Notorious R.O.B.

Over at 1000watt, there is a rather interesting debate going on with some heavy hitters contributing, on whether big brokers should or should not support innovations and tools by the MLS or Association. Go check it out if you haven’t already.

The general thrust is that Brian Boero and Marc Davison both believe that innovations are an unqualified good, and that big brokerages have no reason to oppose innovation wherever it occurs — even if that is at the MLS, at the local Association, or at NAR. As Marc writes:

If you share this belief, then I submit it would be impossible for you to ever stand in the way of any innovation or impede anyone from offering that innovation. Even an MLS.

If you share this belief, never fear a tool. And always proceed by having supreme confidence in what you could do with any tool versus others.

The basic idea is that the big brokerage, with its superior execution ability will benefit more from any tool or feature offered by the MLS/Association.

The counterpoint, articulated well by a few folks who are in a position to know, is that brokerages invest heavily in technology, in tools, and in innovation. And that the MLS or Association offering those same capabilities out results in an unfair leveling of the playing field. For example, here’s Pam O’Connor, CEO of Leading Real Estate Companies of the World:

Many brokers (and not just the largest ones) invest heavily in tools for their agents for the purpose of differentiation with consumers and attracting the best and brightest. It’s called competition. To have their local association or MLS then offer the same thing dilutes that investment and competitive edge.

It’s an interesting discussion.

Well, I have a concrete suggestion to every MLS that I think would go a long way towards solving this particular conundrum. I happen to think it’ll help some other conundrums as well.

The MLS should cease collecting payment from the agent/member; it should, instead, collect payment directly from the broker, and only from the broker. Change the customer of the MLS to be the brokerages, and some of these problems become easier to think through.

Read the rest of this entry »

Few industries worship innovation as much as real estate does.  It is perhaps the highest compliment to a company or to an individual in real estate to say, “You’re so innovative!”

Thing is, I believe innovation is disruptive.  In fact, I think how innovative something is can be correlated to how destructive it is of older practices.  On that basis, I have a feeling — a hunch really — that Hunch.com is an innovation you’re going to want to watch.

Read the rest of this entry »

Recently, I mused on the nature of innovation and how it goes hand-in-hand with destruction.  The key thought, as pointed out by a savvy commenter, in that post is:

Or thought of another way, when you look at the innovations in the industry today — whether mobile apps, CRM technologies, social media, RPR, or whatever — you might ask, “What part of the industry does this innovation destroy?”

If the answer is “none”, then that thing, whatever it is, is not innovation.  It is, rather, incremental improvement; a marginal gain in efficiency.  It isn’t the automobile, but faster horses.

It seems to me that the corollary of “if it doesn’t destroy, it isn’t innovative” is that the degree of innovation is related to the degree of destructive potential.

So where would some of the recent much-discussed innovations rank on the “Shiva Scale” — the degree to which said innovation would destroy one or more parts of the real estate industry?  Let’s say the Shiva Rank goes from 1 to 10 where 1 might be “as harmless as a baby bunny” and 10 might be “thermonuclear bombardment from orbit”.  Where would some of the recent innovations rank?

Read the rest of this entry »

The Seattle-based brokerage John L. Scott has waded into social networking waters in a pretty significant way with JLSconnect — a brand new service based on Microsoft’s Live platform.  From the news release:

JLSconnect augments the previous “Property Tracker” service found on www.JohnLScott.com which provides the ability for individuals to log in and save “favorite” properties.  JLSconnect adds new social networking capabilities to the Property Tracker experience that makes it possible for people to easily share and exchange comments on interested properties with others.

“Live Services are building block cloud services from Microsoft that John L. Scott utilizes to enrich the consumer experience,” says Sam Chenaur, Microsoft Platform Strategy Advisor. “With those services, John L. Scott is now able to allow users to see when their friends and family are online, provide instant messaging services to share and view property information, see and map properties with Microsoft Virtual Earth, and offer a single sign-on experience to all of those capabilities.”

This could be interesting, but it has the feel of a dollar short and a day late.  If JLS had launched the service a couple of years ago (and conversations about doing this sort of social networking were happening inside Realogy as early as summer of 2007), it might have been different.  But today, there are a lot more questions as to how JLSconnect will work out.

My concern is that if JLSconnect does not deliver the results that JLS may be expecting, it will be seen as evidence that social networking and social media in real estate don’t work.

Read the rest of this entry »