“In an Oct. 2 announcement and email to members, Space Coast MLS said the Homesnap-powered public search on its new association website “wasn’t the right fit for our needs” and had been replaced by a search tool from Financial Business Systems’ (FBS) Flexmls, a previous vendor, while Space Coast MLS works on a permanent solution.”
Looks like Space Coast was iframing Homesnap as their public facing site, which according to Steve Barnes..
““This is really kind of a fringe case related to Homesnap,” Barnes said in a phone interview, adding that none of the other MLSs that iframe Homesnap’s site have chosen to turn it off.
“What it might say is a very local MLS needs unique flavor and a more seamless [tool]. Iframe might not be the best solution for them, but it’s not something that’s actually core to the Homesnap brand,” he added.”
But here’s the rub. According to the article whether you iframe or not you still can’t filter on pools? WTF?
Also, something else. Did you know that you can’t get listing alerts via Homesnap? That’s right you have to login on to the site run a saved search manually (like a caveman) and then find out if properties match your criteria. Unless of course if you just wanted a home with a pool because there is no way to do that currently.
Think about it, it’s 2018 and Homesnap can’t
1. Search for homes with pools
2. Create and send listing alerts (which is ironic because this.)
2 things, I’m sure 99% of IDX vendors have been able to do, for the last 19 years.
Who the fuck cares about “fair display guidelines” if you can’t search for homes with a pool or get listing alerts?
And this is supposed to be “the real estate’s industry answer to third party sites like Zillow and realtor.com”.
I bet they are laughing their asses off in Seattle and Silicon Valley.
I had heard about this event a few months ago, and had been asked if I was going to attend. I was skeptical about it, but when I received an invitation to apply to participate in the “pitch battle”, I went ahead and applied. As I previously mentioned I was surprised that we were selected.
The event was designed by Bob Goldberg, NAR’s CEO to bring the disruptors “inside the tent”. To foster “innovation, opportunity & investment”. Basically Mr. Goldberg wanted NAR to be part of the conversation.
Color me impressed. Not only was the event very well produced, but I enjoyed meeting and seeing other vendors, some old (like me) and some new in the space. I loved vendors pitching agent safety apps, new CRMs, new front end of choice apps, 360 photo apps to help with disaster recovery efforts, real estate photo augmentation, using lockboxes help with in-home medical care, and a way to level up agent performance. What I found most impressive is none of these new startups seemed to be making money by selling ads. Bliss!
BoxBrownine won the “Pitch Battle”. And KW Labs won the Hackathon. You can read more about them here.
And true to his word, Mr. Goldberg did bring in a few heavy hitting investors to the conference too. Of course Mr. Goldberg couldn’t help himself in touting NAR’s own success in the investment arm of his organizations, Second Century Initiatives and REach. He interviewed Ron Hirson, Chief Product Officer from DocuSign. Which recently went public and made NAR a small fortune.
As Mr. Goldberg hit the stage to wrap up the conference, I was thinking about what was missing about the event. And then it hit me. Zillow. I heard nary a mention about Zillow from any of the presenters, or startups in attendance. Not from some sort of mandate, but just…because.
Which to me was the most impressive. Bob Goldberg did seemingly the impossible. He held a tech conference where nobody was talking about Zillow.
I don’t get too political on my blog, but I thought I would share this Twitter thread from Benjamin Wittes. I’ve made it a bit more readable below.
I want to tell a story about John McCain–a story that took place at the Polish embassy, back when Poland was still a committed democracy of the sort that would host a book party for the release of @anneapplebaum’s book, “Gulag” (which you should read).
Anne will correct me if I am misremembering the details here–as it’s been a few years. But McCain, as I recall, introduced Anne to the assembled audience, which included a large number of Gulag survivors.
His short speech moved me as much as any other speech–on any subject–I have ever seen a politician give. For starters, he had clearly read the book (you should too)–which is a bit of a project. Gulag is long. It is exhaustive. And it is brutal and unsparing.
While McCain had many thoughts about the book, he said that the part that really hit him in the gut was Anne’s description of prisoner tapping codes–by which prisoners would tap on cell walls in specific patterns to make out letters to communicate with those in adjacent cells.
He described the code as Anne portrayed the Gulag prisoners using. And then he described the modification that he and his fellow prisoners used–the Cyrillic alphabet being somewhat different from our own. Then he paused and said that he still dreamed in that code sometimes.
And then he tapped.
The room was silent.
It’s been 15 years since this happened, and as I say, I could be misremembering details. I suspect, however, that I am not the only person who recalls vividly being stunned by this speech. I have never heard another politician give a speech like that.
That’s all I got.
I disagree with our president. I think John McCain is a national hero. Rest in peace.
“Zillow noted there are various barriers to listing data access that the company deemed “protectionist.”
“Some large brokerages refuse to provide all their listings to Zillow. If sellers understood that their fiduciaries were restricting data from appearing on the largest real estate site in the U.S., they would likely be upset. Initiatives like Upstream make the potential for such behavior more feasible and commonplace,” the company said.”
I agree. No matter the responses from Upstream, it’s always been about control of listing data. When Craig Cheatham, announced at the CMLS Conference in 2013 that “You’ve got 10 days!”, the sentiment wasn’t “You have 10 days, before we eliminate the need for double entry!”. It was, “You have 10 days before we start yanking our data!”
There has been a shift lately. It’s happened over the past couple years and it’s starting to get a little ugly.
I believe the advent of “front end of choice” is amping things up. Here’s what I’m hearing from others in the industry and my own observations. I’ll break it down it to two parts.
Part I: Why should I help you?
As they say everything old is new again. The MLS industry is going through some changes. It reminds me of back when web-based MLS systems were starting to come out. The traditional MLS vendors freaked out as these new systems were installed “in parallel”. Same thing is happening now. But the 3rd party vendors today are a bit more brazen. Here’s an example.
Remine’s wheel of fortune
MLS 2.0? Now, can you see why some current MLS vendors are hesitant to work with these companies?
A common rant is, “Why should I work with these guys when they are openly trying to put me out of business”?
You add that to tactics like employee poaching and product bashing and you can see how this could get out of hand. And full discloser my own company has been guilty of this to some degree.
These new companies are well funded, but NEED to get big fast. They have a certain amount of capital that won’t last long, so they NEED to be aggressive, otherwise they die. That puts a very different dynamic into the mix.
Yikes!
-MLS launches app, email goes out.
-All agents get phone call
-More emails…more phone calls
-Agent downloads an app, agent gets a phone call.
-More emails…more phone calls
-Agent touches a button, agents gets a phone call.
It can be relentless. All powered by state of the art software, auto-dialers and the latest in marketing automation.
Look I’m all for competition. I thrive on it. And many of these companies have really smart and talented people working for them. I also believe many of these same people want to improve the industry. But it’s still important to remember that we all have a symbiotic relation to each other. We all need to work together and play fair. Which brings me to part two.
Part II: Leveling the playing field (not that playing field)
The other shift I’m seeing is MLS providers giving special access to the MLS membership to select vendors. Most data access agreements coming from the MLS provider have language that states the 3rd party vendor cannot use the agent roster for marketing purposes or to create any derivative work form the MLS data. To me the membership roster was always “sanctum sanctorum“. It made sense that the MLS provider wanted to protect their membership and not show favor to any one vendor.
But lately this seems to have changed. It seems that because of special pricing or that the MLS provider now has equity in these new products they have let things slide.
I see a lot of emails (and get a lot of phone calls) that are obviously using the MLS roster. Hell, I just get a few of these calls and I’m afraid to pick up the phone! Sometimes these inquires come in the form of straight up spam (possibly on behalf of the vendor) from agents wanting me to activate my “X” account or crazy claims like fulfilling the promise of “100s of leads now”, or even “beating Zillow”. Here’s just few examples.
This also has existing MLS vendors scratching their heads. Is this special access? Is this type of marketing available for their tools? Or are these vendors going rouge and not ahering to their agreement with the MLS provider? Same questions come from many 3rd party vendors.
This seems to go against showing favor to one or more vendors. If so, how can others get this same level of access?
I’m fully aware that some might take this post as one vendor whining about another vendor. Or “talk about the pot calling the kettle black Robertson!” I get that. Again, I think competition is good thing but have always prided myself on following the rules and being a good “partner” and part of the community. But still, as I’ve stated, my company is far from blameless.
That being said the feeling I’m getting now is that the gloves are off. And sooner than later everyone will be protecting their turf. And that can lead to bigger problems.
As I said, many of these new companies are playing a different game, they NEED to be super aggressive. And that’s the worry. How do we strike this balance? And I think we need to look at the importance the MLS provider’s role in, dare I say, making the market work and vendors need to look at how their behavior can make positive change as well.
I have been looking for a way to help more of you survive disruption, thrive amidst the chaos, and drive the change we need. I think I’ve found a way.
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Rob was generous enough to share with me Red Dot’s first issue. To say its comprehensive is an understatement. I can almost guarantee that after reading this you are going to walk in the office the next day with a action item list (which he actually writes for you). He’s done a great job of breaking down the content too. He starts out with an Executive Summary which gives you the gist of the issues he is tackling in the report, which is great if you are super busy and want to overview of the content before going in to detail. After reading this month’s report I feel I’ve got a good deal of understanding to make solid decisions about the issues he discusses.
The report is $250 per month. I would recommend signing up just for this first report alone, and I’m sure you’ll be hooked. BTW, I don’t receive any compensation for any of this. I know Rob has been working hard as hell on this and I’m all about helping anyone wanting to help make this industry better.
I’ve be seeing a few friends post pictures like this from NAR’s “MLS Technology and Emerging Issues Advisory Board” meeting going on this week(the one above is from Jon Colie’s Facebook feed).
One thing struck me. What’s missing from this picture?
Vendors.
The industry is changing quickly, we need as many perspectives/help/leadership/ideas as possible.
At the recent Keller Williams’ Family Reunion convention, Gary Keller during his keynote declared “We are not a real estate company anymore” and had a slide talking about vendors that were “not safe”.
Chief Innovation Officer, Josh Team also announced, on stage, that the company would no longer deal with “bolt on” technology. Team defined “bolt on” as…
“Bolt-on technology is anytime you use another company’s technology product that you didn’t build and own,”
How fucked up is that? Imagine how the vendors on the exhibit floor felt after spending good money, on their booths, hotels, airfare and thousands of hours of time and energy to exhibit at an event where the CEO and the senior staff who put on that event insult them as “bolt on” and/or “not safe”.
To put it lightly, that was a pretty dumbass thing for KW to do to those vendors, and shows a remarkable lack of couth.
While I’m told the pitch my Mr. Keller was as masterful as ever, it’s really a shame to see a great company like Keller Williams stoop to this level. By spreading this FUD to their agents I believe they are risking their company’s best asset, culture.
Entrepreneurial, highly trained, independent, system focused, scrappy, motivated. Those are the terms I would describe KW agents.
While it seems that “tech enabled brokerages” are all the rage right now. This pendulum swings back and forth.
So while Mr. Keller’s head may be in the clouds right now, I would encourage him not to burn any boats anytime soon and that the two letters he should double down on are KW, not AI.
Looks like Andrea Brambila of Inman News is back at it again with one of her favorite subjects, NAR wasting their members money.
In a post entitled “What Does Upstream Have To Show For Itself?” she surgically disects the “dream” of the Upstream initiative. Frankly there are so many juicy quotes its hard to list them. Here’s a few tidbits that caught my attention.
“In May 2015, NAR’s board of directors, made up of about 800 members, approved $12 million for NAR subsidiary Realtors Property Resource (RPR) to build Upstream and a related, but separate project called Advanced Multilist Platform (AMP). Upstream is set to exhaust its $6 million share of the funds — which don’t have to be repaid — by the end of 2017.”
I’d forgotten is was that much money.
“According to the CEOs of the two MLSs that will deploy Upstream’s original plan — RMLS and MLSListings — RPR did not publish data mapping tables they needed in order to integrate with Upstream until a month ago, on September 25, 2017.”
Remember when Dale Stinton and Alex blamed MLS vendors for delays. Good times…good times.
“You can’t say people aren’t cooperative when they don’t have enough information to be cooperative or not,” Harrison said.
John Mosey, president and CEO of pilot market NorthstarMLS, agreed.
“The problems are entirely between Upstream and RPR. I don’t think they are between the vendor community. The MLSs that have signed up for the pilots, every one of us have done everything possible to make this work,” he said.
…
“No one knows what the hell Upstream’s doing and there’s questions as to whether they do,” Mosey added, saying that, as far as he could tell, the broker direct feed was a return to status quo.
I love John Mosey.
“Toward the end of Inman’s interview with Mosey, he declared he wished he hadn’t taken the call.
“Because when you announce that [nothing’s happened] — which is absolutely true — there will be a segment of the broker community that uses this as an excuse to say the MLSs are uncooperative and it’s a lie. It’s a lie from the get-go.”
Did I say how much I love John yet?
All in all I think HAR president Cindy Hamann said it best.
“People are getting paid for this,” said Hamann, a real estate broker with Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Anderson Properties and 23-year Realtor. “That makes me mad. That makes me angry. This is members’ money. I’m a hardworking member who is very proud that I was able to send my kids to college without college debt because of real estate. And they haven’t started yet? That makes me angry because that means [Upstream’s] going to come back asking for more money.”
And something tells me that Andrea/Inman isn’t done posting this week.
Lots of activity in the industry but I’m still thinking about CoreLogic’s acquisition of Clareity. Why? Because I think it was one of the shrewdest deals in a long while. Here’s why.
1. Talent. The talent at Clareity is both wide and deep in industry experience and contacts. In one fell swoop CoreLogic scooped up some of the most talented and well connected people in the industry.
2. That pesky “MLS Customer Satisfaction Survey”. You know the one, where Black Knight and flexMLS were beating them every year? Well its gone baby gone.
3. Speaking of the “MLS Customer Satisfaction Survey”. All that data on their competitors that was aggregated for the survey is now in the hands of Chris Bennett. I’m sure the other MLS vendors will downplay this, but I’m equally sure they would loved it if that data was in their hands.
4. The Clareity Dashboard. Notice that last on my list is the actual product of the company! It’s almost like a bonus. And having a product that is a gateway to all other products in the industry is a nice place to sit.
Other things I’m hearing…
Troy Rech is now head of MLS sales. And Lucie Fortier, is returning back to CoreLogic after a short stint at Remine. Nice moves.
At the recent Keller Williams’ Family Reunion convention, Gary Keller during his keynote declared “We are not a real estate company anymore” and had a slide talking about vendors that were “not safe”.
Looks like Andrea Brambila of Inman News is back at it again with one of her favorite subjects, NAR wasting their members money. 
