Where Real Estate Gets Its Dirt

Rapattoni continues NetMagic expansion.

To say that Rapattoni dominates the AMS business in this industry is an understatement. Since announcing NetMagic back in May of last year Rapattoni continues it’s domination without any clear competition in sight. Has everyone else just given up?

——————————-

Gloucester/Salem Counties Board of REALTORS® Goes Live with Rapattoni NetMagic

SIMI VALLEY, Calif., October 13, 2010 – Rapattoni Corporation (Rapattoni) announced today that the Gloucester/Salem Counties Board of REALTORS® (GSCBR), located in Mantua, New Jersey, has gone live with Rapattoni NetMagic. GSCBR has been an association management software customer of Rapattoni for ten years, and it made the decision this year to transition to the company’s new internet-based product, Rapattoni NetMagic.
Rapattoni NetMagic is now being installed throughout the country and features the most robust information management tools available on the market today. The software has real-time synchronicity with the National Association of REALTORS® central database and allows the association staff to easily complete membership and accounts receivable tasks. Rapattoni NetMagic also provides an association’s members with the ability to login to the software and pay their dues, as well as register for classes, online.

Maria Whittingham, chief executive officer of GSCBR, said, “We are now up and running on Rapattoni NetMagic and we love the flexibility it gives us in managing our membership.” GSCBR serves over 1,400 members across the Gloucester and Salem counties in New Jersey.

Nick Rapattoni, president of Rapattoni, said, “We are very excited to add GSCBR to our quickly expanding roster of customers, and we know that they will enjoy all of the advantages that NetMagic offers.”

About Rapattoni NetMagic
Rapattoni NetMagic combines Rapattoni’s extensive real estate industry knowledge with the latest technologies to give associations the most powerful, flexible, and intuitive productivity suite available for managing association needs. Rapattoni NetMagic features real-time connectivity with the National Association of REALTORS® NRDS central database, and it enables association staff to effectively track, manage, and communicate with members.

About Rapattoni
Rapattoni Corporation has been serving the real estate industry under the same name and management for 40 years. The company provides an array of integrated products and services for real estate associations and MLS organizations, including an internet-based MLS, association management software, and key-less Rapattoni Secure Logon with SSO identity portals for online security and convenience. Rapattoni’s MLS products are serving approximately 300,000 users nationally and its association management customers represent more than 85% of the nation’s REALTORS®. Rapattoni’s headquarters are in Simi Valley, California.

For more information, contact Rapattoni’s Public Relations department at (800) 722-7338 or visit the Rapattoni website at http://www.rapattoni.com/.

C.A.R. Expo Recap

I wanted to share a few thoughts and observations about the C.A.R. Expo held at the Anaheim Convention Center last week. The event was fantastic. Good attendance and, at least from my experience, real estate agents were buying.

I barely had time to recover from CMLS 2010 in Chicago when we rolled in and set up our booth on Tuesday. There was a lot of “haven’t seen you in a long time” sarcasm from a lot of the vendors.

Opening day they billed as “Tech Tuesday” and the show floor was open from 5PM to 8PM. Of the 70 orders we took during the show we did over 10 on Tuesday so I was a nice start.

Simon Baker

We then proceeded to crash a party at the House of Blues where we tried to cop as many free drink tickets as we could munster. Then we ended up having dinner with the well-traveled Simon Baker and John Hart from ListGlobally, which bills itself as “a new and innovative global marketing tool for agents and developers” (think global syndication service). We went out for drinks with them the next night since I discovered that Australians are the only ones that can keep up with me. : )

Now back to the show….

Although I’ve seen the C.A.R. shows have lots more exhibitors the overall attendance was good. The Orange County Register had an article about the show you can read here, 1 and includes lots of photos.

I saw some interesting booths and products. One of the clever things I saw was at the Discover MLS booth. They were using a special display overlay device on an iMac to demo their MLS product. I took out my iPhone and shot this quick video.

I went to the MLS committee meeting hoping to catch the calREDD update. But had to leave early since the other topics took up a lot of time. But it doesn’t sound like I missed much. From what I was told Art Carter‘s update was less than 5 minutes.

Oh what a difference a year makes!

MRMLS to announce name change this week.

Word on the street is that Art Carter is going to announce a new name change for MRMLS this week.  Since the “merger” of calREDD and MRMLS speculation has been high if they would keep the MRMLS moniker or possibly switch to the calREDD branding.

My guess is that they will come up with something entirely new.  Anybody on the Interwebs have a guess on what the new name might be?

Miami Associations Merging?

Teresa King Kinney

Rumor has it the REALTOR Association of Greater Miami (RAMB) and the REALTOR Association of Miami-Dade County are merging.  And it looks like CEO Martha Bullman of Miami-Dade will be retiring.  Long time CEO, Teresa King Kinney, of RAMB will be leading the new effort.

Rumor also has it happening as soon as August 1st.

This could have huge consequences and might result in a domino effect for other South Florida associations.  Who could be next Fort Lauderdale, South Broward, and/or Palm Beach?

Time will tell.

calREDD is dead. CALMLS emerges.

No use crying over spilt milk.

We’ve been getting a lot of good comments, tons of traffic, and I’ve been also receiving a few e-mails too.  More and more information is coming out.

If you are interested check out: New CALMLS Business Proposal, the CALMLS Merger FAQ, and this handy dandy comparison NEW CALMLS Vs. OLD check list: CALMLS and MRMLS Joint Initiative Proposed.

It’s still not clear whether or not the C.A.R. board of directors has approved the “merger” and the $750,000 extension is cash (calREDD had already blown through 2.5M of the 3M they originally asked for) but I think we can assume it will be approved, nobody will lose their job (calREDD, as predicted threw their MLS Vendor under the bus) and new CALMLS is ready to roll.

So taking a fresh perspective what do we have here.  As I’ve mentioned before Art Carter has done an excellent job at MRMLS.  He was also instrumental in the formation of CARETS.   His organization is everything the old calREDD was not: professional leadership, a proven MLS Vendor, plus they are now open to multiple MLS systems, and most of all a proven data sharing platform CARETS.  So we should be willing to give this new CALMLS a shot.

I stand by my earlier prediction that Art will have a tough time signing up any MLS providers beyond Southern California but as I hinted before that doesn’t mean CARETS can’t flourish.  And what’s really wrong with that anyway?  Why the need for one statewide MLS system?  Why not just one statewide database?  eNeighborhoods essentially pulled this off for a brief time a few years back with MLS Alliance.

So let C.A.R. revise history all they want (we all know the Emperor has no clothes).  Sure the CALMLS board will be stacked (what board isn’t?).  But a one database solution is really compelling, and maybe, just maybe C.A.R. will finally come to the same conclusion.

Besides the whole calREDD drama was getting kind of well…boring.  Looking forward to seeing what CALMLS can pull off.  Onward and forward.

C.A.R. Business Meetings this week. Let the spin cycle begin!!

If you look up Fiasco in Wikipedia you get this result:

“In English the word fiasco means an absolute, abject or utterly humiliating failure”

Anyway you slice it calREDD was a true fiasco.  But you just know that the California Association of REALTORS (C.A.R.) is going to spin this whole mess in to “this was our plan all along.”  So put on your tin foil hats to protect yourselves from the C.A.R. reality distortion field.

Here’s some questions I’d like answered.

1.  Where’s the 3 million dollars?  I bet you its almost all been spent.  And how many agents did they get to sign up?  Maybe 1,000.  Do the math.

2.  Which begs another question.  How much more money are they going to ask for?   Remember the saying “fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice shame on me.”  Shame on you C.A.R. board of directors if you give these clowns any more money.

3.  Who responsible for this mess?  Is somebody going to get fired? They should. Or are they gonna to throw their vendor under the bus? My guess is these C.A.R. douche bags are so chicken-shit that their MLS vendor will get the blame and everyone else gets to keep their job.

4.  Who is going to control this new calREDD/MRMLS entity?  I’m curious how many seats does the 1,000 calREDD users equate to?  Waaaaaaay too many is my guess.

The man who would be king.

Art Carter aka "King Arthur"

In the King Arthur legend a young boy pulled a sword out of a stone and the village knew that he was the true king.  In our story Art Carter aka, “King Arthur” is going to have to pull a rabbit out of a hat to make this new combined entity (calREDD/MRMLS) a success.

I’ve seen Art do some magic before. He just has to make sure this time that the rabbit doesn’t eat all his “CARETS“.  If you get my meaning.

Prediction:

A good friend once told me that the only reason California is one state (instead of Northern Callifornia and Southern California) is water rights.  So here’s my prediction.

The “merger” will go down as expected, C.A.R. will spin some story to save face.  King Arthur will go after SoCalMLS, and possibly a few others in Southern California and have some success.  But the state-wide MLS train will stop there.  Beyond any existing contracts, no significant Northern California MLS providers will sign up for this new entity (maybe a few tiny associations looking for a subsidy).  One off-shoot is that CARETS may expand, which would be good for C.A.R. members. That’s it. Fin.

Now, if I close my eyes and don’t make a sound, I can hear Russ laughing all the way from Chicago.  : )

So good luck King Arthur.  And stay classy C.A.R., stay classy.

UPDATE:

Check out this FAQ.  It confirms calREDD has blown through 2.5M and wants 750K more.  Classic!

NAR Midyear 2010- Tales from Fort Sumter

The bombardment of Fort Sumter

The red and blue badges at the 2010 National Association of REALTORS (NAR) Midyear Conference took on a different meaning for me this year.

Fort Sumter as many of you know was the place where the first shots were fired in the Civil War.  The Civil War I’m talking about was first written about by Rob Hahn, entitled “The coming Civil War in Real Estate.”

I believe that Rob’s predictions are coming true, and the first shots fired were here in D.C. The vibe from a lot of vendors that I spoke with was that they are feeding the beast (NAR) that might eventually bite them.

NAR, thru RPR and other entities either own or have a significant interest in a  data and analytics business, an association management business , not to mention a web portal (Realtor.com), a lock box company (Sentrilock), and a forms company (Zipforms).

In a nutshell just take a look at the exhibitor list to the conference and you basically have a list of NAR competitors.

With the deck so completely stacked against them why do vendors who have products that compete with NAR even bother to show up to NAR events?

NAR has also cranked up the pressure on their competitor/exhibitors too.  Tactics such as kicking vendors out of Suites if they don’t pony up more money (in the form of registrations and booth space), and enforcing a “no meeting” rule in Suites when official NAR business is being done.

These heavy handed tactics could end up doing more harm than good.  Other conferences could grow or new conferences could be created that cater more towards exhibitors wants and needs.

Big announcements coming tomorrow on calREDD and SoCalMLS

Things are changing so fast it’s hard to keep up!

UPDATE:  A lot of readers confused the headline.  I was actually talking about two separate stories.  One about SoCalMLS.  And another story about calREDD (that news still hasn’t broken, and does not involve SoCalMLS directly.  Sorry for the confusion.

W&R Studios is looking for Outside Sales Rep in Orange County/Southern California

W&R Studios is looking for an Outside Sales Representative for the Orange County/Southern California area.  Get on the ground floor with Greg and Dan!

Check out details on the Vendor Alley Jobs Board:

W&R Studios-Outside Sales Rep


Vendor Alley Jobs Board Update

Many thanks to the folks at Inman News for posting an article about our new Vendor Alley Jobs Board.

You can read the full article here:

A Smarter Solution – Real Estate Job Hunting 101

Thanks Katie!

Sponsored By Paragon Connect