Looking forward to seeing everyone next week! I land Monday afternoon.

Katie Smithson from W+R Studios will be speaking on two panels next week. Her first appearance will be at Carnegie Hall! Who could forget her last stage appearance!

CEO Connect – Tuesday, January 29th 8:55 AM – Carnegie Hall

On-Demand: Are You Missing Out?
Anthony Lamacchia, Broker/Owner, Lamacchia Realty
Sean Black, CEO, Knock
Katie Smithson, Director of Enterprise Services, W+R Studios
With Vija Williams, Director of Growth, Ben Kinney Companies

Broker Connect – Tuesday January 29th 3:10 Westside Ballroom Salon 1&3

How the iBuyer Programs You Know (and Have Never Heard Of) Are Changing Your Business
Chris Lim, Founder Climb Real Estate
Matt Hendricks Director of Broker Relations & Strategy, Zillow Group
Anthony Lamacchia, Broker/Owner, Lamacchia Realty
Katie Smithson, Director of Enterprise Services, W+R Studios

I’ll be on one panel,

Data – “Platforms: What are they & why should I care?” – Thursday, January 31st 3:35PM, Westside Ballroom Salon 2&4

Rebecca Jensen, CEO of MRED,LLC – Moderator
Adi Pavlovic, director of innovation from KW
Greg Robertson, co-founder W+R Studios

Travel safe everyone!

Its list season! Right off the heels of the Swanepoel 200, Real Trends has announced the “GC2019” list of 50 Game Changers. The list includes a few vendors and others that caught my eye.

Zvi Band of Contactually, Morgan Carey of Real Estate Webmasters, Jed Carlson of AdWerx, Denee Evans of CMLS, Tom Ferry, Andrew Flachner of RealScout, Ernie Graham of Homebot, Rob Hahn, Alex Lange of UpstreamRE, Caroline Pinal of Giveback Homes, and Mike Schneider of First IO

Congrats to everyone. For a full list you can visit their site at The REAL Trends Game Changers list.

Inman just posted an article “HouseCanary launches portal, raising questions over listing data.” Here’s what HouseCanary is saying…

“The site is still in a beta mode, but company spokesperson Denise Dunckel told Inman the goal “is to create a compelling and differentiated home search experience for consumers focusing on our deep property analytics.”

But something still isn’t right…

How exactly those listings showed up on ComeHome’s map, however, remains is unclear.

[Denise] Dunckel said that all current and past ComeHome listings come “directly from MLS feeds that HouseCanary has agreements with.”

That sounds straightforward enough, except that two different MLS chief executives told Inman they found their own listings on ComeHome, despite not having an agreement in place that would allow the new portal to share that information.

One of those execs, Lauren Hansen of IRES MLS in Colorado, said she found out about ComeHome earlier this week and was still trying to figure out what exactly was going on. As far as she was aware, ComeHome did not have an agreement with her MLS, nor had anyone from the portal reached out and asked to use listing data.

When Inman asked about IRES and CRMLS, Dunckel replied that “our policy is to only include MLS listings where we have agreements in place.””

????

Sounds like Sarah Sanders has some competition in Denise Dunckel.

And I’m not buying there must be a “misunderstanding” about the agreements either (if they can find them). HouseCanary got $64M in funding. They got “data scientists”. They can’t read a data agreement? Riiiiiight.

Looks like HouseCanary got caught with their hand in the cookie jar.

What’s a word you would use If you don’t have permission to use something and you haven’t paid for it, but you still use it? It’s on the tip of my tongue, I just can’t think of it now….

Sure looks like it. Multiple MLS providers have confirmed that listing data showing up on HouseCanary‘s website, ComeHome.com, don’t have an agreement to display this information publicly.

It appears the source of the data comes from Nextdoor, which announced a partnership with House Canary back July 2018.

Eric Stegemann, founder of TRIBUS, noticed something suspicious when Nextdoor recently started asking him to send data through HouseCanary and reported it on Facebook.

Good on Eric for reporting this.

The two questions I have are this.

1. Is HouseCanary that clueless about MLS data or do they just don’t care?
2. How long has this been going on, and have they been using illegal MLS data to power their AVM?

My advice to MLS providers is to check ComeHome.com and see if any of your data is up there and if they are in violation.

UPDATE: I got a call from HouseCanary. They are strongly denying this report from Eric, saying that they have agreements in place with all MLS Providers for which they are displaying data. The question is if those agreements (if they exist) allow them to publicly display MLS data. The rep I talked to on the phone wasn’t totally sure, and said they would check (lame!) They also didn’t like my title, “Is HouseCanary stealing MLS data?”. I’ve given it some thought and have changed the title. Developing…

Acquisition adds open house lead generation to the HomeSpotter software-suite of real estate products

“Marketing activities for open house lead generation have 3 parts — before, during, and after. We spent the past 4 years building, iterating, and perfecting the during and after pieces and we do those very well, better than anyone else.” said Spacio co-founder and CEO Melissa Kwan. “However, we always knew that in order to complete our product offering, we needed to give agents a way to market their listings before their open houses; this wasn’t something we had the expertise to build on our own. With HomeSpotter’s digital advertising product, Boost, we can finally deliver the complete solution to agents that allows them to do all three: advertise their open houses before, capture leads during, and automatically follow up after, all within a single platform.”

I’m a bit late to the table on this one but wanted to share a few thoughts. Anyone who reads this blog knows I have a ton of respect for both companies. It’s great to see these two together. What I like about HomeSpotter is that Aaron has a strong opinion about how his software should serve his clients; “Real relationships = better business”. Melissa and her teams focus on design have made Spacio a stand out in real estate tech. Looking forward to seeing what this combination delivers.

I didn’t get a chance to post my traditional tribute to Martin Luther King Jr. yesterday. So instead I thought to post about a piece of music inspired by a tragic event and a sermon given by Dr. King after these events. The song is called “Alabama” and written by John Coltrane.

Alabama, by John Coltrane

Martin Luther King addressed a crowd of mourners at the funeral service for Addie Mae Collins, Carol Denise McNair, and Cynthia Diane Wesley in the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church on September 18. A separate service was held for the fourth victim, Carole Robertson. He delivered a moving speech, a Eulogy for the Martyred Children. Coltrane may have had Martin Luther King’s eulogy in mind when performing the piece. Both Coltrane’s music and King’s words are passionate and mournful, and lack bitterness and hatred. Similar to King’s speech where he transforms from mourning into determination for the struggle against racism, there is a point in the tune where Elvin Jones switches from a very quite accompaniment into a crescendo of toms and cymbals played with mallets.

This song is not about mourning. This song to about one simple goal, learning to love one another.

O’Callaghan honored for his positive impact on affordable housing in Atlanta

Down Payment Resource (DPR) is proud to announce John O’Callaghan, President and CEO of the Atlanta Neighborhood Development Partnership, Inc. (ANDP) as the first recipient of the Beverly Faull Affordable Housing Leadership Award.
The award, named in memory of accomplished real estate veteran Beverly Faull, recognizes an individual who has demonstrated leadership in providing more access to homeownership and affordable housing finance solutions.
As a well respected veteran in the MLS and housing industry and one of DPR’s first employees, Faull believed in the company’s mission to provide greater access and awareness to down payment assistance programs. Faull was responsible for building DPR’s MLS business and putting its tools in the hands of more than 300,000 Realtors across a dozen MLSs.

I just think this is so cool. Well done Rob Chrane. I know a lot of you remember Bev. I was lucky enough to know and work with her and still managed to stay on her good side. ????

There’s more about the award here.

MoxiWorks Delivers Alternative to Upstream

Leading real estate technology company, MoxiWorks, announced today that their alternative to Upstream is available to enterprise brokerage customers nationwide. The MoxiCloud open platform provides brokerages with a comprehensive suite of data management services designed to protect and enable the broker to fully control the distribution, licensing and use of the brokerage’s listing, agent, and consumer data.
 
For years, brokerages waited patiently for Upstream to deliver a solution, but their recent announcement of an unresolved technology provider shift has made the future uncertain. “Brokerages need to take control of the data that powers their business, period. Own your data! It’s high time, and brokerages have waited long enough for this to be delayed any longer,” said York Baur, CEO of MoxiWorks. 

Space abhors a vacuum. It’s not clear in the press release if they have a listing input system as part of the “Moxi Cloud”, so I’m a bit unsure as whether their solution captures any data “upstream”. But the timing is epic as UpstreamRE has yet to announce their new vendor, and Alex Lange’s strange LinkedIn postings. With other listing input modules entering the game like Bridge Interactive, and more “in development” like, Remine, its clear this is going to be a crowded field.

HomeServices of America® Expands its Executive Leadership Team

HomeServices’ Executive Chairman Ron Peltier appointed Gino Blefari, current CEO of HSF Affiliates, as CEO of the company. HSF Affiliates is the HomeServices’ subsidiary operating the Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices and Real Living franchise networks. Peltier and Blefari will lead the growing business of HomeServices of America, formulate and execute strategies consistent with the mission, values and culture of the organization, and drive its continued acquisition strategies

This is huge news in the franchisor/brokerage space. Gino is a force, I remember back when he founded Intero Real Estate. Gotta love the timing on this as Ron Peltier, moves on to become the companies executive chairman, after just ranking #1 on the 2019 Swanepoel Power 200 list of the the most powerful people in real estate. No pressure Gino!

Ron Peltier took the top spot from Gary Keller (#2) this year. The report cited that as CEO Peltier was only the second brokerage to surpass 100 billion in sales.

Bob Hale, CEO of the Houston Association of REALTORS was the highest MLS exec, moving up 5 spots to #27. HAR’s Chairwomen, Kenya Burrell-VanWormer, was recently named Inman News’ 2018 “Person of the Year” for taking a public stand against NAR raising dues.

I count about 15 MLS Execs listed including Art Carter, CEO of CRMLS at #36, up 4 spots from last year. Tom Phillips #52 and David Charron #84 of Bright MLS, Teresa King Kinney, CEO of the Miami Association of REALTORS #120, Rebecca Jensen, CEO of MRED, LLC, #128, Matt Consalvo, CEO of ARMLS #133, Merri Jo Cowen, CEO of MFRMLS #134, Morgan Carey, CEO Real Estate Webmasters #136, Kathy Condon, CEO of MLSPIN #138, Dionna Hall #159 CEO of Realtors of the Palm Beaches and Greater Fort Lauderdale, Jim Harrison, CEO of MLSListings #165, John Mosey CEO of Northstar MLS #179, Jim Speer CEO of New York MLS #183, Tim Dain (first timer?) #194 CEO of MARIS and Anne Marie DeCatsye CEO of Charlotte Regional Realtor Association and CarolinaMLS at #195. Denee Evans, CEO of CMLS was listed at #175.

Notable vendors include Errol Samuelson of Zillow Group at #42, Chris Bennett of CoreLogic at #45. Mike Wurzer pushed in to the double digits at #91. Joel Macintosh CEO of WolfNet #146, Marilyn Wilson and Victor Lund of the WAV Group at #149, Brian Boero and Marc Davidson of 1000watt #151, and Me (Greg Robertson) was listed at #154 (up 26 spots, woot!) Zvi Band CEO of Contactually is listed at #169, Leo Pareja CEO of Remine #177, Mitch Skinner of LarsonSkinner #180, Charles Williams of Buyside #181, Andrew Flachner of RealScout #182, Suzanne Mueller of Realtor.com #193 and Alex Lange, CEO of UpstreamRE at #200 (whew!)

I apologize in advance if I missed anyone. Congrats to everyone!