Where Real Estate Gets Its Dirt

Revenue and profit

The recent announcement that Zillow is going to pay $108 Million for dotloop got me riled up. Then Dan forwarded me this article from Jason Fried, co-founder of Basecamp. So good, and keeps everything in perspective.

How much are we worth? I don’t know and I don’t care.

“Startups these days are bantered about as if they were in a fantasy football bracket. Did you hear Lyft raised another $150 million at a $2.5 billion valuation? But Uber got tossed another $2.8 billion at a $41.2 billion valuation! Then there are the companies barely off the ground getting VC backing with 25x valuations, despite having no product or business model.

Entrepreneurs by nature are competitive. But fundraising has become the sport in place of the nuts and bolts of building a sustainable business.

MRED adds Cloud Streams as a free member benefit

It’s Mostly Cloudy at MRED

“”Cloud Streams caught my eye from the moment I first saw it,” said MRED President/Chief Executive Officer Rebecca Jensen. “Delivering the freshest information in the most consumer friendly way to prospective purchasers is critical to service the public today. W &R Studios has hit another home run with this latest product.”

My thanks to Rebecca, Lynn and the rest of the MRED team for making this happen.

The death of “peoplework” – Zillow acquires dotloop.

SellingOutSignA few thoughts after the smoke has cleared on the announcement that dotloop will be acquired by Zillow.

Why did Zillow buy dotloop?

I thought the aquistion was odd and said so in a tweet. But the simple answer is Zillow needs to charge more money for what it offers. The industry will collectively shit their pants with conspiracy theories but its all still hooey.

Spencer Rascoff’s response to my tweet summed it up.

How much did Zillow pay for dotloop?

We will find out soon enough (Zillow is a public company) but I would look to Zillow’s previous acquisition of RentJuice for some guidance. RentJuice was a “rental relationship management service for landlords, property managers and rental brokers that helps them market their inventory and client relationships.” Sounds a bit familiar doesn’t it? The acquisition was pre-IPO for Zillow and was for 40 million cash. $40 million seems very high and Zillow now has paper money. But I’m sure Austin will be able to buy a lot more v-neck sweaters t-shirts. BTW, RentJuice’s CEO, David Vivero, left Zillow just 13 months later.

What’s is dotloop’s future?

A lot of their customers are not happy with the deal. I heard one person quip–“Peoplework” is dead (a reference to dotloop’s much marketed mantra of “people work not paperwork”.) Despite many agents making tons of money working with Zillow it still garners a high degree of FUD factor from agents. Facebook has been blowing up with mostly negative comments, and 3 of 4 comments on dotloop’s own blog post announcing the acquisition were negative. Dotloop will have to do a lot of damage control with their agent and enterprise customers. Also my guess is that dotloop’s CEO, Austin Allison, will leave about 12 – 18 months after the acquisition is complete (Austin isn’t going to be a 4th banana).

What to expect next?
A lot of spin control as I previously mentioned. Also, if I were anyone at Instanet Solutions, Ziplogix, Reesio, or any other transaction platform that competes with dotloop I would be launching landing pages courting disgruntled dotloop agents now, with the messaging “Dotloop agents get XXXX free for XX days”, or “Dotloop agents can trust us with their business”.

Interesting times….

RE/MAX partners with Homes.com for wide reaching “Tech Next” initiative.

Looks like this is a big win for Homes.com! Here are some highlights:

Homes Media Solutions will design and power a new remax.com site. To be launched sometime in 2016. At its core the new site will be designed to generate more referral-free leads. Homes.com is owned by Dominion Enterprises.

RE/MAX’s company owned regions (COR) will also get a brand new lead management solution/CRM, a re-designed Homes Connect, also powered by Homes Media Solutions. Part of the new Homes Connect platform gives every COR RE/MAX agent a mobile friendly single page agent website. Non-company owned regions can also participate.

So it looks like for COR Homes.com will power both the front end and back end.

Congrats to Andy Woolley and his team for making this happen. Since first signing a deal with RE/MAX, as part of eNeighborhoods(before they were acquired by Dominion Enterprises), they have kept the relationship and deals alive for over 10 years.

NTREIS launches Cloud Streams

NTREIS LAUNCHES W&R STUDIOS’ COLLABORATION AND LISTING ALERT TOOL, CLOUD STREAMS.

“The team at W&R Studios has created something truly special – an easy way for agents to alert and stay in touch with their buyers when searching for a home.” stated NTREIS, CEO, John Holley. “Having the ability to automatically send text alerts for property matches is something our members, and their clients, have been waiting for.” Concluded Mr. Holley.

With the addition of NTREIS, now over 125,000 members have access to Cloud Streams as a free MLS benefit.”

My thanks to John and Cindy for help making this happen. And also to Frank for giving us some great (and much needed) feedback early on about Cloud Streams.

MetroList Services adds Cloud Streams and Cloud CMA as a free member benefit

METROLIST SERVICES, INC. SIGNS AGREEMENT WITH W&R STUDIOS
One of California’s largest MLS providers signs deal to offer Cloud Streams and Cloud CMA as a free MLS member benefit.

Love this quote:

“Cloud Streams was the most well recommended and reviewed software application our MLS Committee has ever considered,” said Tom Beede, president and CEO, MetroList Services, Inc. “Offering Cloud Streams along with Cloud CMA will give our MLS Subscribers best of class industry software to help them compete.”

Many thanks to Tom, Bill and Dave at MetroList Services.

The MLS/CLAW adds Cloud Streams as MLS member benefit

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The MLS™/CLAW Adds Cloud Streams as Free MLS Member Benefit

“Cloud Streams is a perfect way for agents to stay connected and engaged with their clients” stated The MLS™/CLAW CEO, Annie Ives. “Our members already love Cloud CMA, and know they are going to love Cloud Streams as well,” concluded Ms. Ives.

With the addition of The MLS™/CLAW now over 85,000 members have access to Cloud Streams as a free MLS benefit.”

As an MLS vendor themselves The MLS™/CLAW has found a way to grow in a very competitive environment. A couple years ago they added the Palm Springs Association of REALTORS and more recently the Imperial County Association of REALTORS signed up for their THEMLSPRO(r) system. Even with efforts to bring a statewide MLS system to California. That’s why I call Annie, The Wolf of Rodeo Drive.

MFRMLS and FMLS to provide Cloud CMA as a free MLS member benefit

Cloud CMA no slogan2 huge MLSs buy popular CMA tool for their members

Paul Hagey from Inman News:

“The tens of thousands of members of My Florida Regional MLS and Atlanta-based First Multiple Listing Service now receive the popular cloud-based comparative market analysis tool, Cloud CMA, for free.

By adding the 41,000-plus members of the large Maitland, Florida-based MLS and the 27,000-plus members of the big Atlanta MLS to the tally, more than 210,000 real estate agents now receive Cloud CMA as a free MLS member benefit, according to the tool’s maker, W&R Studios.”

Dan and I want to thank Merri Jo and Cantey for their confidence and support. And also our very own Katie Smithson for getting both these deals done.

I was just looking at our internal dashboard this morning. Over 2.8 million Cloud CMA reports have been generated. Hard to believe. Many of you who read this blog have helped us achieve this level of success, so many thanks to all of you too.

Read the full press release here.

REach is looking for a few good women

Reach ™ | Accelerating Real Estate

“We have decided to extend our final application deadline to March 15 and we have a special favor to ask you: of the hundreds of companies that applied for REach 2015, one noticeable group of applicants was missing: women! Only two female-led companies applied. “

This is legit. If you are or know of anyone give Constance at NAR’s Second Century Ventures a call.

NAR levels the playing field with $5 agent websites.

NAR partners with Placester to offer members websites for $5 a month

“Nearly every Realtor can now get a personal website equipped with a listing search tool for just $5 a month.

The National Association of Realtors has partnered with real estate website provider Placester to offer the deal, which is available to all Realtors operating in markets where Placester has Internet Data Exchange agreements with multiple listing services.”

$5.00 is pretty cheap. When Zillow announced IDX websites for $10 a month, I quipped that many IDX vendors might have “pooped their pants” well now I think they shit their bed.

I’m curious if NAR guaranteed Placester a minimum number of sites. That would make sense to me. So that would mean NAR dues are paying for IDX websites whether or not you are utilizing this service. Also what if the MLS has a surcharge on IDX feeds, does Placester eat that cost or do they add it to the $5.00?

Three things strike me about this deal.

1. Big brokers are gonna be pissed. The Realty Alliance has made a big kerfuffle about MLS providers providing agents tools (like websites) for “free”, when brokers would typically want to charge their agents for those same tools.

2. Nice win for Placester! You gotta wonder if MOVE had the option to put a similar deal together.

3. IDX has officially jumped the shark.

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