In the spirit of taking action to reverse the negative stigma around the industry, there has been a spike in conversation recently around the cause of ‘Raising The Bar’ (#RTB) by real estate professionals, including an REBarcamp session before Inman Connect NYC, Twitter-speak, blog posts, podcasts and blog talk radio shows.

With lots of conversation comes lots of ideas, including:

• Raise the barrier to entry (Keep out the stupid, poor agents)
• Kill the barrier to entry (Increase competition)
• Increase continuing education requirements and ethics standards (Create smarter, more ethical agents)
• Only hire honest, empathetic, generally good people who have a strong work ethic (Make the consumer LIKE me into doing business)
• Acquire pretty technologies and engage in Social Media best practices (Apply the Laws of Attraction)

All of these ideas focus on the top of the industry funnel – marketing, messaging, advertising, massaging, allure, the ‘easy to manipulate’ aspect of reputation management…they are too far removed from solving the real issues at hand.

The common thread I’ve heard is that the industry must increase its ‘Professionalism.”

My Notorious partner posed ‘The Single Question to Rule Them All‘, all Lord of The Rings style:

“Is professionalism a competitive advantage in real estate or not?”

In short, Rob says if this is the case, the riff-raff will eventually be driven out.  If it isn’t the whole RTB exercise is anti-competitive in nature and generally deceptive.

Robs logic is sound, but there is very little context to the question, so it’s just that…logically correct with alot of ambiguous conjecture and talking heads spewing esoteric, self-serving opinion around the definition of professionalism and how to raise That.

Rewind— REBarCamp San Francisco 2009.  Sitting in a group of well respected real estate ‘thinkers’, Rob Hahn asks:  ’What is the next big thing in real estate?’  With my head focused on the cornucopia of tech related products and services, I didn’t have an answer and admitted to such.

Today–- My answer is pulling the veil back around performance related metrics relative to market baselines for practicing real estate agents.  Establish a Bar, establish accountability, demand greater transparency and Raise The Bar along the way.

So, I propose ‘The Single Question To Rule Them All’ then becomes:

‘Is Performance a competitive advantage in real estate or not?’

Rob’s logic applies to this question and fits like a rubber glove.

If Performance is a competitive advantage, the riff-raff will eventually be driven out.  If its not, then the whole RTB exercise is anti-competitive in nature and generally deceptive.

Performance is a competitive advantage.  I trust I don’t have to write 400 words to explain why.

I’m not sure that the greater industry is ready to RTB…it can be done in pretty straight forward fashion but there are substantial ramifications.

Lets begin…

Social Media Can Help Raise The Bar.

Generally speaking, Social Media provides a two-way conversation medium that ideally compels some level of engagement between two parties.  There is an emotional connection that Social Media taps into for people and it works (very well) when implemented thoughtfully and engaged consistently…a good strategy here will drive potential clients.

Social Media should not be postured as a chronic popularity contest where thou with the most ‘friends’ wins.  The term friend has a diminished meaning in the world of  5000 Twitter and FaceBook ‘followers’. Being named to ‘influential’ lists and the such amounts to little more than superficial ‘pat on the back’ contests amongst inter-industry professionals and is of little value to a consumer…I digress.

Where Social Media really stands to help RTB is rooted in the caveat of the medium:   If you don’t follow up your dynamic online persona with performance driven results, consumers are likely to wield Social Media against you…As stated, its a two way street and bad news travels fast.

Set The Bar With Transparent Access to Relative Performance Metrics.

Open the MLS data vaults to establish a baseline (or bar) around local market performance metrics such as:

• What is the average Days on Market for a $Xk to $Xk house in my market?
• What is the average List to Sales Price difference for similar homes in my market?
• How many sides did an average agent close in the last 6 mos, 12 mos, 24 mos?
• What is the average # times a listing re-priced or re-listed in a given market?
• What is the average final Sales to List price ratio?
• What is the average commission charged on a property within my search criteria?
• How do REO’s and Foreclosures affect a property in a given area?

Once I have a flavor for how my market is performing on average and a Bar has been set, the second and more important question is:

Which Agents/Offices/Brokerages/Franchises Outperform These Averages and by How Much?

You can’t argue with real, empirical data.  You can’t fake the grades on your bell curved report card.

Allowing consumers to evaluate which real estate professionals outperform local averages (Baselines or Bars) that are important to the specific consumer would go a long way toward increasing the likelihood of a positive experience, as well as aid in improving consumer perceptions and expectations.

In addition, consumer access to performance based information (currently locked under MLS data use Rules and Regulations) would:

• Drive out the under-performers or force them to do what it takes to raise themselves above the Bar
• Spur innovation in the sector of commission reform <–A big deal to consumers
• Increase good competition

I can hear the arguments:

‘Just because Sally transacted more sides, doesn’t mean she’s a better agent.’    Very true.  Johnny could have sold 4 properties to Sally’s 20 over the past 12 months, but Johnny sold each one in far less time than the market average.

‘Billy took, on average, 30 more days to sell a property.’  Yes, but he did so at a List to Sales price that was well above market averages.

‘My consumer wouldn’t listen to me and insisted I list the price way above market value, thats why I had to reduce the price 3x and it sat on the market for 462 days.’   Well, you should have passed on taking that consumer as a client.

There are many such what if scenarios.  Performance based data isn’t of much value when analyzed in a vacuum.  It becomes very valuable when compared and contrasted against market averages and considered in conjunction with a unique consumers wants and needs.  Throw in consumer ratings, other forms of feedback on some level and now you’re serving steak instead of sizzle.

Evolve The Traditional Real Estate Commission Model

I know, its not supposed to exist, ‘there is no set commission model’- humor me.

The fundamental issue in the ongoing consumer vs. real estate professional beef is the gross misalignment of performance for consideration.  Consumers generally have a negative opinion of real estate professionals because they believe they overpaid for services compared to the value received.  This is likely because the agent they ended up retaining had poor performance metrics or their positive metrics didn’t align with the consumers wants/needs.

Access to such transparent performance metrics relative to a baseline would blow a hole in the bow of the traditional real estate commission model. Underperforming, inexperienced agents could no longer ride the coat tails of top performing seasoned agents.  Top performing agents could set new pricing models, justify a retainer for services, charge for services using a ‘cost plus’ model…they could make MORE money instead of subsidizing Ron the part time Realtor who botched his last three listings, yet scored a listing that would have otherwise been yours because his college friend Bill said something about needing a real estate professional on FaceBook.

I can’t think of another industry that pays entry level employees on the same scale as long standing executives.  Consumer confidence and perception could rise substantially if they knew who they were paying for up front rather than after the transaction closed, didn’t or worse.

If you’ve followed along to this point I’m sure many are screaming that something like this will never happen, because…:

MLS’s are funded by and thus beholden to the agents they serve.

If an MLS decided to adopt some crazy cavalier attitude and turn this performance based data consumer facing, many agents would likely get upset…read: violent rebellion amongst natives, loss of revenue, mass firings at Cowboy MLS.

Since MLS’s are generally for profit enterprises and the people that run them probably like the fact they have a job, this type of a mass public outing is a non-starter.

So, what about a version that displays all the pertinent individual performance metrics and how they rank against the given baseline/bar, but leaves the agents personal information anonymous?  The only time an agents personal information becomes available is when a consumer pays for the privilege.  Unlimited access to all agent profiles wouldn’t be prudent for obvious reasons…rather a set amount, say 5 profiles per subscription. Those below The Bar remain anonymous and left to think about how to raise their Bar.

In the alternative, Stan finds a real estate professional on Facebook, Blogsite, Zilow, Trulia, IDX, ActiveRain…pick your Social Media outlet.  They like the personality and now want to check how deep the beauty runs.  Dial up the agents performance related data and get a holistic view of who you might retain to handle the largest transaction of your life.  Think Carfax for real estate professionals.

Shame on the agent or broker that would threaten to pull out of an MLS for offering this anonymous data for public consumption, that would be like saying you want the industry to remain in the gallows of consumer perception, deceptive beasts of no prestige.  And if shame isn’t enough, I’m sure there are other incentives to keep everyone submitting their data…

In the ugly and very likely circumstance that agents and/or brokers still balk at the idea, make it opt-in only.  No personal information available unless you as an agent give the MLS the express right to do so.  Pay agents to opt-in, every time their personal profile is requested.  Share the wealth a little.

The big question is always:  Where is the money?  I’d be willing to bet that (ALOT of) consumers would pay for access to such information presented in an intuitive UI-sortable and searchable by what metrics are important to their situation (much like Diverse Solutions did).

This isn’t some pipe dream that would take millions of dollars in development or years to implement.  It could be done quickly and at relatively little expense.  In fact, the primary reason this data isn’t already available is due to simple economics and complex politics…there is alot of money in keeping the data under lock and key…economics rules politics, so where there’s a bigger dollar there is a way.

There are Agent ranking systems out there.  Most allow the agent control over what information is displayed and/or claimed…rendering the system and information skewed at best.  This type of agent rating system must have a very complete set of market data and be maintained by 3rd party providers that simply maintain its purity and integrity.

Diverse Solutions has created the closest product I’ve seen to a tangible, working model using MLS direct data.  Agent Scouting Report was the result of a 48-hour developer competition at the Inman Connect conference in San Francisco last summer.  In its current edition Agent Scouting Report doesn’t work because it shows every agents stats…effectively ostracizing those that happen to fall below the Bar.  I don’t think they’re far off, their product was well thought out given the limited time they had to develop it..a few turns of the dial and some thoughtful considerations in how the data is displayed (see above), and..?

As an agent or broker would you be adverse to this?  Why?  :)

The Broker/Franchise Perspective.

I own a brokerage or franchise and want to fill my office with agents who exceed certain performance metrics for certain property types in certain areas of town.  My brokerage is conducive for these types of agents to excel.  As a broker/owner, I would pay to know who these agents are.  This would be an immensely valuable tool in analyzing my own brokerage as well as my competition on key performance indicators.  I could derive all sorts of actionable data to use as a recruitment and retention tool.

So is everyone ready to Raise The Bar?

It depends on if those who talk the talk about Raising The Bar are indeed serious about doing so and walk the talk.  It will take open minded professionals from MLS directors, their boards as well as the brokers and agents they serve.  I’ve laid out some top level ideas on how economics could cut through the politics, there are more.

The upside for the industry is huge from customer service, commission model and perception standpoints.  It risks shaking the long standing economic model right down to its core, which is a good thing.  In the right hands this very well could and should be the next big thing in real estate.

Comments, opinions, thoughts, flames?

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Is The Real Estate Industry Really Ready To Raise The Bar?

First things first…Why is this a big deal to begin with?  IDX solutions are typically framed in to web/blogsites and offer little to no SEO value.  An indexable IDX effectively creates separate posts for every listing, thus creating GOBS of real estate and general property related content that the Search Engines can’t help but crawl all over and index.

In theory, indexable IDX’s should subsequently send copious relevant organic traffic to a site that has implemented such a plug-in.

As far as I can tell Jason Benesch from The Real Estate Tomato pioneered an open source WordPress plug-in (ListingPress) that spurred further development by a handful of other tech vendors that I also highly respect, like Diverse Solutions dsIDXpress (Press Release).

The idea seems great in theory…as said, plug it in and instantly create a ton of crawlable property data for your real estate web/blogsite.  If you are first in your market with one of these churning inside your site, there would appear to be a distinct SEM advantage.

So, I was having a conversation with some Housechick and this subject of Indexable IDX’s came up.  Being she knows a thing or three about IDX’s and SEM, the obvious question was thrown out:

‘What happens when multiple people/sites in the same market implement such a tool?’

• Does the SEO value evaporate, since everyone will effectively have the same content?
• Do the mysterious Duplicate Content theories come into play, and as a result does Google and the other Search portals penalize sites for such?
• Which site running the same Indexable IDX ranks better? Is this where a higher PageRank becomes more than a bragging right and effectuates results for higher ranking on SERP’s?
• Is there a way to differentiate the content via novel implementation methods, result formats, or other such tweakery?
• Is one Indexable IDX different from another (not from a functionality standpoint, rather strictly from an SEO perspective)?

Kelley and I speculated for a bit with no real conclusions, just educated guesses…so I called Google and am still on hold.

While I’m waiting, I ask the rest of the community: As adoption of indexable IDX’s reaches a certain saturation point by market, does the current innate SEO value diminish, evaporate, or worse?  Thoughts?

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Indexable IDX Questions

Very few will argue that we are in the midst of an historical era of change, largely leaving the Industrial Age heading steadfast and firmly into The Age of Information.

Transitions between era’s have traditionally taken anywhere from 100,000,000,000 to 100 years, with each succeeding ‘period’, ‘time, or ‘age’ shrinking rapidly compared to the prior by a factor of ~10.

If the above is true then it’s not contrived to think that we may be passing through multiple periods of relative historical significance during our own life, whereas prior such ‘times’ have lasted for >10 generations.   This is a remarkable reflection if you really consider it. Change is happening at a far faster pace than any of us are used to because it can.

‘The Times’ change so fast they now call it Real Time (as in the time before real time was fake time, or something like that).

Change is also something that does not feel natural thus most don’t adapt to it well, especially over very short periods of time.  Over 10,000 years?  Sure.  Over 5 years?  Maybe.  6 Months?  What just happened..?

People within a society affected by change can be generally classified as:

•    Innovators
•    Adapters
•    Adopters
•    Laggards
•    Haters

The Moral:  Business is moving, evolving, changing faster than ever.  Real estate and mortgage used to resist such rapid change, today embracement is necessary for survival.

It’s pretty well accepted that in the Information Age, withholding information for money has diminishing value.
It took real estate and mortgage (to a greater degree) longer to understand this, which is evidenced by the initial industry aversion to sites like Zillow et al (Innovators).  Many agents understand that wider distribution of their inventory is in fact a good thing (Adapters and Adopters); placing ones product in a place where there are a lot of potential buyers is likely to increases the chances of selling that product.  Other agents are just now realizing and acting on the same (Laggards).

New technologies start big then get smaller and better.
Zillow launched in February of 2006 offering tools and services that draw in consumers and feed participating professionals using intuitive user interfaces (UI’s).  Trulia evokes similar qualities; single site with all the tools (and the list goes on).  To one extent or another Zillow, Trulia et al have exponentially improved the real estate Search experience over the past two years.  They’ve blazed a wonderful path.

They’ve also raised and spent capital that exceeds some Nations GDP to foster a technological paradigm shift towards information transparency coupled with uber-intuitive UI’s with regards to real estate listings, a map and other relevant local data (also called a mash-up).

Today the same tech driven mash-up UI’s that drive gobs of traffic to the Zillows and Trulias of the world are available and affordable to individual real estate professionals (rePros) at pennies on the dollar.

Different Agenda’s
Zillow and Trulia are advertising/media websites.  Their business models depend primarily on traffic so advertising may be sold for a premium and each have numerous vehicles for an agent to spend their money on.

They’re kind enough to offer tools (widgets) that add a coolness factor to an agents individual site and create social conversation forums to leverage participating agents experience/knowledge for the community as a whole.  But make no mistake; they depend on the traffic a rePros personal knowledge and information draws to embolden their respective brands.  Every tool provided is inherently designed to increase their traffic first, yours second.

Other real estate Search sites like Roost will re-skin, redisplay and replace your current ugly IDX then charge you for the privilege of the traffic they direct back to your site. This is certainly a better alternative to what’s been available in the IDX market and more importantly another step towards blending technology seamlessly with an individual rePro’s Brand…yet not quite ‘there’.

In most every case, a top level domain real estate Search portal seeks to profit from advertising and by building their Brand first, yours second.
Roost claims that they ‘Support Your Brand’:

1. Your brand is prominently displayed at the top of the search results
2. You receive a virtual card with your contact information and links to your listings
3. You receive your own URL on Roost

Claim #3, receiving your own URL on Roost, isn’t the highest and best way to support your brand.  This also leads to a similar experience outlined above where a consumer is bedazzled with one slick UI, only to eventually fall into a foreign place called your website.

Roosts business model message:

• Performance-based and transparent
• Pay only for the clicks you receive to your own site
• Target people in specific geography (town, zip code, etc)
• Buy only as much traffic as you want in any given month.
• Your Roost dashboard will make it easy to manage your spend and track performance.

Very Googleicious…carefull, if you don’t keep the traffic tank monetized, it’s possible to be the Star one minute and invisible the next.

Where is there?
When consumers begin their quest for a home, they’re after one thing: listings—all of them.  Trulia, Zillow, Roost et al face a perpetual problem with the ‘available to in-house listings ratio’.  Big players in this space like Realogy and Prudential are picking sides, contributing listings to one site or another.   Some agents choose to contribute their listings while the vast majority do not.  This leaves consumers with a choice between bad and worse: Try and search all the listings with inferior tools, or perform cutting-edge searches on ~20-30% of the listings available in a given area.  Thats not an acceptable ratio in my book.  Pretty soon we’ll have an aggregator of the aggregators, and so on.

From Joel at FoREM:

It seems ironic though, with all these brokers now lining up in different camps to feed their listings to the big consumer search destinations on the Internet, that it’s ultimately the consumer that suffers from these alliances being formed.

If I’m trying to search for a house in Portland, I still have to have to go to multiple destinations (Frontdoor has X, Zillow has Y, Trulia has X & Y but no Z) just to get an accurate picture of the complete inventory available on the market.

and Dustin:

Either way and any way, this would be another big win for Trulia, but as Joel notes, Michael agrees, (and I’ve said before), it is note self-evident that at the end of the day, the consumer wins with broker-fed listing sites.

While penning and researching this post, I came across the above snippets and couldn’t agree more:  A viable solution could be a website that hosts robust Search UI’s and engages social networking as well as SEO strategies under a rePros personally owned and controlled domain.

BlueRoof360.com is about as close to ‘there’ as I’ve seen.  The only aspect that I question (and this is being very nit-picky) is the platform that they are using…is it proprietary or open source?  In other words, can I snap pieces in and out?  If I don’t like the property search UI, can I swap it out with a better one?  Can I add plug-ins and other features vis-à-vis Wordpress?  Realivent and Incredible Agent deserve mentions here as well.  

As a rePro on the Listing side of the relationship, if you are going to ‘give’ your listings to the Zillows of the world, your personal website had better be on par with the site that the link came from, otherwise that ‘link’ will likely leave your site and go back to more beautiful and userfriendly pastures.

As a rePro on the Buyers side of a potential relationship, a website with real time information and a solid property Search UI is mandatory for future survival.

RePro’s can offer consumers via their personal websites a vital claim that the big players will always chase:  100% of the information located within a local MLS’ database.  Days on market, sold data, and a glut of other valuable information to consumers that currently is not available on the big players sites can be displayed on a licensed pro’s site.  Regardless if one person (consumer or professional) thinks that such info is important or not is irrelevant.  Someone does, it’s the long tail consumerism that dominates the current and future markets terrain.  In any case, the more information you make accessible the larger your potential audience.  Redfin gets this, they offer their agents and consumers best of breed technology and information.

In case it’s not evident i’ll point out that consumers are getting smarter about how the real estate industry internally works due to this new real time access to information phenomenon thingy.  Better to be deemed transparent and open rather than a shifty salesperson.

To keep in line with change in real time, the best strategy is a likely mash-up of all of the above, sprinkled with a little bit of this and that.

1. License great looking, highly functional, scalable technology to display your products through, and seamlessly build your brand.  Keep in mind that you get what you pay for, don’t go for the cheapest solution by any means.
2. Push and maintain your listings with the big aggregators: Trulia, Zillow, Google Base etc for the exposure.
3. Blog incessantly about topics that are local to your listings.  Need a blog and the proper education to go along with one? Check out The Tomato.
4. Participate in Social Networks, optimize your Social Networking Optimization.  Participate in conversations on ActiveRain, update your professional profile on LinkedIn, create a group on Facebook.
5. Seek to learn: Knowledge speaks, wisdom listens…Attend some of the current seminars like 4RealzED, BHBU, and if you’ve got some extra coin, Inman Connect.  I’ve personally been to three Connects, registered for Dustins preso in Orange County on April 17th, and plan to attend BHBU schedule permitting.
6. Prepare to change, upgrade and sharpen your tools often.  Today’s rage is tomorrow’s fizzle, stay razor while you shine.

Also See:

DarWidgetry…

New Marketing Strategies…

The Effect of Transparency…

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Real Time Paradigm Shifting in The Real Estate and Mortgage Industries

For anyone who finds themselves struggling to generate new content (bloggers block), this is a great way to push through the plateau–taking a comment into a new post.

My comment/question:

Hey Todd…

Question:

Can you explain what Page Rank means in tangible terms? As in, what are the demonstrated differences and/or advantages between a site that is a PR4 and one thats a PR5 (and 6 or 7 for that matter).

In your experience, are proper SEO tactics (whatever they are) and Page Rank closely affiliated?

Then I got to thinking (although I’d still like to hear Todd’s answer)…It doesn’t seem that PR has much to do w/ SEO.

I don’t follow status-quo SEOnomics advice but my site is a PR5, has been for the past few Google PR shuffles. A PR5 supposedly requires some hard core, intense SEO-Fu to achieve…except I don’t practice SEO-Fu. The one time I did, I got the beat down.

Wrote a post titled ‘The Best Mortgage Blog‘ in September 2007. 72 hours later I searched Google and Yahoo! for ‘The Best Mortgage Blog’ and *bang* #1 on page 1 of the organic results on all three SERP’s. This post resided in top position for this term for quite sometime (I stopped looking in December).

Today, if you type in The Best Mortgage Blog on Google, you cannot find the post, even if you extend the Search to ‘The Best Mortgage Blog xbroker’. Can’t find it via their Blog Search page either (the post is still #1 on Yahoo). So it appears The Google hath punished me. How they flesh this out is beyond me.

I don’t know how they do it, but I believe that Google pays very close attention to how you ‘build your blog’. If you try to implement crafty SEO tactics based on what pundits say will increase your PR, you’re more likely to be penalized (or marginalized) than rewarded. I’m not talking about black hat stuff (sure way to get penalized and even banned from the SERP’s), but rather any strategy thats designed to try and manipulate Google’s mysterious omnipotent algorithmic brain.

From Googles site regarding Page Rank:

Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search. Google goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a page and examines dozens of aspects of the page’s content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if it’s a good match for your query.

Google’s complex automated methods make human tampering with our search results extremely difficult.

In other words, don’t even try to figure this out.

My lone SEO practice resides in a plug-in for WordPress: The All-In-One SEO pack, which prods me for keywords, a short description and a title. Thats it. The only time I’m even remotely ‘SEO conscious’ is when choosing a title, trying to pen the verbiage as to how a human may search for the content within a particular post, which may be a back asswards technique for all I know.

Other ‘SEO sins’ committed here, deemed counter intuitive to achieving a higher PR:

• A big blogroll and too many links on my home page (so they claim…)
• I submit some duplicate content to ActiveRain (because I enjoy the feedback from inter-industry professionals) and many Splogs scrape my content, increasing the apparent damaging duplicity.

Just write relevant, compelling articles about real estate and/or mortgage and you won’t have to worry about Page Rank and SEO

So that’s my $.02… improving Page Rank and ‘SEO Strategies’ are often disjointed and other times damaging to one another. But I’m still interested in what anyone else (especially an SEO-Fu artist or Page Rank guru) has to say, cause I’m no expert…

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Just Write Relevant, Compelling Articles About Real Estate and/or Mortgage and You Won’t Have to Worry About Page Rank and SEO

Words of advice: Pay more attention to the Loss side of a P&L and the right side of the balance sheet. Too much attention toward generating more revenue and not enough consideration to stopping the internal bleeding is the core of the overall problem…akin to emptying the water from a boat with a hole in the bottom using a (small) bucket.

This problem’s solution is routed in the fact that most professionals within these communities are not astute at running a business. A testament to this statement lies in that many RE and MoPro’s operate as ’sole proprietors’ (or submit as W-2 employee’s) when they should choose a corporate structure more in tune to maximizing income via benefits afforded other corporate structures. Just because one can sell doesn’t mean one can run a business.

The 6% real estate commission model is a horrid example of sound business practice. Economists routinely wonder aloud how this model has stood the test of time (answer: The omnipotent NAR ether/kool-aid). The commission ’split’ model commonly found in the mortgage broker industry (coupled with serious lack of disclosure issues), is far less discussed in open forums, yet just as fundamentally challenged.

It’s evidently apparent what happens in the down part of what are cyclical marketplaces…a mass exodus from the small business world, and thats not good.

I’d like to explore alternative business models that could work for both real estate and mortgage professionals by laying out some succinct recommendations and strategies for 2008, going forward…

I’ll be recruiting some seasoned experience from the world of business to opine via future posts regarding this topic. One of them is an XBanker

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Lack of ‘Make Sense’ Business Models In Real Estate and Mortgage Still a Cause for Concern

Hooray!  The single largest issue that bogs down better real estate Search is the hieroglyphical nature of the data between repositories (MLS’ primarily).

Many times cooperative yields far better results than competitive…but then the id, ego, and/or super-ego goes and gets in the way of things.  Galen openly loathes MLS data normalization, so this appears to be a good thing.  Looks like these current pillars of real estate Search have put aside their respective psyche’s in attempt to make real estate Search better for everyone.

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Yahoo!, Zillow and Trulia Talk About Merging Ideas to Create a New Data Standards Format

The push toward an advertised to available property listing tipping point continues…It’s a horse race folks.

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Zillow Lands a Big Listing Fish Too

I just don’t see any of them as an answer to the most important question revolving around online property search for every consumer:

Who’s got all of the listings?
I’ve talked with many real estate professionals about ‘working with’ Trulia, Zillow et.al, using their tools, what they like and what they don’t. Opinion varies from ‘just a novelty’ to ‘part of my marketing strategy’ to ‘F-em’ . The most compelling and consistent comment I get is that none of these sites contain anywhere near 100% listing penetration for a given MLS’ designated area of coverage.

During Inman NYC 2008 Teresa Boardman and I were chatting about various topics within the re.net world, one being Trulia’s recent releases. Teresa mentioned that after doing some research she found that listing penetration on sites like Trulia et. al. typically maxed out at ~20% of total available inventory.

‘I don’t understand or agree with the need for a national real estate web site at all. Most home buyers just look in one geographic location and do not need to see listings in all states.’

Teresa goes on to state:

‘Last time I checked both Trulia and Zillow had only a small percentage of the homes that are listed in the MLS listed. I guess since there are so many web sites with IDX solutions making all the listings widely available I don’t get the point of these national type sites that just have a few of the listings in a given area. I will go as far as to say that the sites are doing the consumer a disservice.’

So if I’m a consumer and I want to see EVERY PROPERTY thats currently on the market, none of these sites come close to fulfilling my needs, as a matter of fact I’ll probably have to go to all of them and still wonder if I’m missing out on that house. If this is indeed the case, which it is, I’m better off visiting a local rePros IDX fueled site. They may not be quite as sexy, actually downright ugly, but at least I know I can find far more listings than any of the (Third Party Destination Sites) TPD’s out there today. I also don’t want to be pitched from every sidebar and header of every page…the noise is deafening.

If I’m a rePro, I don’t want potential clients leaving my site, period. TPD’s (must) pull consumers back to their site to access a majority of features to quench their advertising based biz model…i.e. they offer some cursory level watered down application thats true purpose is to pull the consumer back the the TPD’s main site, akin to an arsenic laced olive branch offered to the rePro. ‘Here, take this cool little application stick it on your site and we both win!’ Ehhh, wrong. Although the intention may be positive, the result often is not in favor of the rePro.

The problem with the cornucopia of TPD property listing sites ultimately lies in the ways they attempt to achieve true ‘long tail’ property search: Their business model and/or their aggregation method. RePros don’t (won’t) like to give a TPD their lisitngs, only to be charged to feature them (this is the current MLS’ problem)…thus this model should be cast into eternal purgatory, floating rather meaninglessly between failure and marginal profitability, probably hoping they get acquired by MicroHoo...Secondly, rePros don’t like their listings scraped (for obvious reasons)…if a biz model relies on raw scraping, it’ll be scraping up loose change off the street to survive.

So where is the middle ground of killer technology and rePro listing penetration? I think BlueRoof is headed down the right path. Technology (Solvent) + rePro (Solute) = A Solution…one that both consumers and professionals can benefit from.

If like minded rePros (socially) networked together using some of todays (and tomorrows) killer apps, the TPD listing sites (1.0) value propositions could evaporate overnight…The open API that killed the Third Party Destination site…Et tu Brute?
Also See:

FoREM

Transparent Real Estate

St Paul Real Estate

The Real Estate Weenie

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A National MLS Won’t Work, But a Loose Network of Savvy Real Estate Professionals Could

I penned this post on another site back in November, alas I want to continue the thread of this conversation here on The XBroker.  Hopefully the big G doesnt penalize me too bad for duplicate content…

Google, the core driver behind SEO strategies, looks to become the King of Social Networking Optimization (SNO) as well.

“The web is more interesting when you can build apps that easily interact with your friends and colleagues. But with the trend towards more social applications also comes a growing list of site-specific APIs that developers must learn.

OpenSocial provides a common set of APIs for social applications across multiple websites. With standard JavaScript and HTML, developers can create apps that access a social network’s friends and update feeds.”

-Google on OpenSocial

‘Learn Once, Write Everywhere’ is the core message of this ‘new’ architecture proposed and fostered by Google. Using the most general of statements, Googles latest release will have broad reaching effects regarding how the web ‘works’.

According to Google, OpenSocial is a set of three types of API’s that allow programmers to access core functions and information that are common to ’social networks’:

1. Profile Information. Info about you.
2. Friends Information. Info about your friends.
3. Activities. Whats everyone doing, reading, buying, looking at, playing with..?

Although the three API’s above look pretty ‘So What-ish…’, thats really the beauty of it all, they’re blatantly vanilla yet almost infinitely scaleable considering the amount, quality, and how information can be shared. There are little to no restrictions from a programmers standpoint, it’s a wide open and flat playing field to develop under.In the real estate and mortgage verticals, today the question is:

‘Whats the big deal?’ since there are no succinct applications or service providers amongst the initial group of partners that clearly look to benefit ‘Real Estate’ or ‘Mortgage’. I’ll reserve specific examples for the next posting, but I do have some general broad canvas thoughts…

In a past post, I spoke of the evolution of Widgetry (or Gadgetry) or, shareable applications designed to increase the functionality and share-ability of a web-site via SNO. I’ve also touched on the importance of SNO.

Google has kept things ‘Really Simple Stupid’, allowing the collective brain power of programmers with almost any skill level to develop an application or widget using OpenSocials API’s. With just a few tweaks as to how applications/widgets are developed, programmers who choose to integrate OpenSocials API’s won’t need to learn or develop new (mark-up) languages to make their shareable wares work on…pick your web-platform…

As stated above, OpenSocial isn’t ‘just another social network’, it creates a common platform that allows independently produced applications/widgets to work on and connect with multiple platforms.

This should allow for very rapid development cycles as well as much faster adoption rates for popular (and useful) applications. If you’ve used FaceBook you have seen the dynamic of rapid application development in action, which is also why Facebook is the rage in IT (and VC) land. OpenSocial one ups Facebook by not restricting such application development to only their platform. Just think, you could soon be able to throw sheep at your peers outside of FaceBook! (OK, bad joke.)

What becomes possible using OpenSocial relevant to Real Estate service providers? Ponder for a second the richness of information that could be called upon, seamed together, and shared between ‘network hubs’, or like groups of professional peers, running relevant applications (widgets et.al.) using OpenSocial’s framework. Listings, potential consumers, existing clients, vendors, mortgage rates, broad demographic data, hyper-local opinions and information…

Today, real estate agents, mortgage professionals, brokerages et. al. are powerful and robust information network hubs, however, they still remain fractured and relatively disparate from each other….Applications designed to seam these hubs together for the benefit of the professional end-user as well as the ever discerning long tail driven consumer are already in the works, OpenSocial looks to have shortened the learning and adoption curve of such applications substantially.

Also See:

Social Networking Maintenance Made Easier

What Does OpenSocial Mean to Real Estate?

Why Google Turned into a Social Butterfly

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Google, The Core Driver Behind SEO Strategies, Looks to Become the King of Social Networking Optimization (SNO) Too.

ActiveRain secures $2.75M

Sans opinion, I wanted to throw up a quick congratulations to Jon, Matt, et. al. over at ActiveRain, the premiere social network for real estate related professionals.

The life of an entrepreneur is filled with many peaks and valleys, so I’m glad to see their success in a vital area for any propspering business.  They’re great guys and deserve this great news.

ActiveRain has built quite a robust network via hard core boot-strapping.  It’ll be interesting to see what they’re capable of with some cash in their pockets…

Also See:

Inman News

FoREM

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ActiveRain secures $2.75M in Financing From HouseValues