Where Real Estate Gets Its Dirt

CoStar completes the purchase of Homes.com and goes back to the future

Company plans to combine Homes.com and Homesnap to offer the best online home buying experience possible by frictionlessly connecting agents, buyers, and sellers

“Rather than building a business model based on creating friction to syphon off agent commissions, we plan to provide a next generation marketplace that connects listing and buyer agents to sellers and buyers without taking a cut of their commissions.” – Andy Florance, CEO of CoStar Group

Mr. Florance is a master at fear-based marketing. But I see three big problems with this strategy. The first problem is that early results show that many consumers like the one-stop and iBuying experience. The second is total available market (TAM). We all know of the 80/20 rule. In real estate it might be 90/10. If you are only going to sell to agents with listings then you are severely limiting your market. The third problem they have? Zillow.

“Homesnap is the leading real estate productivity and marketing app and hundreds of thousands of the most productive real estate agents in the country rely on it to manage their businesses. CoStar Group intends to fully integrate Homesnap and Homes.com, with Homesnap at one end as the agent’s professional tool and Homes.com on the other side as the home buyer’s portal. Once integrated, agents will have instant access to manage their listings on Homes.com, view and respond to inquiries, collaborate with clients, and provision and monitor sophisticated digital marketing campaigns. We believe this direct connection between agents and a consumer portal is unique in the industry.”

Isn’t this exactly Homesnap’s existing business model? Collaborate! Your listing your lead! Automate your social media marketing!

“Homes.com has one of the largest real estate portal sales forces and CoStar Group intends to leverage that sales force to sell the Homesnap product with the goal of expanding Homesnap’s reach to hundreds of thousands of additional real estate agents.”

Oh, I guess they didn’t have a big enough sales force to properly monetize this strategy. Release the hounds!

Also, no mention of the Broker Public Portal.

I hope there is more to this than what I’m reading. I was really excited to hear something innovative coming from these guys. All I see is a company stoking fear and increasing their sales staff.

CoStar buys Homes.com

CoStar Group to Acquire Residential Listing Site Homes.com

“Unfortunately,” continued Florance, “current residential listing sites do not serve the interests of homeowners or their agents as they focus on selling advertisements on top of agent listings and increasingly offer competing brokerage services. These sites generate a portion of their revenue from directing potential homebuyers away from the listing agents to unrelated buyer agents that are advertising on top of listing agent listings. This is a practice we plan to no longer continue. Our plan in bringing Homesnap and Homes.com together is to help agents market their listings in support of the ‘your listing, your lead’ philosophy – which stands in contrast to most players in the industry.”

$156M seems pretty cheap when you compare to the ShowingTime deal at $500M and Homesnap deal at $250M. I guess I thought they were bigger than they were.

I still don’t know how CoStar makes any money selling only to listing agents, without IDX going away, which is problematic think this “your listing, your lead” rhetoric is still problematic towards MLS and organized real estate. There might be an interesting culture clash with many in the company.

What some may not realize is that Homes.com (due to them previously being remax.com’s MLS data supplier) has one of the largest, if not the largest MLS data aggregation platforms in the space, and now all that data is controlled by CoStar.

Homes.com : Always

Always: Your Listing. Your Lead. Your Commission.

“At Homes.com, we are committed to being a friend and ally to the real estate industry. Our purpose is to connect consumers and real estate pros through a simply smarter home search experience. 

Period.“

I don’t think Homes.com gets enough credit in the industry for not only talking the talk but walking the walk. Other portals are going deeper into agent’s pockets with new business models that really attack the heart of a real estate practice. Listing portals now want to take ownership of the customer, charge referral fees, and then convert them to their own mortgage house. Basically making agents Uber drivers.

Not Homes.com. While they may not have the most traffic their site does get a lot of engagement. And there’s this:

“And we promise to always send a copy of every consumer inquiry on a property to the listing agent. None of the other big real estate search sites can say this.”

What remarkable about that simple statement, is that it’s remarkable.

Nicole Aguilar of CRMLS joins Andy Woolley’s Secrets of a Smarter MLS Podcast

13 – Hotsheet Episode | Nicole Aguilar, Director of Marketing & Communications, California Regional MLS

“As the communications director for the largest MLS organization, Nicole discusses with Andy how she delivers consistent messaging to over 100,000 members of CRMLS, along with the impact the Covid-19 pandemic has had on the content being delivered and the engagement of CRMLS members.”

Great conversation with Nicole Aguilar, Director of Marketing & Communications, of CRMLS on how MLS providers are communicating with their members during the pandemic.

Andy has been getting some great guests like, Rene Galvan of Houston Association of REALTORS, Deborah Boza-Valledor, COO and CMO of Miami REALTORS, Casey Hickman, Chief Operating Officer, UtahRealEstate.com, John Ryan, Chief Marketing Officer, Georgia MLS and Denee Evans, CEO of Council of MLS (CMLS).

If you haven’t added Andy’s podcast to your podcast stream yet you are missing out.

Secrets of a Smarter MLS Episode 2: Karen Kage, Realcomp CEO | Battles won, Battles Lost

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Andy Woolley of Homes.com :

Karen Kage entered into the MLS industry looking for a job, not a career, answering a job wanted ad for a statistical typist at the local real estate association. That was before MLS books, in the late 1970’s, and today she is one of the most well respected CEO’s in the industry. How’s that for a career path?

Her dream job is to coach the Detroit Lions, current head coach Matt Patricia better watch out. Karen would lead the Lions sidelines with the same no nonsense, honest, and caring approach she leads Realcomp’s team of 31 employees, serving 16,400 customers.

In this episode, we explore Karen’s path to becoming CEO, her leadership style, her experience battling the FTC and a protracted class-action lawsuit, and her advice for today’s emerging MLS leaders. 

Listen on the web at Homes.com Secrets of a Smarter MLS

Homes.com launches new podcast featuring Andy Woolley

Homes.com Launches New Podcast for MLS Executives 

Homes.com announced today the launch of a new podcast designed to inspire collaboration and innovation within the MLS industry. Hosted by Andy Woolley, Vice President of Industry Development for Homes.com, the “Secrets of a Smarter MLS” podcast invites MLS leaders to share ideas about the intersection of strategy, operations, and execution that result in a smarter MLS. 
“In an increasingly challenging industry, demanding an increasingly smarter MLS, this podcast is an opportunity for MLS operators of all sizes to learn from their peers around the country,” says Woolley. “My hope is that this podcast will be a platform for collaboration, sharing ideas to empower all MLSs to operate smarter.”

Homes.com

It’s official! I had a little bit of a heads up on this. You can access this wherever you get your podcasts and I have also included a link to it in the “Industry Podcast” section of Vendor Alley.

Andy’s first interview features a great conversation with Jeremy Crawford, CEO of First MLS.

CoreLogic partners with Homes.com to offer MLS providers public-facing websites

CORELOGIC TO OFFER CONSUMER SEARCH SITES POWERED BY HOMES.COM

“Under the agreement, CoreLogic will begin offering the Homes.com Fusion Portal product, a public website platform for multiple listing organizations to CoreLogic clients. Consumer-facing websites follow fair display guidelines, clearly identifying the listing broker and agent on properties for sale.”

Make sense on a lot of levels. First Real Estate Digital (red) left this market awhile back, so there’s no clear leader. Second, Homes.com is one of the best at MLS data aggregation. Third, it gives the CoreLogic’s sales teams a quality product to sell back in to its channel. Plus Homes.com is a good partner. They’ve been powering RE/MAX national website since 2006. Andy Woolley and his team are second to none in integrity and have always been champions of the MLS industry.

A couple of observations. To me this puts CoreLogic in direct competition with BPP and Homesnap. Will MLS providers who signed up for Homesnap also purchase a public facing website? Doesn’t that go against what the BPP “partnership” is all about? Also, the marks the third time (by my count) the industry has used the “fusion” moniker. Please everyone, stop trying to make “fusion” happen. ????

[UPDATE: Turns out Black Knight is Real Estate Digital’s reseller, so they haven’t exited as I first thought. Sorry for the confusion. Plus we know that with FBS acquisition of Solid Earth they also have a dog in this fight.]

RE/MAX acquires booj

RE/MAX Takes Bold Step to Provide Best-in-Class TechnologyGlobal Franchisor Acquires Leading Technology Firm booj

The acquisition exemplifies a new approach for RE/MAX that goes beyond adapting third-party vendor products to fit broker and agent needs. Moving forward, RE/MAX will leverage the capabilities of booj and other strategic partners to deliver core technology solutions designed for and with RE/MAX affiliates. The objective: technology platforms that create a distinct competitive edge for RE/MAX brokerages and agents and complement other tech products they choose to use.

So its apparent the this “tech enabled brokerage” is a thing now. It’s now going to be a bunch of chest beating to show who has the best tech. RE/MAX appears to be taking a more open approach by still working with “strategic partners”, rather than the more closed approach of KW.

In a letter to agents, new RE/MAX CEO Adam Contos stated,

“It will mean an upgrade for the RE/MAX technology suite – a complement to other Approved Supplier products you choose to use.”

A far cry from the paranoid rant of Gary Keller,CEO of Keller Williams last week.

booj is an interesting company. Their pitch has been they only had a few “select” clients and a waiting list. Plus they would never work with any firm that was acquired by a Franchisor. Well it seems that philosophy has changed big time. It will be interesting to see how their current clients react. An opportunity for some, I’m sure. I hope Ido and John got a nice payout.

I’m also curious if this will effect RE/MAX’s relationship with Homes.com, which now powers the remax.com website. RE/MAX started that relationship with eNeighborhoods back in 2004, and have kept it going after eNeighborhoods was acquired by Homes.com parent, Dominion Enterprises.

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.

ListTrac’s new breakthrough might be broken

Billy Joel's Glass Houses
Billy Joel’s Glass Houses
Today ListTrac, a relatively new vendor, announced a “breakthrough”, which allows real estate professionals to “monetize listings”.

I’m not totally familiar with ListTrac’s revenue model ( I don’t think they have one currently) but this whole premise struck me as odd. Or maybe I just woke up in a weird mood today.

ListTrac Breakthrough Allows Real Estate Professionals to Monetize Listings

This quote from ListTrac’s CEO, Trent Gardner got me started:

“Just as musicians are compensated each time their song is played on the Internet, ListTrac wants real estate professionals to be rewarded every time their listing is viewed on the Internet,”

Wait, what? My local Realtor is now Billy Joel?

“For years, companies have taken listing content and assembled multi-billion dollar business models by monetizing the ‘eye-balls’ looking at this valuable content,” Gardner explains. “However, these business models don’t allow brokers to participate — so they have been sidelined watching others make millions of dollars in IPOs off of their content. ListTrac helps change that paradigm with a framework allowing real estate professionals to monitor and monetize their listing content.”

Don’t brokers receive exposure for these listings which then translate in to sales?

“Through its patented-approved process, ListTrac, working with MLS firms, help brokers monetize their listing content through the new standard of online advertising known as ‘programmatic advertising.’ Programmatic advertising allows brands to reach consumers at the right time with the right product and the right message — better connecting the advertiser and the consumer.”

Here’s a question. And again, it might sound a bit too weird . Do the portals get to participate in “programmatic advertising” revenue ListTrac is going to help generate for real estate professionals? Shouldn’t they? Why or why not?

I mean if nobody sees the listings (hears the song?), how is ListTrac going to generate revenue? I mean if I never hear Piano Man on the internet how do I know when to buy a piano??!!

Think about it. ListTrac’s whole business model depends on listing portals to install their tracking software on their sites. Without this software ListTrac can’t operate. I can’t imagine Zillow, Trulia, Realtor.com or Homes.com is too thrilled to install any third party software on their own servers. I’m sure all of these site could provide tracking and metrics to any MLS without the need for ListTrac.

If I were ListTrac I would be playing very nice with all these guys.

But…

“Gardner notes that ListTrac went through an arduous process meeting with MLS tech committees, syndication task forces and MLS boards — all populated with agents and brokers — to ensure that no personal information would be shared and that no MLS listing content would be licensed or sold

Meeting with their customers is an “arduous process”? I wrote about this before but this whole entitlement vibe with newer vendors in this space is ridiculous.

I’m sure ListTrac has some smart people, so I must be missing something about this “breakthrough”. Or just as Billy Joel sang, “You might be right, I may be crazy”

UPDATE: Andrea Brambila, Inman News new “Deputy Editor” (congrats Andrea!) has a whole other take on ListTrac’s revenue model. Check out: ListTrac’s plan to sell agent and consumer behavior data

But last month, a Boston-based Internet data exchange (IDX) website provider, www.realestate Inc., contacted Inman, saying www.realestate Inc. had refused to implement ListTrac’s monitoring code in its websites for agents belonging to ListTrac customer Cape Cod and Islands MLS.

“Our business code of conduct prevents us from installing any third-party software we feel would harm you or others,” wrote the company’s founder, Mark Holt, in an email to its CCIMLS customers.

“We will not install monitoring software at the direction of any third-party without consent. We consider ListTrac’s ‘monitoring code’ dangerous at this time, therefore we will not install it.” ListTrac’s monitoring code is an “unknown back-door Trojan” that’s installed without agents’ express permission on their websites at the behest of their MLSs, Holt told Inman.

Ouch.

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