“StreetEasy attracts nearly 1.2 million1 monthly unique users, primarily home shoppers in the New York region. This acquisition gives StreetEasy the resources to further invest in product development and grow its audience, while offering Zillow® clear market leadership in the country’s largest and most important real estate market.”
Earlier this year we had heard the Zillow wasn’t planning any acquisitions in 2013, I guessed they changed their minds. With the recent stock run up, who can blame them. No mention of any significant revenue’s from StreetEasy.
And speaking of Zillow stock, they are offering 5 million Class A shares. Looks like 2.5 Million of them are coming from Zillow’s CEO Spencer Rascoff, Rich Barton and Lloyd Frink. Nice payday.
“One of the biggest requests from agents has been for fast, easy creation of marketing and advertising materials on their iPads to save them time,” said Renwick Congdon, Chief Executive Officer of Imprev. “Only the mobile Imprev Marketing Center meets that need, freeing up agents to create and distribute whatever they need from wherever they are.”
Solid addition to an already great service. Renwick is a very smart guy that has been solidly building his business for many years. Great job.
““We know that Microsoft had a number of choices in online realtor partners and are pleased to announce our continued long-standing relationship with MSN to deliver the most accurate and trusted real estate information to the MSN community,” said Barbara O’Connor, executive vice president of marketing for Move, Inc.”
In a nutshell, what Barb is saying, is Move, Inc. won the business from Zillow.
And there’s nothing sweeter than kicking your competitors ass on their home turf (Seattle).
“The Spring platform is a new kind of publicfacing search portal that represents a number of key advances in the real estate industry. Traditionally, there are separate search environments for consumers and professionals. Using distinct consumer and professional logins, Spring offers professionals the same proprietary access to information, analytics and features they currently have but within the same navigation experience as their clients.”
Looks like Solid Earth is swinging for the fences here. It acts as both and public and private portal, responsive design, the works. I can only imagine the level of development effort to get this thing ready. It’s a very interesting value proposition, looking forward to see how the market responds. Congrats to Solid Earth.
“First, Leading Real Estate Companies of the World, a network of more than 500 real estate companies that spans the globe, has made Nudge an official Solutions Group Partner. Under this arrangement, all brokerage companies and agents within the network will receive an exclusive price and other benefits.
Second, Metropolitan Regional Information Systems (MRIS), one of the nation’s largest MLS organizations, has purchased a large volume of Nudge licenses for its members. Through our partnership with MRIS, agents and brokers will also receive special training on using Nudge within a broader marketing strategy.”
If you are interested in how Nudge can help you MLS just email me and I’ll set you up a free demo account to try it out.
“For the first time, more than 5,000 real estate professionals across Indiana – who formerly used 13 independent MLS systems – will now have unrestricted access to more than 750,000 real estate listings through LPS Paragon’s advanced capabilities. Newly formed Indiana Regional MLS (IRMLS) will collect from and distribute listing data to the 13 Realtor associations in Indiana, allowing members to search across multiple markets and pay only one MLS fee to access the IRMLS data.”
These deals are complicated (technology and politics) so a nice win for LPS.
And there’s this…
“Kendall said the participating associations worked collaboratively with industry consultant Kevin McQueen of Focus Forward Consulting Inc. and LPS to meet the challenge of a consolidation of this magnitude and achieve successful results. “In addition to combining the listing data information, the resulting cost efficiencies are going to provide members additional benefits, including public records information, appointment services and a consumer-facing website,” she said.”
““We are pleased to have formalized a licensing agreement with a market leader like CoreLogic and look forward to working with them in the future,” said Smarter Agent CEO Brad Blumberg.
Ben Graboske, senior vice president of Real Estate and Financial Services for CoreLogic added, “We are always looking to provide the best, most innovative products to our customers and this agreement with Smarter Agent, enhances our ability to deliver on that promise and to provide mobile data solutions to our clients.”
As an independent software developer I have mixed feeling about software patents. But from the perspective of my previous post regarding “home grown” MLS systems you can see CoreLogic’s play here.
“Rich Lull, LPS MLS Solutions, will join the Board of Directors as the newly elected Class B Director serving a one-year term. Rob Overman, nōshun software, was re-elected to serve a two-year term as a Class B Director. The newly elected Class C Directors include Russ Bergeron, MidWest Real Estate Data LLC, and Jeremy Crawford, MLSListings Inc., both of whom were elected to serve one-year terms. Steve Byrd, Carolina Multiple Listing Services Inc., and Rebecca Jensen, UtahRealEstate.com, were re-elected for additional two-year terms as Class C Directors.”
Missed this announcement last week. Great to see such talent involved with RESO.
Sam Scott, HARSuper thrilled about this. Thanks to Bob, Rene, Sam (pictured) and Shawn for helping make this happen!
Full Press Release Below:
Cloud CMA now available through Houston Association of REALTORS® Award winning CMA tool will be launched at HAR’s largest education and technology conference, “The BIG e”
HUNTINGTON BEACH, CA (October 23, 2012) – Web-software company, W&R Studios announced today that their flagship product, Cloud CMA, will now be available to the members of the Houston Association of REALTORS®.
Cloud CMA is an online report generating software designed for real estate professionals to easily create custom client handouts for buyers and sellers. Report sets include a comparative market analysis, buyer tour, property report, and flyers. Cloud CMA merges data from the MLS with various web sources such as WalkScore, Yelp, Panaramio, Zillow and more to generate content rich reports. Report data is presented in an easy to read and intuitive manner that guides agents and clients through all stages of their transaction.
“HAR has a well deserved reputation of being one of the most innovative MLS providers in the country so we are very proud that HAR has elected to offer Cloud CMA to their membership,” stated Greg Robertson, co-founder of W&R Studios, the creators of Cloud CMA.
Cloud CMA can be accessed from any computer or mobile device regardless of brand. Reports can be generated by simply sending an email, and automatically shared with clients. Reports are stored in ‘the cloud’ and generate a unique link to their location that agents can easily share via email, social media channels, and websites or blogs.
“Cloud CMA is a natural fit for our members who have already integrated a host of HAR technology tools into their daily business,” said Houston Association of REALTORS chairman-elect Danny Frank. “This product will enable them to customize the reports they produce and truly give themselves a competitive edge.”
Cloud CMA will be presenting at “The BIG e”, HAR’s biggest education and technology conference on Thursday, October 25, 2012. Cloud CMA will be available to HAR members on a subscription basis with monthly and yearly options. Interested real estate professionals are also eligible for a 30-day free trial.
For more information about Cloud CMA, please visit: http://CloudCMA.com
About W&R Studios
Founded in 2008, W&R Studios (http://wrstudios.com) is a privately held web software company co-founded by Dan Woolley and Greg Robertson. W&R Studios focuses on creating simple yet focused web applications for the real estate industry. By utilizing a “less is more” approach to software design, elegant user interfaces, and the latest in agile programming, W&R Studios’ software applications are powerful, yet accessible to everyone. W&R Studios’ products include Cloud CMA and Nudge (http://getnudgeapp.com), an easy way to share real estate knowledge and stand out.
About The Houston Association of REALTORS® (HAR)
The Houston Association of REALTORS® (HAR), founded in 1918, is comprised of 24,000 real estate professionals engaged in every aspect of the industry, including residential and commercial sales, leasing, and appraisals, and property management and counseling. It is the largest individual dues-paying membership trade association in Houston, and the second largest local Association/Board of REALTORS® in the United States. HAR’s mission is to help its members achieve ongoing success.
HAR is a representative for the free enterprise system and the protection of private property rights. It is part of a network that includes the National Association of REALTORS® headquartered in Chicago and Washington, D.C., the Texas Association of REALTORS® in Austin, and approximately 1,800 local associations and boards throughout Texas and the United States.
The term “REALTOR®” is a registered collective membership mark which identifies a real estate professional who is a member of the National Association of REALTORS® and subscribes to its strict Code of Ethics.
Mike Sparr, CEO of GoomzeeI’ve been traveling on the east coast and have a lot I want to talk about (including the kick-ass tech fair hosted by MLSLI that I just attended.) But, first I wanted to write a post on the WAV Group post I just read this morning. It cites a press release from Goomzee titled “GOOMZEE GOES PUBLIC; OFFERS TRANSPARENCY IN MLS PRICING”. It lays out it’s site license pricing (oddly I couldn’t find the press release on Goomzee’s site). Here’s a snippet:
“Traditionally, site license pricing has been more of a behind-the-scenes negotiation but Goomzee appears to be breaking out from the norm and is publicizing it’s pricing model, and incentive opportunity. The company is offering MLS clients 25 percent and 50 percent discounts respectively based upon a $10,000 or $25,000 initial deposit prior to the rollout of the product, coining it as it’s “sponsorship plan”.
Also included in the press release is a pricing matrix:
Click to enlarge
Wow. I have to say this is a bold move by Goomzee and something I applaud Mike Sparr, Goomzee’s CEO, for doing. He even cites myself and W&R Studios as an influencer.
“We decided to offer early adopters a financial incentive to chip in now, and save considerable expenses in providing these solutions to their clients,” adds Sparr. “Furthermore, I felt it was important to follow in the footsteps of folks like Greg Robertson of W&R Studios who promotes more transparency in the industry, and what could be more transparent than sharing our pricing model.”
To be clear W&R Studios gives our MLS and broker clients a dashboard where they can see real time sign up and usage stats of Cloud CMA. If they are a revenue share partner, they also see their quarterly rev share pipeline. You can read more about the program in an earlier Vendor Alley post, “Improving Vendor Transparency”
While Goomzee’s move of disclosing its pricing is indeed bold, and I’m sure will have a few of us sharpening our pencils, let’s be honest, we all have a “rate card”. As we all know, prices on that “rate card” immediately go out the door when negotiations begin.
But, the transparency trend is upon us. MLS providers will, and should demand, real time reporting of third party app sign ups and usage. I can see consultants adding “real-time reporting” as a must have feature to their checklists when helping MLS providers choose third party products. Third party vendors should live and die by these numbers. Any third party vendor not providing these types of metrics makes one wonder, what are they hiding?
