Where Real Estate Gets Its Dirt

Can AI solve agent responsiveness?

Luxury Presence Launches AI Lead Nurture, an Advanced AI-Powered Lead Engagement Tool

“The tool automatically responds to inbound messages 24/7 and continues to strategically follow up, keeping leads warm and driving them toward an appointment request. It also does the work of learning a lead’s timeline, budget, and preferences, allowing busy real estate professionals to prioritize the highest-quality prospects.”

Luxury Presence

I’ve written a lot about agent responsiveness (or lack there of). AI could be one of the many ways to help solve this. I’ll keep an eye out of this tool and others and wait to hear feedback from agents and brokers on how they can best tackle this problem.

CMLS elects new board members

Chris Haran
Justin Haag

COUNCIL OF MULTIPLE LISTING SERVICES ELECTS NEW DIRECTORS FOR 2024

“The Council of Multiple Listing Services (CMLS), the professional trade organization serving the Multiple Listing Services industry and representing 231 member organizations with 1.8 million subscribers, has elected new directors for 2024. They will assume their roles on January 1, 2024.

Justin Haag, General Counsel and incoming President and CEO (Jan. 1, 2024) of Northwest MLS (Washington); and Chris Haran, Managing Director and Chief Technology Officer of MRED (Illinois), were elected to serve three-year terms on the CMLS Board of Directors. Matthew Consalvo, CEO of ARMLS (Arizona) was re-elected for a second three-year term.”

Megan Moore, CMLS

Congrats to Justin, Chris and Matt. They certainly have signed up for some interesting time in the MLS industry!

VESTAPLUS hires Kelly Robinson

VESTAPLUSTM MLS Software Solutions Appoints Industry Veteran Kelly Robinson as Vice President of Sales & Marketing

“VESTAPLUSTM MLS Software Solutions, a leading provider of innovative real estate technology, is proud to announce the appointment of Kelly (Pantis) Robinson as the Vice President of Sales & Marketing. With over 30 years of experience in the real estate industry, Kelly Robinson is set to lead the company’s growth initiatives and expand its comprehensive suite of MLS software solutions, which includes the highly acclaimed VESTAPLUS PROTM mobile app, Checkmate Listing Violation DetectionTM, Neighborhood SnapshotTM, ShowingsPlusTM, and TechAssistLineTM.

VESTAPLUS, Press Release

Sheeeees back! This industry is certainly Hotel California. Many may not remember but Kelly (back then it was Kelly Pantis) co-founded RealtyPlus Online, one of the first web-based MLS systems. Great hire by Annie and looking forward to seeing Kelly making an impact on the industry again.

MLS-Touch reaches “Mobile Milestone”

MLS-Touch by CoreLogic Hits One Million Agent “Mobile Milestone”

“The demand for MLS-Touch from multiple listing organizations and Associations across the US and Canada has been tremendous,” said Charles Drouin, Senior Product Leader at CoreLogic. “We are seeing rapid adoption and usage, with MLS-Touch disrupting the leaderboard and becoming the preferred mobile app used by real estate agents today,” he added.”

CoreLogic

Bravo. I have to say CoreLogic’s acquisition of Prospects Software was super smart. Add to that the timing of CoStar’s acquisition of Homesnap (and their failure to resign the BPP) along with a well executed sales strategy and you get these results. Big congrats to Charles, Kevin and the rest of the team.

The MLS™/CLAW and RentBase Announce Partnership

The MLS™/CLAW and RentBase Announce Partnership to Streamline Rental Leasing Process for 18,000 Southern California MLS Agents

“We’re thrilled to partner with RentBase and extend its rental management services to our many agents and brokers,” said Annie Ives, CEO of The MLS™/CLAW. “Rentals have become increasingly important in today’s market, but there is a lack of efficiency and transparency in the rental market. RentBase will help our agents overcome these barriers by managing and nurturing all their rental data and transactions, and converting renter leads to home sales.”

Another tool/solution I written about a lot is ways for agents to expand their business away from just homes for purchase to rental and property management. I think today’s real estate agent should be focused on “housing” not just one sliver of that pie.

There are many good tools in this space. I missed this press release from last month. RentBase caught my eye about a year ago. They are basically a CRM for rental leads and some other features. Noaam Blum is just the kind of founder I like, someone who built something that scratched his own itch. Check ’em out.

FMLS adds Restb.ai to Matrix product suite

Real Estate Tech Leader FMLS Brings Cutting-Edge AI to Agents, Brokers Powered by CoreLogic and Restb.ai

“Restb.ai AI services will be fully integrated into FMLS’s CoreLogic Matrix™ platform and CoreLogic OneHome™ client collaboration portal. Recently recognized as an Inman Innovator, Restb.ai’s generative AI will automatically extract data insights from property photos to streamline the listing input process. Using this same technology, once integrated, homebuyers can upload a photo in OneHome and search for listings with desired features, introducing a new dimension in property search.”

Two things I don’t think can happen fast enough for listing data are floorpans and image tagging. Both have challenges to implement. I feel like I’ve been writing and advocating for both for a few years now. And happy to see this type of progress on both efforts.

While the article talks about many of the use cases for image tagging I don’t think we know what the killer application of this tech will be yet. Sure ADA compliance is a good thing and yeah image match sound promising. But I still think there is something more here that will only be discovered by playing around with it and now because of this partnership it seems that they finally have the chance.

Sisu launches “pizza tracker” solution for teams platform to provide clients better visibility into transactions

Sisu Launches Client Portal 2.0 with Vendor Integration for Streamlined Real Estate Workflows

“Now, with Mortgage and Title vendors on the platform, communication with all parties involved is located in one central place, reducing the potential for duplicate data entry and increasing efficiency. The new release of Client Portal also includes document storage, file sharing, centralized communication and collaboration, as well as the ability to add and edit roadmap steps. This powerful combination of features promises to help real estate teams streamline and automate their workflows like never before, saving time and reducing the potential for errors.”

Okay, I admit it, I watch a lot of reality real estate television shows. Part of me hoping to see some agent using Cloud CMA on their computer screen or handing out one of our reports. But alas so far no million-dollar agent is on video using Cloud CMA. ☹️

But I have seen Sisu. Not surprisingly since a lot of these million-dollar agents run huge teams. Sisu provides a well-designed product that acts as “your real estate team operating system”, along with some great coaching options.

Lion & Orb launch +AdStudio

Real estate PR firm Lion & Orb roars into paid digital marketing with +AdStudio

“We realized early on that when we would secure media placements for clients, we needed a tool to promote those articles that featured their products and services quickly, for an extended period of time as a sales tool,” said Audie Chamberlain, founder of Lion & Orb, in a statement. “With +AdStudio, we have really connected those dots, making digital advertising easy, cost-effective, and efficient to execute.”

Super smart. I think a lot of companies don’t know what to do once they get some publicity. Sure you can share on your personal and company social media but this takes it to a new level. And that’s just one of many use cases. I know that Audie has been working on this for a while. I’m super happy to see this launch. Congrats to Audio and the team at Lion & Orb.

Chris Bennett and Amy Gorce start a new consulting company – PRESTA

INDUSTRY VETS LAUNCH PRESTA TEAM

“Today Chris Bennett and Amy Gorce announced the launch of PRESTA Team, a new company that will leverage their combined 60+ years of industry experience to provide consulting and advisory services in the real estate space. Throughout their careers, Chris and Amy have accumulated valuable insight into many aspects of organized real estate and aim to assist MLSs, Brokers, and Proptech companies strategically navigate through times of unprecedented competition and change.

PRESTA is an acronym, “Premier Real Estate Solutions and Technology Advisors“. There was certainly a hole left by Clareity Consulting when CoreLogic acquired them back in 2017. T3Sixty have been quick to try and fill the vacuum as well as WAV Group. I respect both Chris and Amy and know the industry will be a better place with their insights. I’m sure they are both nervous and excited about their new adventure and I can’t help but feel a little bit jealous of starting something new.

My best wishes to Chris and Amy, looking forward to seeing you both soon!

Minnesota Realtors® choose Lone Wolf’s Transaction Management Solutions as a free member benefit

Lone Wolf partners with Minnesota Realtors® to provide transaction management solutions to its members in 2022

“Cambridge, ON and Dallas, TX – July 7, 2021 – Lone Wolf Technologies (“Lone Wolf”) and Minnesota Realtors® are pleased to announce a new agreement that brings real estate’s leading transaction management solutions, Lone Wolf Transactions (zipForm Edition) and Lone Wolf Transactions (TransactionDesk Edition), to the association’s 22,000 members as member benefits in 2022. The new agreement starts in September 2021.

“We’re happy to partner with Lone Wolf in providing digital form and transaction management tools to our members,” said Chris Gellar, CEO of Minnesota Realtors®. “These solutions put functionality and freedom of choice in our members’ hands and lets them spend more time servicing the needs of their clients.”

This is following a recent announcement that the California Association of REALTORS and the Texas Association of REALTORS (LOI) have also chosen to provide Lone Wolf’s Transaction Management Solutions as a free member benefit.

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