Inman Disconnect
Looking forward to heading to Palm Springs in just a little more than a week for Inman Disconnect. Last year was pretty amazing. Brad does a great job of creating an environment where he puts together a group a people and gets them a little (or a lot) of their comfort zone and then takes that state of mind and drives it toward a larger conversation, and a larger purpose. Last year was The Parker Principles.
So hit me up if you are going to be there. See you soon!
Real Trends 500 – hacked?
Real Trends 500 website hacked hours after new rankings debut
“Real Trends President Steve Murray announced the hack Wednesday afternoon in an email, saying that “someone who didn’t want you to have access to our REAL Trends 500 report hired a hacker to attack the REAL Trends 500 website.” Murray did not identify the hacker, but said that “we will be rebuilding the website which will likely take a few days.”
Inman News
“This was a planned, vicious denial-of-service attack on the premier ranking report in the industry and an attack on our company,” Murray also said. “The timing lets us know it was not a random attack but one that was planned to disrupt the ability of the industry to access this valuable information.”
The site seems to be back up now. Seems odd that anyone would want to attack Real Trends. I mean, Real Trends? Seriously?
But if anything was hacked I would look at the report itself. If you take a look at page 2, it features a full page ad, of what appears to be a one star review of a well respected Chicago brokerage. The gentleman in the ad is photographed with a dead animal wrapped around his neck, complaining about only having one day to clean his closet.
I’m not making this shit up. See below. His name is listed as “Kristoff A.”, what more evidence of hacking do you need!!
Save the date!
W+R Studios is hosting another Boost -The MLS Staff Summit, August 14-16. Last year’s event was a huge success, so this year we are increasing the amount of people able to attend.
Join the crew at W+R Studios for 2 days of intensive Cloud Agent Suite learning, networking, and training on how to Boost your MLS career. We’ll take care of room and board so get your ticket and yourself to Huntington Beach and we’ll handle the rest!
This event isn’t for CEO or leadership, but for those in the trenches working with agents in the training and support departments of MLS organizations.
Boost is hosted by W+R Studios, the creative team behind Cloud CMA and we believe in working hard and having fun.
To be the first to know when tickets will become available by visiting this website -> Boost: MLS Staff Summit
RealScout’s Buyer Graph
REAL ESTATE’S SECRET RESOURCE WAR
“Brokerages already have the advantage in fighting the resource war: strong relationships with real estate consumers.
RealScout
Visionary brokerages are already coming together to establish Buyer Graphs across the country.
These Buyer Graph initiatives, powered by RealScout, secure consumer data from 3rd parties while unlocking the analytics
and deal-making potential of market transparency.”
If you click on the title above you’ll be able to view a short video (after you surrender an email address ????) describing RealScout’s vision of connecting buyer data. It’s an interesting perspective on the value of buyer data and how it relates to today’s listing portals. I think their “Buyer Graph” concept is a great device to really hammer home RealScout’s value proposition.
Also, I keep telling Andrew Flachner, RealScout’s co-founder, he could have a career in television if he wanted.
If you are thinking about building a new MLS system…
Speaking of either building a new MLS system or making enhancements to an existing MLS system please consider this idea:
Add a module that helps MLS organizations communicate with their members better. The standard Message Board that appears when agents login to the MLS isn’t cutting it. Here’s some features off the top of my head…
- Native email solution (preferably double-opt in)
- Native messaging within the MLS System that is context sensitive
- In app Chat
- Social media integration
An MLS system that helps MLS providers better communicate with their members is sorely needed. This will help get important information out to members about product updates and advocacy. And it will help increase adoption of MLS member tools.
You’re welcome.
Remine pivots
Remine lays off two-thirds of sales staff a month after raising $30M
“These positions were focused on the ‘up sell’ of our agent product, and that is no longer reflective of our company’s overall strategy to serve as a partner of the MLS,” Pareja added of the terminated jobs. “Even though they no longer have a home at Remine, the people who worked in these sales roles did everything right.”
Inman News
The company also announced that it was restructuring its leadership, with Pareja transitioning from CEO to president and chief financial officer Mark Schacknies taking over as chief executive.
In a conversation with Inman Friday, Schacknies said that the layoffs stemmed from Remine’s decision to focus on selling services to entire multiple listing services (MLSs), rather than trying to “up sell” individual agents.
“The internal decision was to kind of go deeper into the MLS world,” Schacknies said.
Tough day for a lot of people. I’m hoping anyone reading this that is looking for sales people can contact Remine for what sounds like a lot of good folks.
When I heard about Remine’s MLS 2.0 product I wondered why they just didn’t fully commit to that model instead of relying on up sells. Now, It seems they’ve reached the same conclusion.
I think the future is going to very exciting, with Remine fully committing to building a next level MLS system (“MLS 2.0”) the competition in the MLS vendor space is going to get intense.
ShowingTime
My thanks to ShowingTime to sponsoring Vendor Alley. ShowingTime is one of my favorite companies in the MLS industry. Recently they signed a deal with South Central Kansas MLS.
ShowingTime’s products and services are used to schedule more than four million showings per month in 250 MLSs across the U.S. and Canada representing 950,000 real estate professionals. Its market stats reporting tools equip MLSs, associations and their members with the ability to do in-depth analysis to better understand their local markets and help guide sales and marketing decisions.
Michael Lane, ShowingTime’s president recently sat down with me on an episode of my podcast Listing Bits. You can hear that conversation here.
Listing Bits Episode 38: Showing Management & Real Estate Market Stats with Mike Lane of ShowingTime
My thanks again to ShowingTime.
Homesnap signs agreement with CoreLogic for Matrix integration
CORELOGIC AND HOMESNAP JOIN FORCES ON INTEGRATIONS TO MATRIX
This alliance represents the first time that CoreLogic has allowed these combined integrations directly into Matrix. The integrations will be available to CoreLogic Matrix and Homesnap Pro customers and users at no additional charge.
“Agents want to be able to perform their essential business functions in one place, using one platform. This groundbreaking collaboration with Homesnap will make that goal a reality for the brokers and agents who use Homesnap and Matrix,” said Chris Bennett, Executive Leader of Real Estate Solutions for CoreLogic. “We are proud to be working with Homesnap to deliver these integrations to the industry.”
Smart move by Corelogic. I think opening up Matrix to third party solutions is going to be a good thing in the long run. It keeps people on their platform, which will make it harder for them to switch. Here’s why:
CoreLogic is Google, Matrix is Gmail.
The analogy I keep coming back to is email. To me Matrix is something akin to Gmail. Gmail is a very robust and powerful email client. I can do crazy searches, add boolean operators, date ranges, and a ton of other stuff. But is it the most sexy looking interface? No. Hell I’m sure I don’t know 95% of what Gmail can do. Which is why I use Apple Mail (some of you may use Outlook), which is super easy to use, and has a clean interface and works well with my other Apple apps. But since Gmail hosts my email, if I really need to find an email from that client from 2 years ago, I can go back in to Gmail. Doesn’t happen all the time, but I always glad it’s there. And to be fair, there are a ton of people that love Gmail and use it exclusively.
What I just described is Front End of Choice.
Agent and brokers want more choices.
HomeSpotter, Homesnap, Cloud MLX, and others are really just like Outlook and Apple Mail. Currently Remine in that category, but they recently announced (MLS 2.0) they want to be Google (CoreLogic). ???? Remine has also committed to be open and much more friendly to 3rd party solutions. So, as I’ve said, smart move by Corelogic.
Zillow won’t pay VHT 4 million
Court tosses $4 million copyright award against Zillow
A federal jury awarded VHT more than $8 million, an amount a judge later cut in half.
Washington Post
Last Friday, however, a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned that award and sent the case back to U.S. District Court in Seattle for further proceedings related to a smaller group of photos.
In a statement Tuesday, Zillow attorney Ian Crosby called it a major win. VHT did not immediately return a message seeking comment.
I wrote about this case back in February 2017. All those legal bills can’t be cheap tho’.