At the Inman Connect conference that just wrapped up, there was a “town hall” on a variety of topics featuring industry thought leaders like Marilyn Wilson of the WAV Group, Mark McLaughlin of Pacific Union, Joseph Rand of BHG Rand Realty, and Katie Maxwell of Intero. One question I asked was about Project Upstream, the recently … Read more
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGbScr_4G0Y Earlier today, Zillow announced it was acquiring dotLoop, the popular real estate transaction management platform company. The terms of the deal were not disclosed. The press release is here: Zillow Group (NASDAQ:Z), which houses a portfolio of the largest and most vibrant real estate and home-related brands on mobile and Web, today announced it has … Read more
I’ve been engaged on a project that is both interesting and important for a large regional MLS the last couple of months. As part of that project, I’ve spoken to dozens of people — brokers, agents, Association leadership, MLS leadership, etc. — about a variety of topics, which has been, to quote Tony the Tiger, … Read more
My friend Eric Stegemann, whom many of you already know as a frikkin’ brilliant dude who runs Tribus, posted something on Facebook today and in our banter, got my thinking going. Here’s his post: [fb_embed_post href=”https://www.facebook.com/ericstegemann/posts/10100343757120490/” width=”550″/] And obviously, you can see my comments too. I thought the similarities between car dealers and how they … Read more
Over on Facebook, Sam Debord (regular readers are familiar with Sam) asked a really, really good question: Sam DeBord Rob, give us your take on AMP benefiting small MLSs. Does better software slow consolidation, or are other issues driving it? AMP, of course, stands for RPR’s Advanced Multi-List Platform, a project with which I’ve been … Read more
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1_9WYllhiQ Without question, the big topics coming out of NAR Midyear Legislative Meetings were about RPR-AMP, Upstream, and the future of the MLS. I’ve already written a few posts about them, and expect to write more in the future. But lost in all of that was a big rebrand and relaunch by Move of Realtor.com. … Read more
In a recent post on Realuoso, my friend Erica Ramus, wrote an Op/Ed on how Project Upstream will change everything: The Project Upstream broker initiative is an attempt to gather real estate data under one umbrella, again trying to wrestle back control of our listings and data. … Hahn’s description of “MLS Mashups” and the … Read more
This is not a post. This is an information dump. A reader sent me the materials that were provided to the Directors at the NAR Midyear Legislative Meetings that just concluded to support the proposal to fund RPR-AMP-Upstream. Thought many of you hadn’t seen these, so I wanted to upload them and make them available. … Read more
I have a feeling we’re going to be talking about a whole variety of things that went down at NAR Legislative Meetings & Trade Expo (aka, “Midyear”) this year for months and years to come. It’s been a great week, but rough on the sleep schedule, so these are not exactly deeply-thought-out opinions here. It’s … Read more