Where Real Estate Gets Its Dirt

Cloud Streams’ listing alerts beat all major portals

2832655241372408853I wanted to publish a little more background on Andrea V. Brambila’s article this morning on Inman News.

“How quick and reliable are portal listing alerts?”

W&R Studios did an experiment in the later part of 2015. They registered on all major listing portals, set up a saved search, and turned on their listing alerts. They started with two different cities – one covered by CRMLS in Southern California (Huntington Beach), and another city in Washington state (Auburn), covered by NWMLS. They choose these markets because they were on the same MLS system (Matrix) and wanted to test how these alerts would be affected by MLS providers that have direct data agreements with major listing portals.

In the case of Redfin and Estately they are both brokers as well as portals, so both have the advantage of getting a direct feed from the MLS. They fared well in the test, but still not enough to beat Cloud Streams.

In CRMLS listing alerts sent out via Cloud Streams came in (on average) 1 hour and 4min faster than Redfin listing alerts. Over 5 hour and 20 minutes (on average) than Zillow.

Check out the other results below:

Fastest alerts in the west

Does having a direct data agreement with the MLS make a difference? You bet. Check out below:

alert speed vs direct agreements

Also, what about “auto-prospecting” systems on the MLS? Wouldn’t these always be the fastest? Nope. Since most MLS systems send out alerts on a “Daily” basis and Cloud Streams sends alerts out in “real-time”, Cloud Streams wins again.

Plus when you add that Cloud Streams listings alerts can be sent out via text, instead of a buyer sorting through multiple emails, this increases the speed of when a buyer sees the listing.

Why does this matter? Two big reasons.

1. Being the fist to know when new listings (or updates) hit the market is a huge advantage to buyers. Especially in markets with low inventory or desirable neighborhoods.

2. This helps agents leverage their best asset, access to real-time MLS data, and gives their buyers a clear reason to use an agent, faster (the fastest) access to market data.

Want to help your MLS members compete with major listing portals?

We already have 40 MLS providers up and running with Cloud Streams. Over 200,000 agents who receive Cloud Streams as a free member benefit. Katie and I will be at Clareity’s MLS Executive Workshop this week to answer any questions. See you in Scottsdale!

Zillow had 27.1 million in legal fees in 2015

Ben Lane at HousingWire.com

“The legal battle is still ongoing, with Zillow stating that it spent $8.1 million in legal fees related to the Move/News Corp lawsuit in the fourth quarter, and $27.1 million for all of 2015, with those fees dragging down Zillow’s total financial results.

But Zillow’s not of the legal woods yet.

During a call with investors, Zillow’s chief financial officer, Kathleen Phillips, said that the costs related to Zillow’s “necessary defense” against Move’s claims are projected to rise from $27.1 million in 2015 to $36 million in 2016.”

Does that mean a a total cost of $63M in 2015 and 2016? I guess either number is scary. Fuck.

In a recent News Corp earnings call they mentioned spending $4M (in their Q2). Which means a run rate of $16M a year. Guess its cheaper to be the suer than the suey?

Realtor.com’s Chief Economist “DJ Smokey Smoke” is available for weddings and Bar Mitzvahs

rdc dj

His name is Jonathan Smoke a.k.a. “DJ Smokey Smoke“. It’s nice to see the new owner’s of MOVE are loosening up. But DJ Smokey Smoke’s latest post on Realtor.com’s official blog did catch my eye and left me wondering what exactly is News Corp smoking?

DJ blog

Plus I thought Rob Hahn a.k.a “The Notorious R.O.B.” owned this type of commentary/video format?

Move, Inc acquires Reesio

reesio cageRealtor.com® Operator, Move, Inc., Acquires Reesio, Allowing Real Estate Professionals to Simplify Home Buying and Selling Process

“Reesio provides brokers and agents with a platform to collaborate and communicate with home buyers and sellers, mortgage professionals, title and escrow companies, inspectors and other service providers, making the transaction process transparent and speeding communication to relevant parties. Reesio’s secure online platform allows collaborators to share, edit, sign and store transaction documents such as offer letters, inspection reports, and loan information in one place, and helps brokers and agents to reduce transaction errors and risk by allowing workflow templates to guide the steps and requirements for closing.”

The industry consolidation continues…

Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. I don’t think Reesio was generating much cash, so this deal was an obvious strategic deal to counter Zillow Group’s acquisition of dotloop.

I’ve written about Reesio and their CEO Mark Thomas before. They hustle and Move needs that kind of spirt to compete.

So, congrats to Mark and his team on an successful “exit”.

Russ Cofano out at realtor.com

“Dear Industry Friends,
I hope this note finds you well!
I have enjoyed working with many of you as Senior Vice President of Industry Relations for Move, Inc., operator of realtor.com. I am writing to let you know of my pending transition.
I joined Move with the intention of influencing the direction and strategy of realtor.com. Although I am very proud of our team’s accomplishments and have enjoyed furthering my relationships with you, my role at Move has not evolved as I had hoped. For that reason, I have decided to leave Move and my last day will be September 30. Our parting is friendly and I will continue supporting the many good things that realtor.com has accomplished under its new ownership.
I remain committed to our great industry and still have a strong desire to make valuable contributions during this period of significant change. I will be evaluating opportunities to do so over the coming months.
I have enjoyed working with you and look forward to continuing our relationships. I hope to see you at the NAR meetings in San Diego, if not sooner.
-Russ

Somehow I get the feeling that working for a Rupert Murdoch company isn’t that fun.

News Corp spent $7 million dollars last quarter suing Zillow

News Corp (NWSA) Earnings Report: Q4 2015 Conference Call Transcript

“That said, listing volume has improved in June and July. Reported segment results include $81 million in revenues and an EBITDA loss of $15 million from Move, which includes $5 million of stock-based compensation and $7 million in legal fees for litigation against Zillow.”

That’s about $2.3M dollar per month. That’s insane. And this is being going on a long time. The real issue here is at the center of all this legal carpet bombing are a couple of regular guys (who have done a lot to better this industry by the way) who just switched gigs.

#DropTheLawsuits

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!

Mark Allen joins realtor.com

thumb.phpGlad to hear Mark Allen has found a new gig! He along with Don Flynn were recently hired to join realtor.com’s industry relations team. Below is an excerpt from Russ Cofano’s Open letter to state and local real estate associations.

Move Announces New Executive Roles to Strengthen Association Relationships (Vis RISMedia)

“Don and Mark will work collaboratively across both the association and MLS industries with our MLS industry relations team, which includes vice presidents Rhett Damon, Shelley Fowler and Bob Greenspan and directors Susan Young and Kathleen Wayson. The entire team plans to attend the 2015 Joint AE Institute in March in Vancouver and we can’t wait to see you at that great event.”

“Industry Relations” seems to be the job title du jour. Realtor.com’s take is especially interesting. Lots of cooks in the kitchen. This focus on state and local associations and working “collaboratively” with MLS industry relations seems kind of odd. Not even sure what it means or how it will work – “Hey MLS CEO, the AE thinks you should be doing your job this way.”

Realtor.com is a listings portal right? They need listings. That means focusing on MLS providers and brokers. It’s not too complicated, or maybe I’m not smart enough to understand all this “strategery”.

Rupert Murdoch to keynote at Inman Connect NYC

Whoa….

Zillow’s Obi-Wan Kenobi moment

obiwan zillow

Something I started to think about over the weekend in regard to this move by Zillow (or so it seems) of deciding not to re-sign with ListHub. I guess because I’m a geek I tend to think of things as scenes in Star Wars. To me this move by Zillow reminded me when Obi-Wan and Vader dueled towards the end of Episode 4, “A New Hope” -The original Star Wars movie. In that scene Obi-Wan warned Vader, “If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.” When Obi-Wan saw that Luke and the rest were safe he closed his eyes and let Vader “strike him down”.

Obi had a plan. In Zillow’s case, they were prepared. The very same day they announced they were not re-signing with ListHub they also announced their Zillow Data Dashboard.

But what’s not clear is what’s MOVE’s plan? To me the scenario could play out that for a set period of time realtor.com will have a crapload of more listings than Zillow. This of course depends on if and when you think Zillow will be able to make up the delta of listings on their site by signing direct data agreements with MLS providers. Even if you assume they will make up the difference of listings, it still will take some time.

That time period is a HUGE opportunity for MOVE.

If I were MOVE (realtor.com) I would be getting ready to launch a huge marketing push, the day the ListHub agreement expires, to take advantage of a weak Zillow. The goal of this campaign would be to get in to consumers heads that Zillow does not have all the listings, but realtor.com does. Kind of a “Inventory Matters” campaign, rather than a “Accuracy Matters” campaign.

Maybe this is all underway, maybe not. Maybe they have another plan. But Zillow seems very confident, and that should be worrisome.

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