I know it is inevitable that I will be asked (perhaps 100′s of times) “What did you learn from Inman Connect SF this week”? or “What was the most interesting thing you learned at Inman Connect SF”? or some variation of that general question. In years past I may have made something up to illicit a response like “That’s Nice” or “Wow, that’s great!”, but NOT this year!

This year something very accidental, yet incredibly enlightening happened and it all began with me accidentally walking into the wrong “MeetUp”…

It was like a Bad episode of “Reality TV”

Wednesday at ICSF was jam packed! Stuff happening from the morning bell to the 5pm cocktail call. I was constantly looking at my playbook, trying to decide where I was going…What topic? What room? What subject? It was crazy! So right after lunch I knew I wanted to go to a “MeetUp” of Real Estate Tech Vendors in Continental Parlor #2, that started at 1:00pm. Now the MeetUps were not necessarily open to the public, though they were not marked “Private” or anything, but they were designed for the Vendors to congregate and talk amongst themselves regarding what they were experiencing in the market. This MeetUp was Facilitated by a friend of mine, Greg Robertson from W&R Studios (Cloud CMA), so I knew he would let me “Sit in” on it. After all, I am a Techy!

So off I went on my merry way at about 1:10pm, feverishly typing away at Twitter on my phone, into Continental Parlor #1 ( for those of you who have had your morning Starbucks you probably got it, but for those who have not…I said Parlor #1!). Now in Parlor #1, I was not sitting in on my intended MeetUp, Real Estate Tech Vendors, but instead I was “Transported” to some unknown geographical location somewhere in the 1950′s … It was titled “MLS Operators, Vendors, and Staff” DA DA DUMB! (Cue the music from the 1950′s classic TV show, Dragnet!)

“Son-of-a-bitch!” I thought, I gotta get outta here! but I couldn’t. Something was mysteriously keeping me from moving, it was as if I were paralyzed. The conversation was about the “Consumers” (Keep this meaningless term in mind, it will come up again) perception of our Industry. Specifically, at that moment, about how when they see Listing data in multiple sources (MLS, Trulia, Broker Sites, Agent Sites ect…) that is not the same (different price, Sold vs Active ect…) they say “How stupid is this?”

That’s when it got interesting ….

Think Hatfield’s & McCoy’s, Shark’s & Jet’s, Snoop Dawg & Puffy!

Ok, so I will be the 1st to admit, I have a limited knowledge of the inter-workings of the MLS’s. I am however a keen observer of human behavior, and the overall atmosphere in this room was … hmmmm … What’s the right word? Depressing? no Frustrating? no oh wait… I’ve got it! EMBARRASSING!

Though the Facilitator, Marilyn Wilson a Partner at WAV Group (@marilynwilson), did her best to mediate, like a Beverly Hills divorce case, this was no small task. Don’t get me wrong, there were no punches thrown, no “F” bombs were dropped, nothing uncivilized, Though two MLS operators (one who resembled that Scottish Guy from Austin Powers movies & one who looked a bit like Santa Claus in the off season, ya know, beard was trimmed dropped a few pounds, but the whole grey thing was working for him) felt it was an appropriate venue to make off-color remarks regarding their sex lives. Then there was the MLS guy (who looked a bit like a character from The Sopranos) who felt very comfortable stating that “Brokers are the REAL problem, they refuse to fire the 53% of their REALTORS (c) who are a bunch of Morons and haven’t done a single transaction in over a year” that was kinda weird, being it had seemingly nothing to do with the conversation…other than that…oh wait…

The reason we are headed for Government regulation of our Data

… The room also had a number of bright young minds, from Tech start-ups, some Exec’s from 3rd Party Aggregators, and a few representatives of the Broker/Agent community. These folks were asking for some cooporation in areas like:

• Sharing of Data in more Open fashion
• Involvement by the MLS’s in a Rating system for Agents/Brokers/Affiliates/Aggregators
• More “Open-Mindedness” to new Technologies & Ideas
• An Intranet for the MLS’s to communicate with each other about questionable Vendors
• A more “Open” forum for New Vendors to present ideas

Ya know, Stupid stuff like that!

Each and every time a bright young mind in the Vendor community, or a Consumer Advocate, or a Forward thinking Broker offered a suggestion (some of which, to me of course, were awesome) they were met with the same response from The MLS Boys…”Good Luck with That!” and then came the round of “Belly Laughs” (led by Scottish Guy, Santa, & Soprano Guy)…at first I was amused by them myself. then when I realized that they came from a deeply rooted “Arrogance”, rather than a playful sense of “Humor”, I was faced with the realization that our Industry was “doomed” to be regulated. No one, and I am convinced, No one will be able to get these two opposing sides (Old School & New School) to join together and bring our industry into the 21st century.

The “Straw” that broke the “Consumers” back

It was all made so incredibly clear by a comment from “Soprano Guy”, in response to the statement from Marilyn Wilson “it’s abundantly clear, from all the polls, that the Consumer overwhelmingly wants the Rating System”!

Soprano Guy then blurted out “Who”? “The Consumer”? “That’s not my Customer, The Brokers are my Customers. They pay my bills, not the Consumers”.

In Closing…

You never know what life has in store for you. One minute everything’s all “peaches & cream”. You’re minding your own business, happily “Tweeting” about that nights cocktail parties, or the crazy new Technologies you just heard some Geek talk about on stage and then …. BAM! … Your visions of your industry’s future are shattered by a room full of “Closed Minds”…though it was “riveting” and certainly more interesting than the “Meet The Leaders” segment downstairs, it was then and will forever be my most disappointing “Wrong Turn”

I don’t know how this gets fixed. I just know somebody with the “Schwag” to do it needs to get involved and fix it!

If not, Obama (or the next elected leader of our country) will!

Stay Blogging My Friends!

@TheRECoach

I have come up with a list of different ways agents can drive traffic to their sites. I have put them in order of what I think are most effective and where I would spend my time, money and energy. I based my list on tracking the results through analytics of agents I have been helping. I would love for you to share methods you have had good success with and anything you think should be on the list.

1. Craigslist definitely is the best affordable way to drive a lot of traffic to your site and it is free. It has a pretty low average bounce rate (24%) compared to other methods. The average page views per user is 10, which is pretty good. Plus the conversion rate of sign ups is slighter higher from the Craigslist users than the Google CPC users.

2. Google Adwords is probably the most effect way to drive a lot of traffic to your site if you have a marketing budget. If the ads are put together correctly and land on the right page you will have a higher conversion rate. The agents sites I have been helping have been getting around a 20% Bounce Rate. The average page views per user has been 13 from the campaigns we have been tracking. Some of the agents I have been helping have also been using Homegains CPC product and the bounce rate has been running about 21%. The average page views per user is 16, but it is much more expensive than Google Adwords to get the same amount of traffic.

3. Syndicating listings through Real Estate Portals like Zillow & Trulia, Realtor.com, Listhub & others.  Although the traffic from these portals is not even close to Craigslist or Adwords, I would definitely still get your listings syndicated in as many portals as you can as long as they link to your site or at least have your contact information. The traffic from them was not significant.  Realtor.com drove the most traffic but had a higher bounce rate (48%) with a lower page view per user (2.3). Zillow was the next most effective source of portals with a bounce rate of 32% with 5 page views per user.

4. Social Media (Facebook, Twitter, Youtube & Activerain) can drive some traffic to your site, but the users appear to be less focused on buying or selling homes. Of the sites I tracked Facebook & Twitter actually drove more traffic then the real estate portals, but the bounce rate and page views were horrible.  Here are the stats:
FaceBook – 55% Bounce rate / 1.7 page views per user
Twitter – 78% Bounce rate / 1.3 page views per user
Youtube – 49% Bounce rate / 3 page views per user
Activerain – 44% Bounce rate / 3.6 page views per user

5. Directories like Yahoo, Dmoz and industry ones. These may drive some traffic, but  are more worth getting listed in for the link back to your site. It is a bonus if they drive some traffic.

The analytic stats used a combined average of the following 4 sites: St Louis Real Estate Today, Coastal Bay, The Desert On The Market & Home Sales San Diego.

It is very important when implementing any marketing campaign to make sure that you have some sort of analytics or tracking system in place. I prefer Google Analytics. It is free and you can set up goals to measure your results. If you do not have a way to measure your conversions, you will never have an efficient, effective & predictable way to drive traffic to your site.

These are the most effective ones I have been able to come up with that are track able through analytics. I am sure there are probably other effective methods of driving traffic to your website and would love for you to join the conversation & share them.

The question for most real estate agents is probably “Where do I start?”  The options are overwhelming and there are an incredible number of websites that are glad to take your money.  Rest assured, everything I’m going to tell you about is free.  None of it works without a bit of effort though so here are my suggestions:

www.postlets.com – This is one of the first things you should be doing with every listing you get.  Go to postlets and enter your listing.  You can moan and groan all you want about having to enter your listing in yet another place but don’t be lazy, this is free and doesn’t take all that much effort.  Postlets does MANY valuable things.  First off, it syndicates your listing to Google Base, Oodle, HotPads, Trulia, DotHomes, Backpage, Vast, Enormo, Front Door and my personal favorite, Zillow.  Next cool thing, it allows you to post your listing to all of your social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, LinkedIn, etc.  Another nifty thing it does is makes you a pretty ad for craigslist.  All you have to do is copy and paste the code it generates into the description box on craiglist and presto, you’re practically done.  Postlets also creates a one page website for your listing.  That gives you a link that you can pass around and use in other online marketing efforts.  Lastly, another one of my favorite things that postlets does is creates a custom webpage for you, the agent.  Check out my postlets site here to see what this looks like.  Something I really like about that page it creates is that it generates a map of where all of my listings are.  This is good for illustrating your service area.  One more small touch of information I’ll mention is that postlets allows you to insert the code for Google Analytics.  This is invaluable for tracking where your hits are coming from and how many you are getting.  This is a topic for a whole other article though.

www.zillow.com – The entire real estate profession came unglued when Zillow first started publishing their infamous Zestimates.  How horrible that this data is easily put into our client’s hands!  I’m sure you now realize, Zillow is here to stay.  Like it or not, they are currently the #2 real estate web site.  Instead of fighting this, embrace it.  These guys ROCK for your SEO.  Their links are followed and indexed by google.  I encourage you to create a user profile on Zillow with links back to your own home page.  I won’t give away all of my Zillow secrets here but let’s just say I’ve had 4 leads per month directly from my activity on Zillow and that number seems to be climbing.  Get your profile on there at the very least people.

www.twitter.com – When I first looked at Twitter I thought, “what a useless waste of time”.  Oh how wrong I was.  Twitter gets indexed by Google FABULOUSLY.  If you can think of NOTHING ELSE to tweet, at least use your postlets account Twitter feature and post your listings.  This helps your SEO something fierce.  Start doing this stuff and then try googling one of your listing’s addresses.  Your twitter should be in the top 10 results.  Since I’m using analytics I can see that probably 10% of my traffic is currently coming from twitter and I’m gaining followers just by posting.  Check out my twitter page to see how I am using it.

Google Profiles – When you google your name, what do you get?  Is it some post you made on the Usenet 10 years ago where you were flaming someone because they disagreed with you?  Is it relevant?  Ultimately your name is your calling card.  You should take charge of it on google and make sure you like what you see.  If not, here is one chance to change it and another chance for back links to your website or blog.  If you have a google profile, this is the first thing someone will see when they google your name.  I suggest you put it to good use.  Hopefully one of your doppelgangers hasn’t already grabbed your name.

My goal is not to overwhelm you here.  I’m simply trying to give you the list I wish I had 4 years ago.  I’d say I wish I had it from the beginning, but some of this stuff didn’t exist in 2002 when I started real estate and if it did, it probably wasn’t that relevant to selling homes.  Whatever the case, these are different times we live in.  The industry is now driven by information empowered clients instead of by stuffy old brokerages bent on domination.  The clients are getting this information one way or the other; what is best for you, the real estate agent, is to make it easy for them to get and to make sure your name is attached to it.

More details available at ZIPVO.com.

If you are not currently syndicating your listings, did this video convince you that it’s a good idea? If so, here is a list of technology vendors that can help you syndicate your listings, and here’s a comparison between the different vendors.

I’m proud to announce that Diverse Solutions has been working hard to develop a free offering for the Real Estate community. We all know that creating listings in the MLS systems can be time consuming, and often error prone this is a problem that dsListingExpress completely solves.So without further ado, please visit our launch site to learn more and try it out yourself: http://dslistingexpress.diversesolutions.com

MLS data is my life, so his comments naturally piqued my interest. Here is what I think he was saying, and some thoughts about how MLSs should consider it. (I cannot promise what I say here accurately captures what he said, but you can follow up with him if you want to be sure.)

Clearly, Fannie is struggling to deal with a vast number of troubled loans, especially on the following questions: Should it approve a short sale? How should it price an REO? What kind of workout should it offer a distressed owner? The only way to make these decisions confidently is to have high-quality valuation advice. Fannie regularly seeks valuation advice in the form of appraisals and broker price opinions (BPOs).

But Fannie wants MLS data in order to support systems on its end that analyze and confirm that valuations it’s getting from brokers and appraisers are in the right ball-park. It also wants to use the data for financial modeling, i.e., to make and test projections about what is and will be happening to real estate markets in coming months. It’s asking MLSs to license data to it. Mr. Bryar even shared a proposed contract for the licensing. I expect that Fannie prefers MLS data to merely using public records data for two reasons: (1) MLS data has a lot more rich feature data in it than tax records usually do; and (2) MLS sales reporting is faster than public record sales reporting. (And in some states, there is no public record sales reporting.)

It makes immense sense for Fannie to want to use the best data there is about housing market activity to confirm valuations and to plan its business activities. Does it make sense for MLSs to help? I think there are pros and cons, and if an MLS does work with Fannie, I’d suggest modifying Fannie’s contract to protect broker and MLS interests better.

First, the pros. I think a lack of checks and balances on the professionals in real estate transactions is part of the reason we are here. There’s plenty of blame to go around for the housing bust, but it did not help that Fannie and others had no independent way of checking the valuations on which it relied in a fast-moving market. Providing a tool for it to do so going forward might be (1) civic-minded, in that it might increase Fannie’s chance of success and survival without increasing the taxpayer’s bill for on-going bailouts; (2) smart for the brokerage community, in that it should generally result in Fannie giving more credence to properly prepared BPOs and appraisals; and (3) good for the MLSs, who may be able to call on Fannie for assistance in return down the road. In theory, I think Fannie’s strongest argument is that anything MLS can do to help liquidity return to the real estate market is good for MLS’s broker participants.

On the other hand, MLSs providing data to Fannie have to consider some potential downsides:

1. As a broker, would you want Fannie to tell you it disagrees with your BPO based on its calculations on data from your MLS?

2. How do we know whether Fannie will use the data in ways that actually deliver positive results to the market?

3. Do you trust Fannie Mae to use data only in the ways permitted?

4. Are there any potential unintended consequences here?

It seems to me that reasonable MLSs could decide either way.

But if an MLS does sign with Fannie Mae, I’d suggest revisions to a number of the provisions in Fannie’s proposed contract:

1. Limiting the scope of the license.

2. Stating use limitations more explicitly.

3. Cleaning up a couple problems in the “confidentiality” provisions.

4. Having it be terminable at will (with maybe a 60-day out).

5. Kicking out the clause where MLS indemnifies Fannie (as MLSs don’t create their own data, they really are not in a good position to warrant it against claims of infringement).

6. Changing the limitations on liability (which are mutual, but in the context of this type of transaction, they favor Fannie).

In fairness, I think Mr. Bryar said that Fannie would consider modifications to its agreement or using MLS’s standard license agreement, if it has one.

One other note: NAR policy says that your MLS cannot transmit your listings to anyone for a non-core use without listing broker permission. I wonder whether NAR would consider this a core use of MLS data. If not, the MLS probably has to give brokers notice that it’s sending their listings to Fannie Mae and give them the opportunity to opt out of that transmission. If many brokers were to opt out, it would affect Fannie Mae’s ability to rely on statistical algorithms run against the data it does get.

If your MLS is interested in discussing the matter, you can reach Mr. Bryar at marcel_bryar@fanniemae.com.

What do you think? Should MLSs provide data to Fannie Mae? Why or why not?

-Brian

But as large brokerages like Prudential, Coldwell Banker, Century 21, ERA and others sign on to feed to Zillow, Trulia and the other major players in online real estate search, smaller boutiques and individual agents are already ahead of the game and have syndicated their listings to all these sites using vehicles like Postlets, vFlyer (which just got upgraded), etc. So, as the playing field is “virtually” being leveled in regards to online exposure, agents and brokers must respond in offering an “added value” by beefing up their online media strategies and begin paying for featured ads to stay that one step above their competition.

It feels like only yesterday when the only outlet you could use in your online arsenal was a showcase listing or featured home on Realtor.com, then came their banner ads and eventually the web 2.0 players who broke the mold and answered to consumer’s demands of offering more valuable information on command are getting into the ring and offering up their own version of featured ads. Case in point, both Trulia.com and Zillow have recently launched similar featured ad placement programs as additional channels for agents to promote their listings. Zillow’s Showcase Ads are a great tool to use in the promotion of your listings while also incorporating your own personal branding — especially when according to the company, “Listed homes on Zillow get 240 times more page views than non-listed homes.”

As the market continues to dwindle, so will the number of real estate practitioners. This will not make waging the war against your competition any easier because what was once out of reach is becoming easily accessible to any broker or agent that’s got enough savvy to find it. Remaining innovative and not getting left behind are pivotal to an agent’s continued success. By consistently utilizing these new tools, you will ultimately continue to differentiate yourself from the rest of the herd.

As briefly mentioned in my previous post, Postlets, vFlyer, and ListHub are some sites that will syndicate your listings to a plethora of the more popular real estate listing websites.  If you have a Point2Agent site and add your listings, Point2 syndicates the listings just like the others.  (Note: Point2 sites are great for their price… FREE!  Although you can upgrade for some other great features.  Check out a test/training site I made in less than 30 minutes)

Syndication is important for a few different reasons.  The first being that it saves you time for the reasons mentioned above.  Enter your listing in one spot, and the rest is done for you.  I want to point something out to those that are with a Realogy brand company (Century 21, Coldwell Banker, ERA, Better Homes & Gardens and Sotheby’s) though.  This is done for you via the feed from corporate.  Syndication sites are below the corporate sites in the heirarchy set forth by third party real estate sites, so if the same property is featured on a syndication feed and a corporate feed, the corporate feed will win.  From what I understand, third party sites ranking of claiming listings work like this:

Agents Direct Claim > Brokers Direct Claim/Feed > Corporate Feed > Syndication sites

If you aren’t from a Realogy brand company and you’re unaware of your company sending feeds to the third party sites, Jump ahead of the others in your company and area by using the syndication sites.  If you’re a broker/owner, make your company stand out by creating an XML feed that the third party sites can access.

Other good reasons to syndicate listings are your listings are put in front of prospective buyers!  Screw the newspaper, you’re trying to get the listing sold.  There’s some stat out there where a lot of people use the Internet to search for their new home.  And it’s easy!  Very little technical skill needed.

Another way to advertise your listings: Blog about them.  Don’t just give property specs though, they can pull that from another site.  Write about the community and why someone would want to live there.

Okay, I hope you are ready to jump up and down that you’ve been waiting for me to shut up and let you go post your listings.  I’m done.

Now go to Postlets, vFlyer, Listhub… (all do the same, just personal preference on which one you choose).

Among the first to display listings online

Already in 1996 it was possible to search for houses on sale using Internet through the Bovision service. (The service was a spin-off from Capitex a provider of CRM tools for residential brokers. In 2006 the Finish media company Alma Media acquired Bovision.)

The Associations of Realtors make their move

In 1998, two years after Bovision’s entry, the two Swedish associations of Realtors decided to create their own listing service, named Hemnet. This was done in co-operation with the two largest brokerage firms in Sweden and two large newspapers. Within a year Hemnet was larger then Bovison. Today Hemnet is used by ‘almost’ all the 2 000 brokerage firms in Sweden and has the most traffic (by far).

The next generation

For a number of years little happened in the market of listings. Then in late 2007 a new player entered the market — Booli. It was founded by Daniel Kaplan, a successfully serial entrepreneur who believes the user experience of searching for new homes could be done better.

In contradiction to Hemnet and Bovision which the brokers feed with information; Booli is a search engine crawling ‘all’ the Swedish brokerage firms sites for listings.

It’s to no surprise that this approach has caused some upset feelings in the brokerage market (especially from the owners of Hemnet).

However, there are brokers who are delighted to see developments in the area. Some even go public like the CEO of Bjurfors, one of the larger brokering firms. In this press release, he compares Booli with US services like Zillow, Trulia and UK based Rightmove.

In spring 2008 another service also saw the light, Bospindeln. Not as advanced as others but very fast and also includes homes for sale by owners.

The most recent to enter the Swedish market is Properazzi, the international search engine. However, they are just in the start up face and does not include a greater number of listings.

Example of listings

Here are a few examples on how an actual listings care displayed on the Swedish market. A house, an apartment, another apartment (which also displays the most current bid).

Conclusion

After an promising start with online listings in Sweden in the mid 90′s the development was slow for a number of years. But during the last 9 months more has happened on the market then ever before.

The new services have great functionality and some also great coverage, but it is a long road to take on Hemnet. However, just the presence could make it better for the consumers since the competition will put pressure on Hemnet to improve their offerings.

But there is more for agents/brokers to be concerned with, to ensure their listings get “face-time” on many online real estate classifieds.

Time to get Geeky…

So where is online search heading and how can you remain competitive?

The growing frontier is definetely keyword search. It’s here and it’s growing. In terms of Computer Science, it’s a realm called “Natural Language”. We see it today with companies like Vast, Roost, Oodle and other online classifieds, where keywords are an intricate part to the online, consumer search experience…where the importance of keyword search for RE professionals is now extremely important.

Given the example of Roost to the right, we see opportunities for consumers to refine search results on key words like “Hardwood Floors”…rich keywords and phrases. I remember Joel of FOREM once mentioned folks from Boston searching for “Wicked” features, like a “Wicked Kitchen” per se.

Why Care?

One Word…Syndication. For me, Point2 is most robust in syndication partners (see graph of Point2 Syndication Partners). From the Graph, you’ll note syndication to Vast and Oodle from Point2. If Point2 syndicates to Vast…your listings are now at Overstock.com as noted by Inman. Given Point2 syndicates to Oodle.com…your listings are now at Walmart.com per Joel Burslem at FOREM..

Heck, Point2 could extend their graph to be

• Point2 –> Vast –> Overstock
• Point2 –> Oodle –> Walmart

What You Need to Do
Be top heavy in your “outdoor” and “indoor” descriptions of a property, more so than below:

Warning. What is a checkbox for “hardwood floors” on your base technology for listings, also available for consumers to check when searching…may not be a checkbox for consumers searching on syndication partners, whose search is different and constantly evolving. “Hardwood Floors”, “Oversized Cabinets”, etc…all needs to be in the description (you may even feel like your duplicating the information because it was a “checkbox” when you added the listing…so be it).

Go top heavy in keywords and phrases in your descriptions…leave nothing to the imagination, get it in there, double it up, be long-winded, be extremely verbose.

What Online Classifieds May Be Doing With Your Listings

I brushed off a graph from my master’s thesis in Mgmt Information Systems, to give insight on how online classifieds who are implementing natural language search…how they may be parsing, chopping up and indexing your listing’s interior and exterior descriptions.

It’s a process called “Noun Phrasing”…extracting the meaty and important phrases from sentences. Given listings, it may be “Remodeled Kitchen”, “Large Lot”, “Game Room”, etc that online classifieds may be extracting and indexing for natural language search.

Bottomline…
Takeaway. Because of syndication and different searching methods available on consumer sites, your descriptions must more keyword-rich than ever before.

As an agent I would not care if my listing was found by a consumer browsing Overstock.com while perusing new digital cameras. Overstock is not the #1 destination for real estate consumers….However…

If my listing was syndicated to a not-so widely visited site…but my listing was on the first page of search results by a consumer looking for “jacuzzi tub”, “oversized lot”, “mountain view”, “remodeled kitchen”, “shed”, “Phoenix, AZ”…..I’d take the lead and run w/ it.