Where Real Estate Gets Its Dirt

Cloud CMA introduces Interactive CMA presentations

Cloud Interactive CMA - More Photos w:handI’m very proud to announce a new enhancement to Cloud CMA, interactive CMAs. Optimized for the iPad Cloud CMA customers now have the ability to “present” their CMA reports on a tablet.

We spent a great deal of time thinking about the best way real estate professionals could use an iPad at a listing presentation. Some apps try to jam as much information on each page, making the information impossible to read or understand. Since we view this as a complement to our existing Cloud CMA reports we were free to focus on design that highlights the key parts of a CMA. Key to this was an easy to read format, that helps the presenter show comps in a fun and entertaining way. Check out this short video we made highlighting some of its features.

Screen Shot 2013-06-05 at 6.42.08 AMThis is a free enhancement to all Cloud CMA customers and is available today. Since it’s web-based agents can also share their presentations by just sending their clients a email with a link.

If you want to learn a bit more about how it works, and see another promo video please visit W&R Studios’ blog Lightning|Twice. My thanks to the entire team at W&R Studios, they really knocked it out of the park.

You can check out the full press release here.

Reesio puts on a show

reesio-logo-5648354179ec9f4cce32c4ea8b1795eaLater this month I will be attending and my company W&R Studios will also be exhibiting Cloud CMA at a conference put on by new real estate software company, Reesio. Reesio is a startup less than a year old. They are in the crowded space of transaction management. They felt a good plan get the word out was to put on a conference. The conference is called RealTech SF 2013. Here’s what Mark Thomas, Co-Founder and CEO of Reesio has to say about the event.

“As part of the journey that we as founders of Reesio have gone through with our company, one thing that we’ve noticed is how difficult it can be for real estate professionals to easily find out about new technologies that exist out there to make their jobs easier. In addition, there’s a tremendous dearth of publicity around real estate technology in general, despite the fact that real estate can be one of the more painful processes of any industry. We have 2 main goals that we’re trying to accomplish by hosting and putting together RealTech SF 2013:

1) To educate and highlight to real estate professionals the latest and greatest technology initiatives currently going on within the space that can help them grow/manage their business and enhance their careers.

2) To bring more awareness about real estate technology as a whole to people outside of the industry, and to show that the products that companies are currently working on are solving truly painful experiences that people are currently having to go through.”

The show is only $25 to attend, so pretty reasonable for an agent. The speakers seem to be a mix of industry vendors and brokers. I like the hustle approach Reesio is putting forward, plus Spring in San Francisco? I’m in!

Top 5 Reasons To Use Cloud CMA – Video

I just finished a new promo video for Cloud CMA. Hope you like!

Katie England Joins W&R Studios

Katie EnglandI’m very excited to announce Katie England has joined W&R Studios. Katie came from well respected property records company, CRS Data, where she was the Customer Experience and Education Specialist. Dan and I are super thrilled to have Katie join our growing team.

Katie will start on January 21st and will be primarily responsible for the east coast and help us grow and expand our Cloud CMA/Nudge product line. We have some exciting things lined up with year and looking forward to her being part of our success. Please join me in congratulating Katie on her new gig.

Goomzee opens the kimono

Mike Sparr, CEO of Goomzee
I’ve been traveling on the east coast and have a lot I want to talk about (including the kick-ass tech fair hosted by MLSLI that I just attended.) But, first I wanted to write a post on the WAV Group post I just read this morning. It cites a press release from Goomzee titled “GOOMZEE GOES PUBLIC; OFFERS TRANSPARENCY IN MLS PRICING”. It lays out it’s site license pricing (oddly I couldn’t find the press release on Goomzee’s site). Here’s a snippet:

“Traditionally, site license pricing has been more of a behind-the-scenes negotiation but Goomzee appears to be breaking out from the norm and is publicizing it’s pricing model, and incentive opportunity. The company is offering MLS clients 25 percent and 50 percent discounts respectively based upon a $10,000 or $25,000 initial deposit prior to the rollout of the product, coining it as it’s “sponsorship plan”.

Also included in the press release is a pricing matrix:

Click to enlarge

Wow. I have to say this is a bold move by Goomzee and something I applaud Mike Sparr, Goomzee’s CEO, for doing. He even cites myself and W&R Studios as an influencer.

“We decided to offer early adopters a financial incentive to chip in now, and save considerable expenses in providing these solutions to their clients,” adds Sparr. “Furthermore, I felt it was important to follow in the footsteps of folks like Greg Robertson of W&R Studios who promotes more transparency in the industry, and what could be more transparent than sharing our pricing model.”

To be clear W&R Studios gives our MLS and broker clients a dashboard where they can see real time sign up and usage stats of Cloud CMA. If they are a revenue share partner, they also see their quarterly rev share pipeline. You can read more about the program in an earlier Vendor Alley post, “Improving Vendor Transparency”

While Goomzee’s move of disclosing its pricing is indeed bold, and I’m sure will have a few of us sharpening our pencils, let’s be honest, we all have a “rate card”. As we all know, prices on that “rate card” immediately go out the door when negotiations begin.

But, the transparency trend is upon us. MLS providers will, and should demand, real time reporting of third party app sign ups and usage. I can see consultants adding “real-time reporting” as a must have feature to their checklists when helping MLS providers choose third party products. Third party vendors should live and die by these numbers. Any third party vendor not providing these types of metrics makes one wonder, what are they hiding?

The return of Sparky

A long time ago I co-founded a software company called IRIS. Our flagship product was an MLS access app called “Lightning“, we later added (after acquiring J.Williams) a CMA app called Lightning CMA Plus.(Pardon me for calling software applications “apps”, that’s what I’ve been calling them for 20 years).

During that time Microsoft introduced what they termed “Office Assistants“. Many of you may remember “Clippy“. These “assistants” could give you a tutorial of your app or appear when you asked for help.

All of us at IRIS thought these little characters were the bees-knees and Windows had a way where you could customize the characters for your own apps. We did this with Lightning but I wasn’t satisfied. I wanted our own character (because that’s how I roll). So I called Microsoft.

Microsoft referred me to David Christianson. An animator who worked on many of the Office Assistant characters. We got to talking and we came of of a little Lightning bolt character. I’m not sure who picked the name, maybe we had a company vote, but we dubbed him “Sparky“. Sparky always held a special place in anyone’s heart who worked at IRIS during that time.

Long story short we sold IRIS, the assets transferred to one company after another. We had a rough year after selling IRIS (that’s another post, but I’ll give you a hint, the year was 1999). Sometimes around the office I would see written on white boards the words “Free Sparky”.

The “Lightning” assets now belong to RED -Real Estate Digital. So I called up John Hensley, now one of the owners of RED, and asked if it would be possible for Dan and I to reacquire the trademark and image and begin using Sparky with our new company. John was very gracious and agreed.

I wanted a new drawing of Sparky made, something to celebrate his return, so I Googled David Christianson (Sparky’s animator), I didn’t find him, but I did get in touch with his daughter, and she put me in touch with him. Turns out David is still animating and agreed to the commission.

Cloud CMA just topped 40,000 active users. I have many people to thank, many of those people read this blog. So let me take this moment to thank all of you who supported Dan and I. And special thank you to Lauren Hansen of IRES who did a site license for Cloud CMA before it was ever released, thanks Lauren! After saying this I can’t think of a better time to bring Sparky back!

So, ladies and gentlemen, I’m happy to announce, Sparky Lives!

Sparky!

¡Viva Cloud CMA!

Super excited to announce that Cloud CMA now allows agents to publish reports in Spanish! It’s a free enhancement to existing Cloud CMA customers. You can find out more here.

We put together this “behind the scenes” video to show how we did it. : )

Full Press Release Below:
____________________________________________________________
Cloud CMA reports now available in Spanish.
New feature in Cloud CMA allows select reports to be generated in Spanish.

HUNTINGTON BEACH, CA – June 4, 2012 – W&R Studios, a web software company, announced today that select Cloud CMA reports are now available in Spanish.
Cloud CMA is an online report generator and offers real estate professionals the ability to create custom comparative market analysis (CMA) reports, buyer tours, property reports and flyers.
“Spanish currently ranks as the second most frequently used language in the United States. According to a recent study put out by NAHREP (National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals), during the third quarter of 2011, Hispanic homeownership rose to a rate of 47.6 percent, growing by 288,000 units, accounting for more than half of the total growth in homeownership (53 percent) in the nation,” stated Greg Robertson, co-founder of W&R Studios.
This new feature is a free enhancement for existing Cloud CMA subscribers. A drop down menu appears during the customize step of CMA and Buyer Tour reports. Language selection defaults to English.
“Being able to create a CMA in Spanish is just one example of how we keep Cloud CMA customers ahead of the pack, more innovations are on the way,” concluded Mr. Robertson.
For more information about Cloud CMA please visit http://CloudCMA.com

About W&R Studios
Founded in 2008, W&R Studios (http://wrstudios.com) is a privately held web software company co-founded by Dan Woolley and Greg Robertson. W&R Studios focuses on creating simple yet focused web application for the real estate industry. By providing a “less is more” approach to software design, elegant user interfaces, and using the latest in agile programming, W&R Studiosʼ software applications are at the same time powerful, yet accessible to everyone. W&R Studiosʼ products include Cloud CMA and Nudge (http://getnudgeapp.com), an easy way to share real estate knowledge and stand out.

For more information please contact:
Greg Robertson
greg at wrstudios dot com
(855) 977-8834
###

Great Cloud CMA review…

Sorry for the shameless plug but wanted to point out a great Cloud CMA review on GeekEstateBlog. The reviewer is Daniel Beer who is an active agent at Santaluz Real Estate, he focuses on real estate in San Diego. Here’s an excerpt…

“Cloud CMA is by far my favorite new toy I have come across, not just this year, but in the last several.

Why? Because it gives me two things I desperately want. Efficiency (time) and professionalism. In an industry that sometimes stinks of cheese, Cloud CMA reports look great, professional, and best of all, they take only minutes more than printing out a sad little basic CMA from your MLS. The extra minutes look like hours to your clients, making you look like a superstar.”

You can read the whole post here:

How Cloud CMA Helped Me Win Over A Home Seller

Cloud CMA launches in Metrolist Marketplace

Two great things about this news. It brings Cloud CMA’s total coverage to over 500,000 real estate professionals around the country (a big milestone for W&R Studios). And I love the trend of these “app portals”. Metrolist Marketplace is a great example of this. I’ve listed other examples where Cloud CMA is featured along with other app portals in which Cloud CMA is featured.

Metrolist Marketplace
http://marketplace.metrolist.com/Cloud-CMA

Coastal Carolina Storefront
http://ccar.lpsmlsstorefront.com/cloudcma/

MLSlistings PERKS
http://portal.mlslistings.com/perks/?p=875

We are in the early stages of these sites but they can be a great win for third party vendors and MLS providers alike. But I would like to see tighter MLS integration to really make them take off.

Full Press Below:
_____________________________________________________________________________

Cloud CMA launches in Metrolist® Marketplace
Award winning tool now offered to members of Colorado’s largest MLS provider.

HUNTINGTON BEACH, CA (March 26, 2012) – Web-software company, W&R Studios, announced today that its flagship product, Cloud CMA, is now available through Metrolist Marketplace, a new e-commerce platform Metrolist launched late last year.

Cloud CMA is an online report generator designed for real estate professionals to easily create property reports for their buyers and sellers. Reports include a comparative market analysis (CMA), buyer tour, property profile and flyers. These report sets can easily be created and presented on a PC, Mac, iPad or via smartphone.

“We are excited to add Cloud CMA to our growing list of vendor’s products now available through Marketplace.” stated Kirby Slunaker, President/CEO of Metrolist]. “With Marketplace we continue to accelerate the ways third-party vendors, that utilize integration MLS data, can streamline the purchase process of their customers.”

The property reports created by Cloud CMA blend MLS data and photos with content from top websites like Google, Education.com, Walk Score, Panaramio, and Yelp. These property reports are unique and unlike any available in the industry today. Additionally, all report sets in Cloud CMA can be created by just sending an email.

“We are super excited to have Cloud CMA available in the Denver market. We think Metrolist Marketplace is a perfect way for vendors to reach MLS members”, stated Greg Robertson, co-founder of W&R Studios.

For more information about Cloud CMA please visit http://marketplace.metrolist.com/Cloud-CMA

About W&R Studios
Founded in 2008, W&R Studios (http://wrstudios.com) is a privately held web software company co-founded by Dan Woolley and Greg Robertson. W&R Studios focuses on creating simple yet focused web application for the real estate industry. By providing a “less is more” approach to software design, elegant user interfaces, and using the latest in agile programming, W&R Studiosʼ software applications are at the same time powerful, yet accessible to everyone. W&R Studiosʼ products include Cloud CMA a simple online property report generator for real estate professionals.

About Metrolist
Metrolist is the largest MLS in the state of Colorado, supporting the largest network of Realtors with the most comprehensive database of real property listings throughout the Front Range. Realtor-owned since 1984, Metrolist provides leading technology solutions to real estate agents and brokers to better serve buyers and sellers. More information about Metrolist is available at www.metrolist.com. Metrolist provides a broad database of real property listings for real estate brokers to better serve buyers and sellers. Metrolist serves five Realtor® associations: Aurora Association of Realtors, Douglas/Elbert Realtor Association, Mountain Metro Association of Realtors, South Metro Denver Realtor Association, and the Denver Metro Association of Realtors.

Contact:
Greg Robertson
greg at wrstudios dot com
855-977-8834 Ext 2

“Seller” Video

: )

For more information about this video please visit Lightning|Twice, the official blog of W&R Studios.

Sponsored By MLS Reset