I finally made my flight reservation for Inman. I decided to go mostly to meet up with some important people and hopefully meet in person some others I’ve gotten to know on-line. RE Bar Camp and Bloggers Connect should be good for the meet ups, but I suspect the after-parties will be better. If you’re going to Inman and want to get together, let me know.
Our MLS software currently processes hundreds of thousands of searches every day to send out updates regarding new and changed listings for agents to consumers. This is an obviously valuable service from the agent and a core tool of the MLS system. However, we know a large number of these e-mail updates go unopened and are just hanging around consuming resources and sending out unwanted mail (i.e., spam). To address this, we’ve been thinking about the best way to purge the “dead wood” and so I thought I’d bounce some ideas around here and see what you all think is best.
1. Simple Expiration — One approach is to simply set an expiration date on every prospecting event and require the agent to renew the event at expiration. The advantage of this approach is that it’s clear and provides a regular reminder to the agents to review their prospects. The downside is that the agents may not want to conduct such a regular review and will see it as an unwanted hassle.
2. No Activity Expiration — We could expire an event if the links being sent haven’t been accessed by the recipient in a certain number of days (e.g., 30-60).
3. Combination — Another approach would be to combine the two and require an annual review/renewal of all links (whether accessed or not) and a shorter-term renewal (30-60 days) if the link hasn’t been accessed.
Vote for your choice below.
A related question is how much advance notice of the expiration should be given to the agent? A week? Two weeks? More? Any other considerations I’ve missed?
The FBS Blog is back with comments. Thanks to Brandon for helping me get it figured out! If you desperately wanted to comment one of my riveting posts from the past few weeks, please go back and visit them:
No Time to Shower and Internet Leads for Real Estate
Roost: Peeling Back the Onion, A Marketing Platform for Brokers
Leads from Listings and Weeping for Buy-Side Brokers (or not)
You know you’re busy when you don’t have time to shower in the morning. That’s how it’s been for me lately, which explains why I haven’t been blogging. Anyway, I have been keeping up a bit with my reading and this post from Greg Sterling caught my attention with some interesting data from Yahoo! Real Estate and so I quote it here in full along with Mr. Sterling’s conclusion:
* Consumers spent an average of 12 hours online researching agents and 75% selected an agent within one week of starting their search
* Home buyers and sellers consider approximately two agents before making a final decision
* 74% of people who accessed an agent Web site got there with the help of a search engine
* 45% of respondents used the Internet to learn about agents they didn’t know existed
* 41% discovered special deals and promotions offered from an agent through the InternetThese data offer more confirmation of the Internet’s influence on consumer decision making. There’s no comparison with word of mouth, which probably accounts for the highest percentage of leads to realtors.
I upgraded WordPress last week and have had all sorts of fun ever since. New posts are automatically being flagged as not allowing comments, when the settings most definitely are set to allow them. Bugs. Also, I published the last post too early, just because I wasn’t yet used to the new interface. Anyway, my apologies to those who may want to comment. Hopefully I’ll find time to figure it out soon. In the meantime, if you’re desperate to comment, the posts earlier than the last two still allow comments.
The ground between portals and IDX is being defined in large part by Alex Chang from Roost. As a result, I was psyched Alex agreed to be a part of our panel on MLS portals. I had several take aways from Alex’s talk:
After the panel, I had many participants say how much they enjoyed Alex’s perspective, which was just enough outside the MLS perspective to be fresh and invigorating.
In my last post on the public MLS site panel discussion, the panelists seemed to agree that IDX programs don’t conflict with a public MLS site. The more I think about this issue, though, the more I think they do conflict or involve a “fork in the road” that needs to be illuminated before choosing one or other or to build a new road that combines the two. Put simply:
As Brian Larson says during the video, there is a fork in the road here. Perhaps new roads will be built that create the best of both worlds, but, today, the difference between IDX and public facing sites remains distinct and choosing both creates the potential for conflicting policies. I think the difference between these policies is highlighted well by Duane Sauke’s refusal to weep for buy-side brokers who get to use his listings on IDX sites.
Some time ago, I wrote this in a post called Listings, Leads and Losers, Oh My!:
IDX was a great idea. Larry Cragun and Kris Berg have it right, the agents should be delivering the listing information to the consumer. Importantly, this argument should not be confused with those who think agents make a living simply by hording the listing information. I seriously doubt that ever worked as a long term business model, but, if it did, there is no question that such a model won’t survive today. No, what I’m suggesting (and what I think Larry and Kris are suggesting) is that the agent is on the front lines and there should be as little friction as possible between them and their potential clients. Isn’t that what the web revolution is all about, efficiency, knowledge, and power to individuals? That was the promise of IDX and I think it can still be brought to fruition.
Here’s how we can revive IDX. Brokers and agents should be allowed to put all the listing information on their web sites. The IDX data set should be complete (which should get the DOJ off the NAR’s back) and brokers should be assured that someone else isn’t going to sell leads from their data (this is called compromise). Once data standards are established, promising a strong and comprehensive data product from brokers and agents to consumers, NAR should create and heavily promote a branding and logo program for legitimate IDX sites so consumers can have confidence they are seeing everything. (No, I’m not crazy, this is a really good idea, if you pause to think about it. See, the NYSE and NASDAQ for examples.) Consumers should be able to shop till they drop, without being bothered, until they’re ready to engage. But, when they are ready to engage, they should be one click away from the agent who is going to serve them. Getting funneled through lead site after lead site before getting to the agent is not efficient and is not consumer-friendly.
This post was the genesis for my question of whether a public facing MLS site conflicts with IDX programs. Put another way, is branding IDX a better investment for members in an MLS than branding a public facing MLS site? Is there enough budget to do both well? What is the market impact of one versus the other? Which would members prefer? I didn’t put all of these questions to the panel, but I think the responses are valuable on the main point.
The first question I posed during our panel discussion on public facing MLS sites is a variant on the classic “level the playing field” issue and whether public facing MLS sites benefit big brokers, small brokers, both or neither. Victor Lund starts off the discussion suggesting that public facing MLS sites would benefit big brokers more, because, having more of the listings, they would get more of the leads or traffic. Duane Sauke, the broker on the panel, said that, if it is true that big brokers would benefit more, then they’ll still not want an MLS web site because they’ll want to own the space entirely.
Brian Larson then follows that up with his mantra throughout the panel discussion, which can be paraphrased as “show me the data.” Lastly, Brian suggests that MLS web sites have the possibility of dampening competition by “treating everyone equal” and puts forward Zip Realty as a new web competitor that has succeeded but may not have if it was competing against a public facing MLS site. Combining Brian’s observations, I wonder what the data shows about Zip Realty in Houston?
What do you think? Do public facing MLS sites benefit big or small brokers more? Or neither? Or both proportionally? Following Alex Chang’s suggestion that the answer depends on how the site is constructed, how does IDX fall into the mix?
P.S. Isn’t the ablity to deep link into a Viddler video awesome?
A week or so ago, we held our annual FBS Summit and hosted a panel of speakers on the pros and cons of MLSs creating and promoting consumer facing listing sites. We recorded the sessions and now have the videos uploaded for public viewing. We had to break the nearly two hours of video into many small parts and the easiest way to show them all is with the links below. Over the next week or two, I’ll be writing some posts with additional commentary on some of the videos and embedding them at that time but if you want the full experience just click through the following links.
Question 1 - Do MLS sites favor big brokers, small brokers, both or neither?
Question 2 - Is an MLS site in conflict with IDX?
Question 3 - If an MLS has a public facing site, what are the best ways to drive traffic to brokers? (Pass through versus destination.)
Question 4 - Are leads from a listing search good leads given dual agency? How do consumers choose an agent?
Question 5 - Is promoting an MLS brand in conflict with the brokers’ efforts to promote their own brands? Is advertising by the MLS in conflict with the advertising of the brokers?
Question 6 - Should an MLS spend member dollars on advertising a portal?
Question 7 - How would the branding efforts of a site like Roost compare to what an MLS could or should do?
Question 8 - Can an MLS promote the REALTOR brand and the MLS web site at the same time?
Question 9 How can MLSs help train agents to respond better to consumers? Is that the role of the MLS?
