Where Real Estate Gets Its Dirt

Homes.com not sitting still

With all the hub-bub going on with “Z2K” its been pretty easy to miss that Homes.com has a lot going on….

In a first, Homes.com powering MLS public-facing website

“Connecting consumers to Realtors on TulsaRealtors.com without displaying competing banner advertising was a top priority, ensuring the conversation stayed focused on helping Tulsa consumers find their next home,” said Mike Cotrill, CEO of GTAR, in a statement.”

Another tidbit about the article from above.

“Homes.com, the fourth most popular real estate portal in the nation, began powering the national websites for franchise powerhouses Re/Max in 2006 and ERA in 2012,…”

Back in 2006 eNeighborhoods originally signed the deal with RE/MAX. eNeighborhoods was then acquired by Dominion Enterprises (the parent company of Homes.com). Through that acquisition, other competition, changes in leadership at RE/MAX, the “Great Recession”, a lot of other shit I don’t know about, Andy Woolley and his team deserve a lot of credit for keeping that relationship (and revenue) going. 9 years is a helluva lot of time in this industry.

Homes.com also rolled out a new look, a more friendly version of the “3 headed monster”.

Homes.com retools ads for buyer’s agents

“Our new advertising product is the result of extensive discussions with agents, brokers, MLSs and industry partners to find the best way to connect engaged consumers with buyer’s agents as they search for their next home,” said Homes.com President David Mele in a statement. “Homes.com Local Connect clearly displays the listing agent at the top of every lead form and ensures that consumer leads are always routed back to the listing agent or broker, regardless of whether the listing is displayed for free or through paid advertising.”

And Homes.com signed up with Clareity’s Direct Connection tool.

‘Easy button’ could help brokers manage direct MLS feeds

“Implementing Clareity Direct Connections offers another resource to improve the accuracy and quality of listings on Homes.com, while providing MLSs and brokers a user-friendly way to opt in to display their listings on Homes.com and Homes.com marketing products,” said Andy Woolley, vice president of industry development, in a statement.

Clareity MLS Executive Workshop highlights 2015

A few things I wanted to highlight about last week’s Clareity MLS Executive Workshop in Scottsdale, AZ last week. First off Gregg and his entire team did an amazing job. The content was fantastic and they managed to keep the conversation above the salacious syndication war between MOVE and Zillow Group narrative that has been floating around.

But, one of my takeaways about the Zillow Vs MOVE thing was how it effects other players, notably Homes.com. Seems like an opportunity for these guys. When I asked Andy Woolley, now Industry Relations at Homes.com. Andy was quick to point out that while they don’t, and won’t possibly ever have as much traffic as ZTR, they were focusing a lot on “quality”. Meaning the “quality” of leads coming through Homes.com. I was sent a screen shot of a ListHub report (from the Houston market) that seemed to prove that out.

Homes.com lead ratio

Yes, I know their total detail views is much smaller, but their lead ratio is crazy good.

HAR .08%
Zillow .06%
realtor.com .03%
Trulia .019%
Homes.com .97%

The other thing was the direct feed count. Check out this slide.

Direct Feed Count

Homes.com has 400 direct feeds from MLS providers. 400 freaking hundred. Zillow Group isn’t even close. Great lead ratio, huge direct feed count, you gotta wonder what that is worth to someone.

On another topic, was the release of the MLS Satisfaction survey. Here’s the results of the “End User Satisfaction.”

MLS Satisfaction Survey

Looking at MLS Vendors with more than 2 customers it appears that Black Knight and FBS still dominate the top two spots above their competition. Kudos to both of them.

Thanks again to Gregg, Matt and the rest of the Clareity team. We are always thrilled to participate. And I hope you enjoyed the Cloud Streams t-shirts. They look great!

Andy Woolley named VP of Industry Relations for Homes.com

Woolley_Andy-199x300Andy Woolley Named Vice President of Industry Development of Homes.com®

“Homes.com is committed to providing consumers with the best possible search experience by offering the most accurate and timely data available, combined with being a ‘friend to the industry’ by positioning the listing agent as a critical part of the consumer inquiry,” said Dave Mele, president of Homes.com. “Andy brings a wealth of experience to a critical area of our business as we focus on strengthening and expanding our partnerships throughout the country to help agents, brokers and MLSs grow their businesses.”

WyldFyre…adieu

The big news yesterday was the acquisition of MOVE, Inc. by News Corp. But there was a piece of news that many of you may not know about. As of yesterday, Homes.com will stop supporting WyldFyre.

WyldFyre, a distributed database system, one of the first true alternative front ends to an MLS system. And this was pre-internet. We’re talking TVI-950/VT-100n type of stuff.

WyldFyre was part of eNeighborhoods, who bought it from MOVE, Inc. back in 2004. I was in charge of sales at eNeighborhoods when this happen. Along with the product we got Michael Hayes, Bob Morse and Joe Happe to join our enterprise sales team led by Andy Woolley. We all had some great times together.

But WyldFyre origins go back all the way to 1992. Southland Regional MLS with Jim Link at the helm took a chance on their product. Southland’s backend system was called Computerized Real-estate Information System aka CRIS. The first version of WyldFyre was called CRISNet.

At the peak, there were well over 100,000 unique users of Wyldfyre in North America and Australia.

Dan Musso and Mike Myers sold their company to HomeStore in 2000.

I reached out to Mike Myers about this thoughts on the final sunset of WyldFyre. He simply stated.

“Had I known it was going to last this long…we would never have sold the company.”

Food for thought to other vendors out there.

22 years is a long time in technology. 22 years of helping agents do the business of real estate. And I’m sure there a few real estate agents who are still pretty pissed they are shutting it down.

So join me in pouring one out for WyldFyre. Dan and Mike, you should be very proud.

Jason Doyle, GM of Homes.com, is leaving for new gig.

Screen Shot 2014-04-05 at 8.10.25 AMWord on the street is that Jason Doyle, after 14 years at Dominion Enterprises, is resigning. Dominion Enterprises is the parent company of Homes.com. I knew Jason from back when eNeighborhoods was acquired by Dominion and always found him to be a smart guy and straight shooter. With juggernauts like Zillow, Trulia and MOVE and their big budgets Jason did a great job in keeping Homes.com relevant, and profitable. Please join me in wishing him well on his new gig.

Homes.com launches tv campaign.

[VIDEO]: Homes.com Launches National TV Campaign to Drive More Traffic to You!

“The campaign will provide your brand and listings exposure to over 260 million consumers daily that watch HGTV, TLC and the DIY Network!”

The ad is decent, not great, but I see a few smart things Homes.com has done here.

1. Instead of a high concept ad like Zillow, which are hard to pull off, they went with their strongest asset, the URL. Nobody can argue that homes.com is the best url out there.

2. Morale. I think this type of exposure is huge for the company itself. Homes.com is competing with the likes of Zillow, Trulia and Realtor.com. I’m sure the employees must be sick of seeing Zillow’s name all over the place. I think it’s great when you sit down in front of the television and a commercial for your company comes up and you say to your kids, “that’s the company Daddy works for.”

3. Sales. When you are running a sales team you need something for them to rally behind. It’s huge to add to your sales pitch that the company is launching a national television campaign.

Homes.com adds MLS direct feeds from 9 MLS providers.

Homes.com Adds Nine Direct MLS Feeds
Consumers visiting Homes.com will see more accurate listing information

“The display agreement provides Homes.com with data from the following MLS organizations: Houston Association of REALTORSÒ, California Regional MLS, MetroList Services (Sacramento area), Southland Regional Association of REALTORS (San Fernando Valley, CA), BAREIS (North San Francisco counties), MLSListings (Monterey to Silicon Valley), Intermountain MLS (Boise, Idaho), MLS Property Information Network (New England), and Midwest Real Estate Data (greater Chicago area).”

Super Impressive. Those are some of the largest and most respected MLS providers in the country. Plus think about the number of listings they have. This is a HUGE deal for Homes.com and win for consumers. If they keep this up their ListHub feeds might be regulated to just smaller MLS markets.

Then there’s this…

“Homes.com is an industry partner with a deep commitment to creating connections between real estate professionals and consumers. We believe that this starts with a direct relationship with local MLSs,” said Brock MacLean, executive vice president of Homes.com. “Through agreements with these nine MLS organizations, more than 200,000 MLS members will now be able to leverage traffic from more than 12.5 million homebuyers who visit Homes.com monthly, better connecting their member agents and brokers with active consumers.”

Riiiiight. It took a super connected dude like Brock McLean to get these deals done.

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