Where Real Estate Gets Its Dirt

“Active” users

I recently read a great post by Ev Wiliams, one of the co-founders of Twitter. Ev’s post is titled, “A mile side, an inch deep”. He makes some solid points about his frustration with user metrics. The post stems from a recent report that Instagram has surpassed Twiiter in total number of users. To which Ev responded… “I frankly don’t give a shit if Instagram has more people looking at pretty pictures”. Hubris? Not really.

“Ask any junior high student which rectangle is bigger, one that is three inches wide or one that is two-and-a-half inches wide, and they’ll tell you it’s a nonsensical question unless they have more information — specifically, the height.

And yet, we literally say one company or service is “bigger” based on a single number — specifically, number of people who have “used” it in the last 30 days. Even without even getting into how “use” is defined, this is dumb.”

This got me thinking about the debate of usage and “adoption” rate of third party software programs in MLS markets. Questions like, what metric should products be measured upon? Is it one metric? Is it several?

To make matters worse some vendors call an “active user” someone who logs in to the service one every 90 days, some say 60 days or 30 days. It varies, so its always hard to compare different services apples to apples.

This discrepancy also shows up when vendors report how many customers they have. Some vendors report that anyone under a site license (which are technically paying customers) are active customers. Even though many of those MLS members have never used their software.

When my company (W&R Studios) launched Cloud CMA we wanted to “open the kimono” on usage rates. We think this a key best practice for any Enterprise SAAS vendor. So in every MLS market we launch Cloud CMA we include a real time MLS Dashboard. The MLS Dashboard contains a ton of information including:

Have many users signed up/created an account?:

today
yesterday
this week
last week
this month
last month

How many reports were created?:
today
yesterday
past week
past month

What types of reports were created?:
CMAs
Buyer Tours
Property Reports
Flyers

Some MLS providers have also asked us to include:

Unique visitors in the last 30 days

I tend to focus on how many reports are being created. But, we also track all kinds of other metrics too. One of my favorites is the number of seconds it take a new customer to create their first report after signing up, our fastest is just over 2 minutes (156 seconds). Which we think is a good measure of how intuitive the software might be.

The point I’m trying to make, and Ev does a much better job, is that there is no “God Metric”.

“Numbers are important. Number of users is important. So are lots of other things. Different services create value in different ways.”

Good food for thought.

As a side note I’m going to be a panelist at Inman Connect NYC later this month. The topic is:

“Does Building Business Around Big Data Make us Stupid?”
Thursday, January 29 2:35pm to 3:00pm

The panel will be moderated by David Charron. My other panelists will include John Heithaus from RealEstate Business Intelligence, LLC (RBI) and Matt Shadbolt from the New York Times.

It should be fun so please join us!

Today is Bob Hale Day.

The city of Houston has proclaimed today, October 25th, 2013, Bob Hale Day!

bob hale day

And I thought that every day was Bob Hale Day! Congrats Bob! #bobfest

Tom Ferry event draws close to 4,000 agents.

I’m at the Tom Ferry “Success Summit” today. It’s being held at the Anaheim Convention Center. This is the second year I’ve exhibited the event. I was amazed at the number of agents he had last year. They have gone even bigger this year, drawing close to 4,000 agents. It really isn’t too hard to believe. Tom is a dynamic speaker with a deep bench of coaches and speakers, and the content is geared to top end agents.

I’m told the average ticket price is around 199.95. You do the math.

MREDpalooza lives up to the hype.

I’ve been down on trade shows lately. Most of the time the organizations putting on an event don’t do a very good job. Poor attendance, or lack of traffic, etc. But Russ Bergeron and his crew at MRED showed us how its done.

We had our single best day for Cloud CMA Power Pack orders. I also spoke to a few other vendors and heard the “best day ever” comment more than a few times. The place was rocking for 7 hours straight. I probably left some money on the table by not having another person in the booth with me, it was that crazy.

But the biggest take away I had was how MRED just raised the bar on how I look at other events and where I’m going to spend my money in the future. We got a helluva bang for our buck at MREDpalooza. I can think of other events, I did last year, that had LESS than half (way less!) the attendance of MREDpalooza and cost me MORE money.

Those phone calls are going to start with something like “MRED had over 3,000 people attend their conference and I spent X, how many do you expect?”

The Passion Of Bob Hale

Bob Hale, CEO of H.A.R.
Bob Hale, CEO of H.A.R.
The fight to keep the option of associations and MLS providers to give their members a choice of providing a public facing MLS site could have no better hero than Bob Hale.

He seems to be everywhere. And when he isn’t there, his name is still on the lips of everyone. In D.C. you had a sense that Bob was fighting for much more than the right for MLS public facing websites, he was fighting for his legacy.

I can’t say that I know Bob all that well. But when first meeting him and his wife Susie you got a feeling that these were “good people”. From time to time he does send me a text or a quick email with an insightful comment on a blog post I have written. I think he gets my weird sense of humor. His name has been so prevalent in our industry a few years ago I came up with the Vendor Alley awards, and the top “Vendy” I dubbed “The Anyone But Bob Hale Award”. I was glad to hear he liked the homage.

A quick story. I was visiting Houston a couple months ago and had a chance to get a tour of the HAR Central Office. Sam Scott graciously led me around introducing me to staff members. Towards the end of the tour we stopped by Rene Galvan”s office. Papers with handwritten notes were strewn across Rene’s desk. Bob was seating at the end of Rene’s desk just finishing up a phone call. They had been working on the MLS policy back then, and it was apparent they had been working for hours (days) and more hours (days) to come. “Hey buddy,” he said, “How you doing? Welcome!” His phone rang again, “I gotta get this”, and he was back working the phones. Lyndon Johnson would be ashamed. My impression was its not easy being Bob Hale, it takes work. A lot of work.

When I walked in to the the MLS Policy committee meeting last week Bob was at the microphone. He was summarizing the importance of MLS public facing websites. Answering questions, fielding counter arguments, always with a glint in his eye….in the arena.

The fight isn’t over. More challenges lie ahead. His biggest yet might be finding a decent hotel room in Boise at the 2013 CMLS conference. But this year, if I had to give out the “Anyone But Bob Hale Award”, I would have to give it to…Bob Hale.

Reesio puts on a show

reesio-logo-5648354179ec9f4cce32c4ea8b1795eaLater this month I will be attending and my company W&R Studios will also be exhibiting Cloud CMA at a conference put on by new real estate software company, Reesio. Reesio is a startup less than a year old. They are in the crowded space of transaction management. They felt a good plan get the word out was to put on a conference. The conference is called RealTech SF 2013. Here’s what Mark Thomas, Co-Founder and CEO of Reesio has to say about the event.

“As part of the journey that we as founders of Reesio have gone through with our company, one thing that we’ve noticed is how difficult it can be for real estate professionals to easily find out about new technologies that exist out there to make their jobs easier. In addition, there’s a tremendous dearth of publicity around real estate technology in general, despite the fact that real estate can be one of the more painful processes of any industry. We have 2 main goals that we’re trying to accomplish by hosting and putting together RealTech SF 2013:

1) To educate and highlight to real estate professionals the latest and greatest technology initiatives currently going on within the space that can help them grow/manage their business and enhance their careers.

2) To bring more awareness about real estate technology as a whole to people outside of the industry, and to show that the products that companies are currently working on are solving truly painful experiences that people are currently having to go through.”

The show is only $25 to attend, so pretty reasonable for an agent. The speakers seem to be a mix of industry vendors and brokers. I like the hustle approach Reesio is putting forward, plus Spring in San Francisco? I’m in!

MLS Track agenda is posted for Inman Real Estate Connect Conference.

Looks like program for Inman’s Real Estate Connect Conference has been posted. Here’s the MLS Track, moderated by the talented Merri Jo Cowen!:

Sessions

MLS Solutions – Sponsored by WolfNet
Thursday, August 2nd.

1:30 pm – 1:40 pm
Welcome Remarks
Merri Jo Cowen, CEO, My Florida Regional MLS, @mjcowen

1:40 pm – 1:55 pm
MLS Data Standardization Services: Opportunities and Barriers
Joel MacIntosh, Founder and CEO, WolfNet, @joelmacintosh

2:00 pm – 2:40 pm
Standardized Data: RETS, APIs and 3rd Party Services
What are the advantages and disadvantages of each approach? Is the industry ready for an app store ecosystem? What will the impact be on vendors who service your members? What does it all mean for agents on the street?

Moderator: Merri Jo Cowen, CEO, My Florida Regional MLS, @mjcowen
Chip McAvoy, VP, Technology Services, CoreLogic
Michael Wurzer, President and CEO, FBS, @mwurzer
Rebecca Jensen, President and CEO, UtahRealEstate.com MLS

2:45 pm – 3:25 pm
Data Access Revenue Models
When it comes to non-dues revenue from IDX, VOW and other 3rd party agreements, what’s your formula and how does it impact all parties? Who pays and what should the services include?

Moderator: Merri Jo Cowen, CEO, My Florida Regional MLS, @mjcowen
Jon Bednarsh, Co-founder, President and COO, Onboard Informatics, @jbednarsh

3:30 pm – 4:10 pm
Social, Mobile and the MLS
Explore how social media and mobile technology are impacting MLS’s, as well as how MLS’s around the country are adopting these technologies. Hear best practices and get advice from industry leaders.

Moderator: Merri Jo Cowen, CEO, My Florida Regional MLS, @mjcowen
John Heithaus, CMO, MRIS, @MRIS_CMO

4:15 pm – 5:00 pm
Updating the MLS
What’s it going to take to create the MLS of tomorrow? We’ll take a candid look at the technological, legal and business issues that need to be addressed to update outdated practices and remove some of the limitations facing MLS users and vendors today.

LPS shows the love

Marty, Rich and Jennifer from LPS MLS Solutions
I had an opportunity to attend LPS’s Customer Training Conference (CTC) last week in Overland Park, Kansas. It’s a 4 day event that brings together LPS customers (typically support staff) and LPS leadership and support teams (headquartered in Kansas).

LPS customers receive training, and certificaiton. Besides being able to meet the LPS support staff face to face I think the biggest benefit of these types of events is meeting other people doing the same type of work as you. So the lobby bar was full. They had over 100 attendees.

I was asked to give presentations on real estate software and got to meet a lot of wonderful people. I also got to sit in on presentations given by LPS staff about features in their MLS system and answer questions from their customers. The back and forth in these conversations were very enlightening.

I have to say I was super impressed by the dedication of LPS support staff (SSMs in LPS parlance).

Many of us in the industry become super jaded dealing with the needs of real estate agents. Supporting them can be a tough gig. It was just refreshing to see a group of people who haven’t fallen in to that trap of cynicism.

Tip of the hat to LPS management team and the great staff they have put together and thanks for including me at your event.

The 2011 Vendor Alley Awards

It’s just about the time of year when you start reading “top 10” lists of 2011. I thought I would start a new tradition here at Vendor Alley and rattle off my choices for top companies and people in the real estate industry for 2011.

I call them “The Vendys”.

1. The “Bob Hale” Award
The reason I call this the “Bob Hale” award is that it seems Bob is listed every year as one of the top influencer/innovators in the industry. So think of it as “besides Bob”, who really made a difference this year in the real estate industry. : )

And the winner is….Merri Jo Cowen

I’ve been a part of CMLS for many, many years and while other board presidents have set the stage for CMLS to take a larger role in the MLS community Merri Jo has been the catalyst to make those goals happen. It’s been a pleasure to have a front row seat to how CMLS has changed over the years and Merri Jo has been a huge part of that success.

2. Best new real estate technology/product. –Nest
What happens with the inventor of the iPod focuses his attention on real estate? Magic.

Runner up- I have to say that I really love Realtor.com’s iPad app.

3. Top MLS Provider. – MRED, LLC
All you need to do is take a look at the pressroom of MRED, LLC to see the transformation happening at MRED.

4. Top MLS Vendor – TIED: LPS and CoreLogic.
My basis for this was the CIVIX lawsuit. While I believe NAR painted themselves in to a corner with the settlement it was these two MLS vendors who stepped up and wrote the really big checks.

5. Top Real Estate Portal – Zillow
Their spectacular IPO and recent acquisition of Diverse Solutions only shows they are here to stay and poised to dominate.

6. Best new real estate vendor. – Goomzee
I’ve had many discussions with their CEO, Mike Sparr, and he is one of the new players that “gets it”.

7. Top company to watch – RED -Real Estate Digital
After a bold management buy-out, these guys are just getting started.

8. Most improved company – Inman News
The conferences are better, their site is better, Agent Reboot, InmanNext, the list goes on and on. Tim, Alice, Chris, and Katie and the rest of the team has done a spectacular job and can’t wait to see what’s next.

9. Best industry blog – 1000watt Blog
If I can’t pick VendorAlley.com then 1000watt Consulting gets my vote. Brian, Marc and Joel, offer equal doses of spot on analysis and inspiration all wrapped up in a beautifully atheistic and great writing.

10 Best company blog – RPR
While I have been known to poke some fun at these guys you can’t argue what a great job they do with their blog. One small quibble, I can’t view videos on my iPad.

11. Top MLS Provider CEO – Art Carter
Art Carter turned the fiasco that was California Association of REALTORS failed state-wide MLS effort (calREDD) into in the the largest MLS in country. I don’t think he’s done yet.

12. Best Industry Conference. – CMLS
Like with all my picks I’m a little biased but CMLS’ annual conference keeps getting bigger and better.

13. Best Real Estate Franchise – Keller Williams.
Sure their consumer facing website sucks but in the world of real estate franchisors its all about agent count and these guys are winning.

Well that’s it. Am I a “kiss ass”, “spot on”, “not even close”? What say you?

Interview with Chris Heagerty of ARMLS

I was out at the ARMLS’ LEARNaTHON in Phoenix last week and was able to interview Chris Heagerty, their Director of Communications among other things. Bob Bemis has a phenomenal team and I’m super impressed how well produced their events are and the number of agents they attract. At LEARNaTHON we had 4 sessions, each about an hour long, where we could really educate interested members about Cloud CMA. Chris was kind enough to speak to me about how they put together their events. My hope is that other MLS providers might be inspired to try something similar. Thanks Chris!

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