Where Real Estate Gets Its Dirt

Keller Williams raises the bar.

I’ve got to hand it to the folks at KW. I was super impressed at the recent 2011 Keller Williams Family Reunion in Anaheim, CA.

To start off with in order to participate in the event you must first compete a Approved Vendor Application. Here’s a list of some of the requirements:

You have to be in business for at least 3 years.
5 letters of recommendation from KW agents using your product.
3 business letters of references
1 letter of reference from you bank.

I would love to see more of this type of vetting in the industry. Although the requirement for being in business for 3 years could be shortened. This might limit their agents to new technology.

Tom
While setting up our booth an announcement went over the PA requesting Vendors to come to demo theatre. At that point Tom Freireich, director of business development for Keller Williams introduced himself and thanked all of for supporting KW and for our business (imagine that!!) Tom told us how many agents were expected (what? no spin? an actual number?) He also invited us to participate in the general session and other events. In fact the show hours were designed to allow this. Tom explained to us that he wanted everyone to particpate and understand their culture. And a quick note about the show hours, the earliest they started was 11AM. So just in case you didn’t listen to me and “went big” the first night you didn’t have to stress to get to the booth at some ungodly hour. Plus you also got a voucher you could use to buy something to eat. Boom!

The inclusive vibe KW set the tone for was a welcome surprise from someone who has attended and paid for a lot of trade shows. To me Keller Williams has set the bar on how to run a trade show and the respect their vendors. Bravo.

Vendor Alley Jobs Board is live!

I’m happy to announce the creation of a new “jobs board” for the real estate industry! Since I get a fair amount of readers from all facets of the real estate industry I didn’t limit the jobs listed to just vendors.

The URL is http://Jobs.VendorAlley.com

My wish is for this to become a central hub for anyone involved in the real estate industry; whether a vendor, MLS, association, title company, franchisor, or real estate brokerage to find a job.

I’ve kept it pretty inexpensive. Only $29.95 to post a job for 30 days via PayPal. So far I’m starting with 4 categories:

Sales
Tech
MLS/Association staff
MLS/Association CEO

I consider this a version 1 release. I’ll be spiffing it up later. I would also love your feedback on making it better. Just e-mail me at vendor.alley at gmail dot com

Thanks!

Greg

GMAC merges and morphs in to Real Living

The news has broke this morning. It represents the largest real estate franchise acquisition of the year.
Here’s an excerpt from the Vancouver Sun.

“Real Living Inc. built a major real estate brokerage in Ohio in a fairly short period of time by focusing on women clients as the primary decision maker in a home buying transaction. Toronto’s Brookfield Asset Management wants to duplicate that success across and the U.S. market and is buying Real Living’s brand to do it.

Brookfield said in a statement it is rebranding its GMAC Real Estate division, which its acquired from the trouble financing arm of General Motors last year, as Real Living to create a new franchise with more than US$20-billion in annual home sales.

Brookfield Residential Property Services says it will add Real Living’s 2,000 brokers and sales associates to its existing real estate network of 30,000 real estate professionals.

While Real Living says it will not change its core real estate business in and around Columbus, Ohio, it has essentially sold Brookfield the right to use its brand and technology across the rest of the U.S. as well as Canada.

In Canada, Brookfield controls real estate giant Royal LePage, but the company made no mention of alter that brand to make it more like Real Living.

In September 2008, Brookfield announced it was buying GMAC’s home-services unit and picking up about 1,500 offices in North America and nearly 30,000 employees.”

I’ll have some further commentary when I confirm a few things…

Stefan has some interesting thoughts on this as well. Read them here.

If you think the RPR announcement is the only big news you'll hear this week, you're wrong!

rumors

While it will be hard (if not impossible) to compete with the RPR-LPS announcement this past week, I assure you that there will be at least one other significant announcement this week having to do with the real estate franchise industry.

Warren Buffett gives nod to LPS Real Estate Group

wbrdesk

I missed this while at Inman, but thought it worth noting. This is a huge win and validation for LPS Real Estate Group. The fact that they have been able to keep them as a customer for so long, mirrored with this announcement of expansion of services is a huge win and validation of LPS Real Estate Group.

If you aren’t familiar with HomeServices of American they are the real estate company owned by Warren Buffett’s company Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Click here to see a list of HSoA real estate companies, click here.

LPS Real Estate Group Signs Multi-Year Agreement to Provide rDesk® Broker Suite of Products to Eight HomeServices of America Companies

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – August 5, 2009 – Lender Processing Services, Inc. (NYSE: LPS), a leading provider of integrated technology and services to the mortgage and real estate industries, today announced that it has signed a multi-year agreement to provide its rDesk® Broker Suite of products, offered by its LPS Real Estate Group division, to eight operating companies that are part of the HomeServices of America, Inc (HSoA) network.

These eight companies have signed contracts for a variety of rDesk® Broker Suite products, including broker and agent Web sites, lead and contact management, comparative market analysis (CMA) and document management. The comprehensive, Web-based suite of integrated software solutions gives brokers the online marketing and productivity tools they need to create a competitive edge. These tools help them acquire more leads that can be converted to clients, work with buyers and sellers to close more transactions, and maintain lifelong customer relationships.

The HSoA companies currently leveraging rDesk are: Edina Realty (which services North Dakota, Minnesota and Wisconsin); Kansas City-based Reece & Nichols; Prudential California Realty; Long Realty Company in Arizona; CBSHome Real Estate in Omaha, Nebraska; Champion Realty, Inc. in Maryland; and Home Real Estate and Woods Bros Realty, both in Nebraska.

“Over the years, the rDesk® Broker Suite’s depth and breadth of content and functionality have evolved, in great part, from input offered by innovative, market-leading brokers and thought leaders like the HSoA companies,” said John Hensley, chief product and technology officer, LPS Real Estate Group.

“Since its inception, the rDesk® platform has leveraged new technology and standards to deliver brokers and agents a Web-based integrated solution that meets their growing business needs and keeps them ahead of their competition.”

An affiliate of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., Minneapolis-based HSoA is the nation’s second largest provider of homeownership services and has a nationwide network of companies in 19 states that offers integrated real estate services, including brokerage services, mortgage originations, title and closing services, property and casualty insurance, home warranties and other homeownership services.

“These companies are leaders in their respective markets,” said Ron Peltier, HomeServices chairman and CEO. “To further that leadership position, they must offer products and services that set them apart from the competition. rDesk® is a product that both strengthens market presence and enhances the customer experience.”

The rDesk® Broker Suite includes rDesk® Broker Website, Resource Center and Contact Manager; rDesk® CMA and Buyers Tour; a turnkey marketing campaign manager and professional flier program; the industry’s most thorough neighborhood, school and environment reports; and a centralized document management system that can easily integrate DocCentral™, the LPS non-proprietary document management system that is becoming the industry standard.

The rDesk® Broker Website platform creates custom-branded, content-rich and scalable company Web sites that make it easy for customers to search for homes, get community information, investigate financing options and request additional information.

The Broker Suite also includes rDesk®’s exclusive Client Relationship Manager, which creates a broker’s online communication and customer management hub for the entire office with easy-to-use software tools to manage leads, customers, listings and transactions. The system instantly routes new leads to participating agents and then ensures that the agents respond within the timeframe set by the broker. Client Relationship Manager also accommodates real estate teams, other office groups and e-teams to share in new prospects collected by the broker’s own site and in their market’s portion of more than 600,000 leads LPS Real Estate Group generates to its broker and agent customers each year.

For more information on rDesk® products, contact Michael McCulloch at 480.556.9848 or e-mail michael.mcculloch@lpsvcs.com.

About Lender Processing Services
LPS is a leading provider of integrated technology and services to the mortgage and real estate industries. LPS offers solutions that span the mortgage continuum, including lead generation, origination, servicing, workflow automation (Desktop) portfolio retention and default, augmented by the company’s award-winning customer support and professional services. Approximately 55 percent of all U.S. mortgages by dollar volume are serviced using LPS’ Mortgage Servicing Package (MSP). In fact, many of the nation’s top servicers rely on MSP, including eight of the top 10 and 14 of the top 20. LPS also offers proprietary mortgage and real estate data and analytics for the mortgage and capital markets industries. For more information about LPS, please visit www.lpsvcs.com.

The LPS Real Estate Group has relationships with more than 300 MLS organizations, 250 broker companies, settlement services companies, and more than 350,000 real estate professionals. The technology applications include innovative tools such as Paragon™; the reInsight™ collection; rDesk® Broker & Agent Suite of products; TransactionPoint®; DocCentral; Cyberhomes; the Real Estate & Living Media Network that generates revenue for its publishers; as well as a robust real estate property and tax database that includes 285 million residential and commercial property, ownership, sales, assessment and mortgage records. This represents detailed information on at least 92 percent of U.S. property ownership records in more than 2,000 counties with over 648,000 new ownership records added monthly. To learn more, visit www.lpsreg.com.

About HomeServices of America
HomeServices of America, Inc., based in Minneapolis, Minn., is the second-largest homeownership service provider in the United States. Owned by MidAmerican Energy Holdings Company, an affiliate of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., HomeServices’ operating companies offer integrated real estate services, including brokerage services, mortgage originations, title and closing services, property and casualty insurance, home warranties and other homeownership services. HomeServices Relocation, LLC is the full-service relocation arm of HomeServices which provides every aspect of domestic and international relocation to corporations around the world. HomeServices operates in 19 states with more than 17,000 associates under the following residential real estate brand names: Carol Jones REALTORS; CBSHOME Real Estate; Champion Realty Inc.; Edina Realty; EWM REALTORS; Harry Norman, REALTORS; HOME Real Estate; HUFF Realty; Iowa Realty; Long Companies; Prudential California Realty; Prudential Carolinas Realty; Prudential First Realty; Prudential York Simpson Underwood Realty; RealtySouth; Rector-Hayden REALTORS; Reece & Nichols; Roberts Brothers Inc.; Semonin REALTORS and Woods Bros. Realty. Information about HomeServices and the locations of its subsidiary companies is available at www.homeservices.com.

Investor Contact: Parag Bhansali, 904.854.8640, parag.bhansali@lpsvcs.com

Media Contact: Michelle Kersch, 904.854.5043, michelle.kersch@lpsvcs.com

While you were worrying about the economy…

While you were checking your 401K eNeighborhoods launched their IDX solution on Century21.com, ERA.com and ColdwellBanker.com. A HUGE accomplishment for the boys and girls in Boca. The deal was signed back in November 2007.

Earlier I had posted eNeighborhoods had also re-signed RE/MAX International to provide, among other things, IDX services to remax.com. According to Hitwise, remax.com is consistently in the top five most visited real estate web portals, and the number one most visited brokerage site.

Think about it, one company provides all the IDX data to Century21.com, ERA.com, ColdwellBanker.com, and remax.com. You could say that eNeighborhoods powers online real estate.

Now don’t get me started on how the Realogy brands actually implemented this IDX solution (I’ll save that for another post!), it’s enough that Realogy took the first step in realizing that consumers want to see ALL THE LISTINGS not just theirs.

eNeighborhoods recently announced that they have hired new key executives, Mark Mathis and David Harris.

Being the former General Manager of eNeighborhoods I’m not sure if I should feel flattered that they still haven’t replaced Dan or I yet or feel something else. A big part of us wanted to stay on and see these things through, but I guess a bigger part of us wanted to start something new.

But what I mostly feel today is proud of the eNeighborhoods team that made it happen.

RE/MAX re-signs with eNeighborhoods


Word on the street is that RE/MAX International has re-signed another multi-year deal with eNeighborhoods. eNeighborhoods is the chief technology solution provider behind the popular remax.com site. Currently remax.com is the most visited website of any real estate brokerage brand. eNeighborhoods is owned by Dominion Enterprises.

Recently RE/MAX announced that 5 million leads had been passed thru remax.com to RE/MAX Associates around the country. Quite a feat since the site just launched only 2 and half years ago.

eNeighborhoods seems to have this space locked up. They are also building similar services for all the Realogy brands, (Century21.com, ColdwellBanker.com, and ERA.com) which should be launching in the near future.

Takes talent to get these types of big deals done. Both on the deal side and the tech side. Congrats!

eNeighborhoods helps remax.com deliver over 5 million leads.

File this under kicking ass and taking names….

RISMEDIA, August 22, 2008-More than five million leads have been passed on to RE/MAX Associates across the country, through remax.com, the most visited website of any real estate brokerage brand, according to the company. Debuting just two and half years ago, the real estate network’s lead management system, LeadStreet®, has helped RE/MAX agents succeed in the current market, by giving them the tools they need to incubate and manage leads.

According to the company, reaching the five million mark in a short time is significant. “It’s a symbol that RE/MAX is leaps and bounds ahead of the competition,” says Kristi Graning, senior vice president of IT and eBusiness at RE/MAX International. “We believe in providing useful and relevant technology services and tools to our Associates.”

Through LeadStreet, RE/MAX agents can accept leads on a mobile device with e-mail capabilities or on any computer. “LeadStreet is groundbreaking,” says Andy Woolley, vice president, Enterprise Services for eNeighborhoods, one of three firms that power the lead-generation system. “RE/MAX is the first company to do this on a nationwide scale, both creating a consumer interface, and taking the next step to provide tools for its Associates.” RE/MAX and eNeighborhoods are partners in the LeadStreet initiative.

An average of almost 2.8 million unique visitors log onto remax.com every month, where they can browse through listings in thousands of cities and towns. “The numbers indicate that remax.com is a website of choice for consumers,” says Graning. “And RE/MAX Associates are the ones they turn to when they’re looking for the best listings and best information.”

LeadStreet is provided for no referral fees from RE/MAX International to RE/MAX Associates. “It is a great asset in this market,” says Graning. “And one of the reasons why our agents are the most productive in the industry.”

Help-U-Sell files for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy



Help-U-Sell (aka Help-U-Hell) did what anyone and everyone who actually worked with these guys already knew was going to happen. Nortorious for late paying, if even paying vendors at all, these guys are now making it official.

Steve Ozonian last led this crew. I wrote an April Fool’s post about Steve Ozonian this year and judging by some of the comments not a lot of Help-U-Sell franchise owners got the joke.

It’s a shame. I worked with a lot of Help-U-Sell franchise owners and they are a great group of people.

Hopefully things will work out for the best.

Better Homes & Gardens launch

I’m not sure who else was paying attention but I’ve got to give a shout out to Sherry Chris and her team regarding the launch of Realogy’s new franchise Better Homes & Gardens. They knocked the ball out of the park.

As someone who truly appreciates a good marketing campaign I can say that these guys pulled off a virtually flawless launch. Here’s my breakdown.

1. The build up/buzz
Their blog, Clean Slate, gave everyone a front row seat to the excitement of building something new. And was a great avenue to send out their message while being a fun read.

2. The look
The whole “green” vibe is a perfect match for the brand. They carried that vibe through their entire campaign. Very clever and well executed.

3. BHG everywhere….
It seemed to me that BHG was everywhere. Something in my inbox, a twitter update, a panel, video blog, and press releases. My personal favorite a live countdown on Twitter to promote the launch. Classic! – Might have to steal that one.

Looking forward to see what this team does next.

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