Where Real Estate Gets Its Dirt

The W+R Studios Speakeasy

It was great to have the COVE Conference in Huntington Beach. One of the highlights was hosting a party at W+R Studios office. We turned it in to the “W+R Studios Speakeasy”. We made a short video of the event, please enjoy.

My thanks to Diane Ruggiero for letting us tag along with her event.

UtahRealEstate.com adds Cloud CMA as member benefit

UtahRealEstate.com to Offer Cloud CMA as an Exclusive Member Benefit

“This week, UtahRealEstate.com expanded its partner software program with a statewide exclusive offering of W+R Studios’ Cloud CMA product. Cloud CMA is a modern, high powered, and visually captivating Comparative Market Analysis platform that allows real estate professionals to create beautiful CMAs with just a few clicks. URE will be seamlessly integrating Cloud CMA into its MLS system so that members will be able to select properties from the MLS and work with those properties in the Cloud CMA software.”

Everybody’s doing it…

W+R Studios gets live coverage on local television station

One fun thing happen to us lately. Our office is located on Main Street in Huntington Beach. Huntington Beach holds one of the largest 4th of July parades in the country. The crowd size was over 500,000 this year. We hold an office party every 4th of July, since our balcony overlooks the parade route.

I made a sign this year to catch the attention of the local news station (ABC 7) who were broadcasting the parade. Along with some nudging from some of our team we got on live television! See if you can spot me.


Later the news team came and joined the party!

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Happy Holidays

W+R Studios had their Year End Meetings this week. We put this video together as we were doing our ugly sweater workshop.

#MannequinChallenge

NARlando 2016

Many of you are already in Orlando, personally I don’t arrive till tomorrow afternoon. Which means I’ve got a jammed pack weekend! Here are some of things that we have going on.

W+R Studios booth!
Stop by and see our newly redesigned booth. Our booth number is 1185. No ping pong this year, but sit in on a demo and get a free t-shirt!

MLS Association Executives Session
November 4, 2016 at 1:00 p.m. (that’s this Friday)
Hyatt Regency, Windermere Ballroom Z

Brian Donnellan has asked me to moderate a panel with Mike Wurzer, Matt Cohen and Chad Curry on the future of real estate technology. We are going to geek out on future tech and what it means for real estate. (I’m just glad not to talk about Upstream)

AMP Presentation
November 5, 2016 at 1:00 p.m. (Saturday)
Katie and I will be demoing our Cloud Agent Suite (Cloud CMA, Cloud Streams and Cloud MLX) and highlighting recent integrations we’ve done with the AMP API.

ListHub Party
November 5, 2016 5PM-9PM
ICEBAR – 8967 International Drive, Orlando FL
W+R Studios is co-sponsoring the ListHub party. We will have a cool photo booth set up for attendees.

Corelogic Party
November 5, 2016 8PM-11PM
B.B. King’s Blues Club – 9101 International Dr. #2230, Orlando, FL
W+R Studios is also co-sponsoring the Corelogic party as well (what can I say, we like to party!)

Come by our Suite!
Katie and I will be in our Suite at the Rosen Centre giving private demos. We have a few slots open so reach out to Katie if you like to talk about adding the Cloud Agent Suite to your MLS or brokerage.

Other than that I’ll most likely be at the lobby bar (but you already knew that.)

Just remember, DON’T GO BIG ON THE FIRST NIGHT!

See you soon!

P.S. We are going to miss you Skinny!

Cloud MLX Webinar

Cloud_MLX_vertical_1_blueIt was great seeing everyone in Las Vegas last week. And to be honest I’m still not fully recovered. : )

Anywho, Katie and I had a lot of questions about Cloud MLX and since there wasn’t really a good wifi connection in the Heart Bar we only did a few demos. As you may know Cloud MLX was named “2016 Most Innovative Technology” by Inman News. But as luck would have it we had a Cloud MLX webinar scheduled for CRMLS members this Wednesday at 9AM PT. So if you are interested in seeing what all the hype is about I wanted to give you the info to take a look.

Just click on the link below and it will get you signed up.

Register for Cloud MLX Webinar – CRMLS

Or if you’d rather get a private demo, just contact Katie and she’ll set up a time.

Cloud MLX launch party – You’re invited!

We are having a launch party next week at our W&R Studios offices in Huntington Beach next Tuesday (4/26), at 6PM.

If you have ever come to any of our parties you know that Frances and her team does it right! We are going to have a Live Jazz Band, a Bourbon Bar, good food and a lot of swag.

We are celebrating the launch of Cloud MLX and our new rebranding. I know a lot of you might be heading to the C.A.R. Meetings, or maybe you could fly in a day early for the T3 Summit, but Dan and I would love you to figure out a way to join us for this special event!

You can RVSP here: Cloud MLX Launch Party RSVP

MLX Invitation

Hope to see you there!

Katie Smithson promoted to Director of MLS Services

Headshot Katie

Katie Smithson promoted to Director of MLS Services at W&R Studios

“I couldn’t be more proud of Katie. She has been a key part to our success, and has shown the ability to take on any challenge. I’m sure she will continue to impress in her new role,” stated Greg Robertson, co-founder of W&R Studios.”

What he said. : )

Can I get a “whoop whoop”?

#InternationalWomensDay

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!

Looking for a new gig?

Two new positions posted on the Vendor Alley Job Board!

Digital Marketing Manager for HomeSpotter

Senior Developer for W&R Studios – Help us make great software for the real estate industry!

See these jobs and more at the Vendor Alley Jobs Board!

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