Gates, Jobs resignation is just so tragic. I likened it to as if Bob Dylan had announced he could no longer play the guitar or sing. Gates got to choose another path but Jobs poignant “Unfortunately, that day has come” tells you he had no choice.
I know that loving what I do for a living makes me a lucky man. Not many people have that opportunity. And for me the process of creating and being around other creative people is absolutely the best part of my job. Sure there are disagreements and sometimes a lot of yelling and screaming. But the journey of creating is really the reward. It would be impossible to give that up.
When we started W&R Studios Dan and I decided to start fresh. After 15 years of using Windows computers we switched to MacBook Pros. We never looked back.
I think we did it for the the same reason Steve Jobs plays his favorite Dylan album.
Inspiration.
Great article by Marc Andreessen in the Wall Street Journal. Love this bit….
“First of all, every new company today is being built in the face of massive economic headwinds, making the challenge far greater than it was in the relatively benign ’90s. The good news about building a company during times like this is that the companies that do succeed are going to be extremely strong and resilient. And when the economy finally stabilizes, look out—the best of the new companies will grow even faster.”
Boom! With close to 70,000 members CRMLS now becomes the largest MLS providers in the country.
Here’s a list of the winners in this deal:
Well played, lady and gentlemen, well played.
Full Press Release Below:
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Merger of CRMLS and Southern California MLS Creates Largest MLS in the Nation
LOS ANGELES–(BUSINESS WIRE)–California Regional Multiple Listing Service, Inc. (CRMLS) and the Southern California MLS (SoCalMLS) have agreed to merge, creating the largest multiple listing service in the nation, it was jointly announced today by Len Herman, 2011 president of SoCalMLS, and Rob Arrietta, 2011 president of CRMLS.
“Combining two highly complementary organizations is what our brokers and subscribers want, and now we have the opportunity to offer even greater value to our customers.”
“This union was long overdue,” said 2011 SoCalMLS President Len Herman. “Combining two highly complementary organizations is what our brokers and subscribers want, and now we have the opportunity to offer even greater value to our customers.”
“The combination of two of the largest MLSs in the nation simply makes sense for brokerages, agents, and REALTOR® associations,” said 2011 CRMLS President Rob Arrietta. “The combination of our products and services gives real estate professionals throughout California an extremely cost effective solution for their MLS services.”
The combined entity will remain as CRMLS, which is based in San Dimas, Calif., with Rob Arrietta serving as president of the organization. Len Herman will remain on as part of the transition team. CRMLS will now be providing products and services to 33 REALTOR® associations and their 68,000 participants and subscribers throughout California.
About CRMLS
CRMLS delivers, through local member associations, the most affordable, reliable, and convenient listing technology service available, and provides products and services that support real estate professionals in maximizing the use of property data to achieve their business goals.
Contacts
CRMLS
Art Carter, 909-859-2045
art at crmls dot org
Want to be cool like this MLS Exec? I still have a few stickers left, click here to learn how to get yours free!
Yesterday Dale Ross, CEO of RPR, wrote a blog post named “The Future?“. The fact he used a question mark isn’t surprising.
Mr. Ross is a bit perplexed on why many MLS providers have not chosen RPR or continue to use their competitors for what he calls “short-term gains.” He references a widely distributed blog post written by Kim Prior of OnBoard Informatics, called “MLSs Taking Control of Destiny – a Plea, an Observation, a Call to Arms“. (Sound the trumpets!) Her post is a bit naive but does lay out challenges many industries face including the MLS.
When RPR launched Mr. Ross stated their plan was to have RPR break-even in 3 years. It’s been a bumpy road since then as many MLS providers challenged their value proposition. In his post Mr. Ross repeated RPR’s value proposition as this:
“What RPR seeks to offer NAR members is REALTOR® control of property data, analytics and valuations. At the core of the RPR system, the licensed data provided to the MLSs by brokers is aggregated with the additional licensed parcel-centric data. RPR then seeks to return valuable tools to REALTORS® designed to bring national and local information as well as agent and broker support systems directly where they are needed the most, at market level to benefit the consumers, but provided by REALTORS® to reinforce REALTOR® value. “
The linchpin to this strategy is how “valuable” the tools RPR is providing. In a recent blog post Brian Larson asks many MLS providers to consider this before resigning with RPR. Reports have suggested that usage of RPR’s toolset are very, very low even by 3rd party software standards. Recently RPR has refocused efforts to improve this.
I’ve been creating and selling software solutions for REALTORS since 1992 and feel your pain. Based on that here a some suggestions for RPR to consider.
1. Stop complaining. NAR has committed 20 million dollars to you and ponied up another 12 million to buy assets to get you started. Add to that you also have a rock star team that includes Marty, Mona, Reggie, Ohan, Kristen and others. Nobody gives a shit about your problems, implement.
2. Don’t be greedy. I still think that sharing future revenues from MLS data with MLS providers is the right thing to do. Look at it this way, I bet you CoreLogic paid 100 times more towards the CIVIX settlement than RPR and still was able to share revenue back to the MLS via its data deals. In that situation who’s the better “industry partner”?
3. Make a product agents love. This is the hard part. But, I guarantee you if the RPR toolset was something agents actually loved all these barriers with MLS providers would disappear overnight. But so far, other than NAR cronies, I’ve never really hear that agents really LOVE RPR’s tools.
4. It’s NOT the data stupid. Data, data, data is all I ever hear from RPR. It should be User Experience, User Experience, User Experience! I’ve had a few off the record conversations with trainers at MLS providers tasked to train on RPR. The feedback has been the same, it’s “too complicated”, it does “too much”. So how about introducing a stripped down version that offers less flexibility but gives the agents something quick and easy. Your data means dick if nobody can figure out how to get at it or how to use it.
5. If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. It would be interesting to see what Zillow, Realtor.com, Trulia, and other industry 3rd party software developers could do with RPR data. Hell, Zillow is swimming in money since their IPO. How about striking a deal with them for an API to RPR data? Get them, and others, addicted to RPR data.
You’re welcome. : )
The reports start flowing in this morning that the Advanced Access offices in Anaheim Hills were being shut down. Turns out that it was all part of a consolidation effort by Dominion Enterprises in anticipation of their launch of Homes Connect.
According to a tweet from Andy Woolley, General Manager of Homes Media Solutions:
So it appears they are consolidating their sales positions in San Diego and part of that effort was laying off 20+ employees at the Advanced Access office in Anaheim Hills.
I think this consolidation is a good idea. The fact that Dominion Enterprises hadn’t done this sooner is the issue. At one point Advanced Access had 40,000 paying customers. That number is very different today.
Homes Connect looks very promising. To me the single biggest thing about Homes Connect is their emphasis on VOW agent sites. They really have a chance to change the game with agent website vendors who are only offering IDX data.
Looks like the final milestone was met. To be honest I’m left a little numb by this news.
On one hand I feel like congratulations are in order for NAR along with the big MLS Vendors and everyone else who participated to make this happen.
On the other hand I just get this sense of foreboding that this isn’t the last of these types of shakedowns.
Just yesterday Google bought Motorola. You would think they did it to create great new Android phones, where they (Google) would control both the hardware and software (similar to Apple). But nope, they did it for the treasure trove of mobile patents Motorola held. It is some sort of Mexican Standoff strategy where if someone pulls the trigger and sues, the other guy will pull the trigger as well.
Something needs to change, and quickly.
See release below:
————————————————————————–
Realtors(r) Complete Licensing Opportunity with CIVIX-DDI
Contact: Leanne Jernigan
202-383-1290
ljernigan at gmail dot com
WASHINGTON (August 16, 2011) – The following is a statement by National Association of Realtors(r) President Ron Phipps:
As of Monday, August 15 the National Association of Realtors(r) has completed a negotiated licensing opportunity with CIVIX-DDI, LLC, the owner of various technology patents, on behalf of the real estate industry. The negotiation included a total payment of $7.5 million in patent license fees to CIVIX. As a result of this action, all Realtor(r) associations, multiple listing services, commercial information exchanges, MLS system vendors, as well as brokers and agents are protected from current and future claims of patent infringement from CIVIX.
The National Association of Realtors(r), “The Voice for Real Estate,” is America’s largest trade association, representing 1.1 million members involved in all aspects of the residential and commercial real estate industries.
###
Information about NAR is available at www.realtor.org. This and other news releases are posted in the News Media section.
Good looking site. The simple design makes it easy to navigate, I especially like the use of video (MRIS TV!) right up front on the home page. The two videos I viewed were well produced and looked great. Well done.
Congrats to Kevin Greene and LPS REG, I know they have more MLS Portal customers yet to be launched.
See Full Press Release Below:
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LPS Real Estate Group Powers
Consumer-Facing Website for MRIS
LPS Real Estate Group is proud to announce that its MLS Portal was chosen by MRIS, the leading real estate data company in the Mid-Atlantic region and the largest multiple listing service (MLS) in the nation, to serve as the platform for its consumer-facing website, HomesDatabase.com. The new site was recently launched on August 4.
LPS Real Estate Group’s MLS Portal provides multiple listing services with a branded website that offers consumers direct access to comprehensive property listing content. This site includes an aerial-view map-searching feature with rooftop accuracy and parcel-line overlays. Additionally, search functions are tailored to regional and market specifications. The portal also enhances the listing information to include points of interest, school and neighborhood data, driving directions to each property and more. With the click of a button, viewers can generate real-time reports and snapshots of the real estate market in a selected area to analyze buying trends and compare property values.
“The team at LPS Real Estate Group did an outstanding job from start to finish building and delivering our site,” said John L. Heithaus, Chief Marketing Officer, MRIS. “Throughout the entire process they worked very closely to ensure all promises were kept and the site accomplished what we wanted, ensuring we drive more qualified leads to our Agents faster than ever before.”
“MLS consumer portals drive consumer traffic back to the Brokers and Agents, rather than competing with member websites,” said John Hensley, chief product officer, LPS Real Estate Group. “Consumers who are provided independent access to listings are generally better informed and more faithful to the real estate professional who helps with their sale or purchase.”
More than 90 percent of consumers use the Internet as the first step in their real estate purchase. LPS’ MLS Portal provides that intermediate level between the national websites, where many consumers start their search, and the individual agent website, where consumers work one-on-one with an Agent in their home-buying process.
“Surveys have shown that consumer-facing MLS websites gain increasingly higher search result placement than individual Broker Agent websites,” added Hensley.
Visit HomesDatabase.com via a mobile device or computer, and for more information about the MLS Consumer Portal product, contact Kevin Greene at 949.903.6138 or visit www.lpsreg.com.
