“The National Association of Realtors’ longtime CEO Bob Goldberg is leaving the trade association, multiple sources with knowledge of the situation have confirmed to HousingWire Thursday morning.
“We are immensely grateful for Bob’s leadership and decades-long service to NAR,” Tracy Kasper, current NAR president, said in a statement. “It has been a privilege to work with him in expanding and strengthening our organization, and we congratulate him on his well-deserved retirement. His contributions to our association and our industry have been tremendous.”
“A CRM makes sense for Zillow. The acquisition demonstrates that the evolving proptech remains on a path to become an increasingly influential presence in the residential real estate industry with consumers and agents.
It has taken on a number of software brands of late, starting with ShowingTime in early 2021, which became the basis for ShowingTime+, an umbrella brand under which a litany of agent-oriented marketing services come to rest, such as Listing Showcase and Aryeo, a marketing media management solution which it scooped up in August.
Follow Up Boss will not be part of ShowingTime+, Zillow President Susan Daimler told Inman.”
Craig Rowe for Inman News
Congrats to Dan and his team. Follow Up Boss is all about culture. I think it’s smart not to roll them in to the ShowingTime+ team. Also, talk about timing….
In collaboration with Drew Meyers of Geek Estate (GEM), I will be hosting in the work/car studio I share with Dan Woolley ( and my two vintage VWs) a NAR NXT Pre-Party. We’ll set up tables, have local brews and a few handles, snacks, cool music, a bubble top hockey table and a few surprises. Register here.
Very close to John Wayne Airport (SNA) airport if you are flying in Monday. Or maybe a kicking off point for some of Orange County’s finest restaurants. I’ve included a map below to give you some idea of the location in respect to The Anaheim Hilton and JWA.
Open to GEM members and you pioneers of proptech and organized real estate insiders.
CMLS 2023 Industry Update with Greg Robertson and introduction (roast) by Andy Woolley
I know many of you have been asking for this. I’ve been looking for a good quality recording but hadn’t found one with both the introduction and my presentation. Enter, Mike Canova from GAMLS who shared this video with me at the recent RESO Conference. I took the video and edited it a bit by inserting the slides from both presentations. Still blown away how great Andy did on the introduction. Please share and enjoy!
One thing I’ve discovered about myself is that I really enjoy the beginning phase of starting a company. Building a team, fleshing out the idea of a product, branding, positioning, pricing, billing, go to market, etc. Once that part is done is more of a matter of managing and optimizing (which I kind of like too). That’s why I always enjoy talking to new vendors, hearing their ideas, and if I like the idea/founder seeing if I can match them with the right people.
That’s exactly why I’m started working as an advisor with Trackxi. Trackxi is a deal tracker software solution for agents, teams and transaction coordinators, it also so has light CRM. It’s more a project management solution than a “transaction manager”, it doesn’t have any MLS integration or does it incorporate forms natively. In that way it’s a very opinionated piece of software. Trackxi is pre-loaded with deal workflows (tracks?) that agents can share with their clients and other people involved in the deal. It has a kind of “pizza tracker” data viz element that clients can view to see what tasks have currently been completed, what tasks are in progress, and tasks that haven’t been started. Which I think will be great for buyer’s agents showing their value.
You can use Trackxi to track pretty much anything. One client used it to plan her wedding. I think beyond tracking deals you can make templates like “First 90 days as a real estate agent”, “Kick start your real estate business.” , etc.
Another reason I’m working with Trackxi is their co-founder Vijay Gopalswamy. Vijay lives in Portland, Oregon and is bootstrapping the company. Vijay started as an agent and later a broker team leader and Trackxi was born from some of the lessons he learned with starting that team. Vijay is a pretty humble guy and has an interesting background. I interviewed him on Listing Bits that I will share later today.
I’m actually not sure what being an “advisor” really means. But I am having super fun working with Vijay; brainstorming messaging, positioning and company strategy. Our hope is that these discussions and work translate to getting Trackxi available to more agents. To find out more about Trackxi please visit their website here.
My thanks again to VestaPlus for sponsoring this month’s Vendor Alley. The team at VestaPlus has put together a great website that highlights the benefits of VestaPlus. The website is also a good resource to learn about the other products/features offered by VestaPlus such as Neighborhood Snapshot(tm), ShowingsPlus(tm), and Checkmate(tm) (which was recently adopted by CWMLS).
Next week Lone Wolf Technologies will reveal its new platform at the T3 Technology Summit, and I’m super excited about it. Why? Let me tell you a story.
At W+R Studios we were bootstrapped, so we needed to grow organically. Our product strategy centered around making core features of an MLS system better.
CMAs on MLS systems suck? Let’s make a better one. Enter Cloud CMA.
MLS system’s client portals and listing alert emails are ugly. Let’s make them pretty (and easier to use). Voilà , Cloud Streams.
Searching on MLS systems too complicated? Let’s make something simple. Boom, Cloud MLX!
The problem was two fold. In order to grow we needed to add new products (more software) and at the end of the day is that we had 3 different software apps, each of them great in their own right, but they didn’t really work together. Also if you wanted all three you had to buy each one separately, and have 3 separate logins, and 3 separate onboarding scenarios, 3 different times you entered a credit card number, and 3 separate…you get the point.
We solved most of this by creating the “Cloud Agent Suite“, but really only scratched the surface of what was possible, then we were acquired in December 2020.
So this problem of “simplifying real estate” has been on the minds of our (W+R) design team for a very long time. How do we bring all of this together to create an end to end solution that makes sense, and still grow? Can “less software” be the answer?
Turns that the problem was about to get bigger. Starting in 2020 Lone Wolf acquired 5 companies in 9 months (including W+R); HomeSpotter, LionDesk, Terradatum and Propertybase. Now you had 9 (at least) separate logins, 9 separate… you get the point.
Sean Wheeler, CTO Lone Wolf
When I left Lone Wolf I was starting to see the green shoots of this work. Most of it on the backend led by Sean Wheeler, Lone Wolf’s CTO. One login, one credit card, one database of contacts for all products, etc. Jimmy Kelly, Lone Wolf’s CEO, talked about their effort and the concept of “less software” on a post on Inman News titled “Real Estate Doesn’t Need More Software“. I was also privy to see some of the earlier mock ups from the design group, which were super impressive.
Jimmy Kelly, CEO Lone Wolf
But, like any good meal it all comes down to ingredients. Lone Wolf from my estimation has the best ingredients in the market. The products they acquired (and the teams behind them) are not only best of class but have high adoption rates and great partnerships. Now it comes down to presentation and taste. And I have full confidence in the design chops of the team behind this. I had a chance to interview, Damien Huze, who was W+R’s Chief Design Officer and now a principal designer at Lone Wolf on my Listing Bits podcast which should drop this week.
Damien Huze, Principal Designer Lone Wolf
Am I biased? Absolutely. Am I still a fan of simple focused software applications? You betcha. But I’m a bigger fan of people. So I look forward to seeing how this particular group of talented people proves less software is better.
What if we told you that a high-stakes trial in the real estate and technology industry is about to unfold, with potential implications for consumers and the future of the housing market? Today, Rob and Greg are joined by Ed Zorn, Vice President and General Counsel at CRMLS, and they dive into the details of the ongoing Burnett v. NAR trial, exploring the various legal aspects and arguments that could lead to a major disruption for home sales.
Join us as we discuss the application of the “per se” standard, the challenges faced by the Burnett, and the pivotal role of the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) in this episode of our podcast. Don’t miss this heated discussion as Rob and Greg once again do their best to save the real estate industry.
