Notorious R.O.B.

Continuing the tradition that started when the earth was young (or last year… depending on your definition of “time”), I’d like to present this year’s version of “Predictions Guaranteed to be Wrong, Or Your Money Back”! As we saw in the report card post, last year, I went 4.5 for 7 in predictions. I hope to bat lower for this year’s predictions. Of course, I can guarantee 0 for 7 by making ridiculous predictions, like “The Jets will win the SuperBowl”.

Without further ado, the predictions for 2012…

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Ted Williams: .406 batting average in 1941. Me: .600 in 2009. Sorta...

Coming off of an awesome, Hall-of-Fame type of year in which I batted .600 in predictions (or, alternatively, a year in which I only got 6 out of 10 predictions even remotely close to right, and hence am a big #FAIL), I thought I would don the Nostradamus hat once again and make foolish predictions for 2011. I know I should make 10 predictions, but… y’know, I’m sort of stuck on that number Seven.

Here are seven predictions for 2011. Many are guaranteed to be wrong, or your money back! But as a bonus, each prediction comes with a music video for your entertainment.

[Warning: don’t read this is you’re feeling happy and optimistic, and you want to stay that way. I’m personally feeling happy and optimistic, but as I put this together, I can’t help but want to reach for strong drink for the industry as a whole. I know I tend towards bearishness, and some might suggest, alarmism, so… I’d suggest you go read some other 2011 predictions posts as well. Here are a few I’ve seen myself: Lani on Agent Genius, Greg Robertson on VendorAlley, and this whole series over at Inman.com.

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Respect my authoritah! Or not. Up to you.

As is somewhat normal, Brian Larson has a thought-provoking post on the future of the MLS up on MLS Tesseract. I gather it’s just one part of a series that he wrote a while back on Inman. In this particular post, Brian argues that interbroker compensation (aka, “Offer of Cooperation and Compensation”) is an anachronism and should be abandoned. He cites a number of factors — decline of sub-agency, restraining innovation in brokerage models, unfairness, and possible legal problems — to argue for getting rid of the Offer.

Brian ends the post, which was written in 2005/2006, with this:

So, other than references to some old reports from 2005 and 2006, I think all of this still makes sense, perhaps more so… What do you think?

Well, I think you’re making a ton of sense, Brian. But I do have a question about compliance, and data integrity.

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[Original post at 7DSassociates.com]

Bell Bottoms 2.0: What's old is new again!

There is a fascinating post on Find It Fill It blog (looks to me like this is a commercial real estate brokerage of some sort) about how Loopnet’s “crowdsourcing” model will reinvent commercial real estate as we know it:

This is like aiming a cannon to your competition that’s holding a pistol. If you leverage your user base to work for you and you provide them a better data service in the process, that’s the promised land of a business-client relationship. In technology terms, LoopNet is using a business model from the Web 2.0 period called, “Crowdsourcing”. Crowdsourcing is when a web software company provides the platform and the data entry/update is in part generated by the contribution of its users. So, let’s say an office building in LoopNet’s property database says that it was sold in 1999, but you (the user) know that it was just sold on November 1, 2010 for $2 million, LoopNet allows you to update that data yourself. Not only does this help you, but also you fellow professionals and in the end, LoopNet. This is very POWERFUL stuff. Having commercial real estate professionals who are “in the trenches” update this property data is the best quality in data that a commercial real estate data operation like LoopNet can ever wish for. Its competitors will be very envious and if they don’t move fast, they can lose ground quickly. (Emphasis mine.)

Interesting.  Well, I happen to agree with the FIFI blogger 100%, provided that by “reinvent” he really meant “imitate” the 100+ year old business model from the Telegraph 1.0 period called the “Multiple Listing Service”.

Read the whole thing on 7DSAssociates.com –>

Marilyn Wilson of the WAV Group has posted a plea for MLS boards to set aside personal agendas and work towards the good of the whole MLS, asking, “Is your heart in the right place?“:

I would suggest that every MLS board member in the country think about the importance of the role they are playing and be honest with themselves. Can you honestly separate your competitive spirit from your Association or brokerage from your role as a MLS board member?   Can you put aside rivalries and focus on your task at hand – to create a profitable, viable MLS that continues to evolve so that it can stay relevant to ALL of its customers, not just YOUR company or YOUR association?  Can you remember that the MLS is a technology service provider, designed to help its customers sell more real estate and should not be concerned with local politics?

Read the whole thing.

I have my own thoughts on the matter, but for now, I’ll limit things to a short, quick observation.

Seems to me that as a threshold matter, before asking MLS board members to think about their roles, Marilyn (and MLS board members) should ask themselves whether a “MLS Board” is in fact a Board at all.  The answer, I think, is not obvious.

Continue reading the post on 7DS Associates.

(Originally posted on the 7DS Blog)

As reported by Inman News, NAR’s Multiple Listing Issues and Policies Committee has approved a new addition to the Internet Data Exchange (“IDX”) policy as follows:

Display of IDX Information by Real Estate Franchise Organizations

Participants may provide IDX information to their real estate franchise organizations (“franchisors”) to be indexed for display on franchisors’ websites. For purposes of this policy, “real estate franchisor” is defined as a company granting real estate brokerage franchises under the franchisor’s trademarks pursuant to a franchise disclosure document meeting applicable Federal Trade Commission rules. Display of IDX information by franchisors is subject to the following requirements and limitations. Failure of a franchisor to comply with the following requirements and limitations can, at the discretion of the MLS, result in suspension or termination of the participant(s)’ authority to provide IDX information to the franchisor:

• Initial search results that provide minimal information (e.g. “thumbnails”) are exempt from MLS-required disclosures (e.g. listing firm, listing agent, source of information, notice that information is deemed reliable but is not guaranteed accurate) provided that a direct link to a detailed (“full view”) display that includes all required disclosures is provided.
• Consumers can link directly to the detailed (“full view”) display that complies with MLS disclosure/display rules of the source MLS.
• IDX information is not used for any unauthorized purpose.
• Inaccurate or incomplete information related to any listing is promptly corrected by the franchisor at the request of the source MLS.
• No advertising may appear on pages displaying IDX information.
• IDX listing information will not be modified, manipulated or permanently retained.

Rationale: This proposed expansion of the IDX policy would authorize real estate franchise organizations, with their franchisees’ consent, to index those franchisees’ IDX displays, with the results being displayed on franchisors’ websites, subject to appropriate qualifications and limitations.

On the surface, this seems like a fairly minor change to the IDX policy.  But we’re not content to lick the surface of this watermelon.  Let’s dive in a bit with some questions that immediately arise.

CLICK HERE TO READ WHOLE POST ON 7DSASSOCIATES.COM

Thanks to my friend Jack Miller, I read this post by Drew Burks of Web Real Estate Marketing in which he laments the lack of leadership in the MLS and Realtor Associations:

You see the associations are focused on the wrong things!  The real estate industry is focused on growing membership and collecting membership dues; whereas, in my humble opinion the better thing to focus on is innovation!  With innovation we can move the industry forward in a competitive manner.

And so on.  There are, as of this writing, 143 Facebook “Likes” on this post, and 15 comments with all of the commenters agreeing with Drew.

I have now heard this familiar refrain time and again in just about every other conversation about the industry, with REALTORS, with MLS executives, with MLS board members, with Association leadership, with broker/owners, with managers, with vendors… just about everyone agrees that the industry is broken. I’ve taken part in a lot of those conversations myself.

Here’s the thing: Enough with the talking already.  Time to step up or shut up.

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Riders on the storm....

I’m honored to be asked to give the closing remarks at the Council of MLS conference in Chicago this year at the end of September/early October.  Since I’m supposed to be wrapping up the discussions of those few days, I can’t actually prepare anything ahead of time.  But I can sort of cheat by putting out to the industry some of the bigger issues/questions I’ve been thinking about, in the hopes that the speakers, panelists, and participants at CMLS this year might talk about some of these things.

These Seven Big Questions represent some of the really fundamental challenges facing the MLS industry as a whole.  I do not (yet) pretend to have all the answers, or even any answer (at least, not in public, heh) but I did want to start posing them to my readers.  For those attending CMLS, please give some consideration to thinking about these questions.

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I’m going to try to do a bit of a stream-of-consciousness “live-blog” here at Houston Association of REALTORS Real Estate Investment Symposium.  I put that in quotes because (a) I’m distracted often, and (b) the bandwidth isn’t the best off my little MiFi device.

I’ve already missed a couple of the early presentations from Zillow, Google, and Move, but a couple of interesting things from this morning.

Sam Sebastian from Google suggests that the future of real estate broker is as an ‘information broker’; I asked if he could elaborate on that, since the experience of the past ten or so years is the opposite: information that used to be held by realtors is now all over the public via the Internet.  Isn’t the trend more and more towards realtors becoming customer service people rather than information brokers?

The answer — and it’s a good one — basically seems to be (at least interpreting Sam) that by “information broker” he meant something more like an analyst.  That the future of the realtor is as an interpreter of all of the information and data that’s all over the place on the Internet.

Interestingly, Google’s search on real estate terms is up 20% year over year, despite the terrible market.  Incidentally, I think that’s contradictory to the experience of the other big real estate websites (or at least used to be a few years back), but I haven’t seen recent stats.

[EDIT: This is getting very long, so it continues after the fold.  And forgive me for the ugliness of the post; it's the nature of a "live-blog".]

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Your SEM Dollars At Work!

From the Search Engine Land site comes news (h/t: Duke Long, @dukelong) that Google has built out what amounts to the start of a national real estate search website:

The real estate listing place pages include property information, photos, map placement, Street View imagery and functionality, nearby public transit details, and even AdWords ads. Google has added links for “Directions” and “Search nearby,” as well as a “Send” link that opens an outgoing email with the place page link embedded inside. The property details in the example above are sourced from two separate Prudential Real Estate web sites, and from NWSource.com, which is the Seattle Times’ web site. It’s all presented just as you’d see on any standard MLS web site, though it lacks some of the deep information (such as square footage of individual rooms) available in a typical MLS listing.

Whee!  By the way, in case you think the Flickr image above is a Photoshop job, here’s the link to the property in question on maps.google.com: 8801 Fauntleroy Way SW, Seattle, WA. And here’s an announcements of sorts from Google Australia:

So here’s what we’ve been cooking up – in the past, if you wanted to view real estate listings on Google Maps, your best bet was to select “Real Estate…” from the “More” menu at the top of the map.

Now, simply searching for “real estate” will return, well, real estate (try it)! You could also try “homes for sale sydney” or “homes for rent adelaide“. Or while you’re at it, check out “apartments for sale brisbane“, or “homes for rent near perth“. The idea is to make it really easy for you guys – you tell us what you want, and we get it back to you! Of course, we’ll continue to work to return the best results for all your Google Maps queries, whether you’re looking for local businesses, geographic features, or your perfect home.

We also wanted to tell you about the integration of real estate listings with Place Pages. Now clicking the “more info” link next to a listing takes you to a faster, easier-to-read page that gives you all of the information we have about a listing: photos, inspection times, videos, details, a Street View preview and nearby public transit information if available, allowing you to quickly find the listing you want and click through to the sources of the listing.

The initial responses range from delighted to worried.

This is from Kathleen Buckley (@kvbuckley), a broker in Massachusetts:

From Todd Carpenter (@tcar), Social Media Manager for National Association of REALTORS:

From Bob Wilson (@bob_wilson), a real estate marketer and technologist:

There’s lots to speculate on, lots to think about, and lots to debate and argue about here.  But in a way, it’s as if the other shoe has finally dropped.  Many of us in the real estate industry have been wondering what Google plans to do with real estate, as the boys and girls from Mountain View have been moving towards something like this for a while with Google Base, Google Maps, etc.

So let’s get into the speculation.

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