Where Real Estate Gets Its Dirt

NAR levels the playing field with $5 agent websites.

NAR partners with Placester to offer members websites for $5 a month

“Nearly every Realtor can now get a personal website equipped with a listing search tool for just $5 a month.

The National Association of Realtors has partnered with real estate website provider Placester to offer the deal, which is available to all Realtors operating in markets where Placester has Internet Data Exchange agreements with multiple listing services.”

$5.00 is pretty cheap. When Zillow announced IDX websites for $10 a month, I quipped that many IDX vendors might have “pooped their pants” well now I think they shit their bed.

I’m curious if NAR guaranteed Placester a minimum number of sites. That would make sense to me. So that would mean NAR dues are paying for IDX websites whether or not you are utilizing this service. Also what if the MLS has a surcharge on IDX feeds, does Placester eat that cost or do they add it to the $5.00?

Three things strike me about this deal.

1. Big brokers are gonna be pissed. The Realty Alliance has made a big kerfuffle about MLS providers providing agents tools (like websites) for “free”, when brokers would typically want to charge their agents for those same tools.

2. Nice win for Placester! You gotta wonder if MOVE had the option to put a similar deal together.

3. IDX has officially jumped the shark.

ShowingTime inks deal with CarolinaMLS

Carolina Multiple Listing Services, Inc. signs agreement with ShowingTime

““ShowingTime Appointment Center has developed innovative technology solutions that support Realtors® as well as the goals of CarolinaMLS,” said Steve Byrd, vice president and CTO of CarolinaMLS. “Their 24/7 service, best-in-class mobile app, two-way text messaging and analytic reports will not only afford our agents a great experience but will help agents provide even better service to buyers and sellers.”

Its been a good year for ShowingTime. Congrats.

SentriLock wins in Las Vegas

“4 years, 3 Leadership teams, 2 AEs and 1 beautiful signed contract!”

Nice win for Kim and Sentrilock. Congrats!

Full Press Release Below:

Greater Las Vegas Association of REALTORS® Partners With SentriLock, LLC
Greater Las Vegas Association of REALTORS® (GLVAR) has partnered with SentriLock, LLC, the official lockbox solution of the National Association of REALTORS®, to provide its members with SentriLock’s REALTOR® Lockbox System.

GLVAR is the local representative of the National Association of REALTORS® and the largest professional organization in Southern Nevada. GLVAR is one of the top 10 largest REALTOR® Associations in the United States. GLVAR serves more than 11,500 real estate professionals in the Greater Las Vegas area, providing local members with the highest level of education, training and political representation.
Heidi Kasama, 2014 GLVAR President, said, “After researching this issue, we chose SentriLock for this important service because we determined they were the most qualified and offered the best, most cost-efficient solution for our more than 11,500 GLVAR members.”

SentriLock CEO and founder Scott Fisher has led the company through 11 years of consistent growth to serve more than 280 REALTOR® Associations and MLS customers throughout North America.
“We’re extremely excited about partnering with a proven leader like Greater Las Vegas Association of REALTORS®, which is an outstanding organization with a great staff,” Fisher said. “I believe GLVAR recognizes that our 100% REALTOR®-focused company will be an excellent fit for their members. As with all of our customers, SentriLock is committed to providing GLVAR members with the best product and service available.”

Contact Information Greg Sheldon SentriLock, LLC. http://www.sentrilock.com (513) 618-5821


Down Payment Resource (DPR) launches in two new markets

DPR Blog:

“We’re excited to bring Down Payment Resource™ (DPR) to two new multiple listing services—Southeast Michigan’s Realcomp II Ltd. and Richmond, Va. based Central Virginia Regional Multiple Listing Service (CVR MLS).
DPR is now available to more than 335,000 real estate professionals through 20 multiple listing services and REALTOR® Associations.”

I really think this is a great resource for agents and consumers. We recently launched this as a report page option in Cloud CMA.

Murdoch buys MOVE, Inc.

Spencer Dog2

Holy Shit!

I hinted about this rumor last week via a tweet, but didn’t know the suitor at the time.

Via Press Release: News Corp To Acquire Move, Inc.

“Under the acquisition agreement, which has been unanimously approved by the board of directors of Move, News Corp will acquire all the outstanding shares of Move for $21 per share, or approximately $950 million (net of Move’s existing cash balance), via an all-cash tender offer. This represents a premium of 37% over Move’s closing stock price on September 29, 2014. REA’s share will be acquired for approximately US$200 million. News Corp intends to commence a tender offer for all of the shares of common stock of Move within 10 business days, followed by a merger to acquire any untendered shares.”

Not a bad price, considering.

“Some of the expected key benefits of the transaction include:

-Broadened reach for Move through News Corp’s robust platform including WSJ Digital Network (approximately 500 million average monthly page views[6]) and News America Marketing (nearly 74 million households)
-Increased sales and marketing support to drive higher brand awareness and traffic
-Cross-platform promotion and audience monetization expertise
-Leverage of News Corp’s and REA’s real estate and digital expertise to drive improved product innovation, consumer engagement and audience growth
-Boost traffic and digital dwell times with high quality News Corp content”

Smart.

If Spencer Rascoff is Frank Underwood then Rupert Murdoch is the Prince Of Fucking Darkness. So things are so desperate it looks like the National Association of REALTORS literally just did a deal with the devil.

Let the games begin!

Jason Calacanis has a great idea for real estate

And he’ll fund it….

https://twitter.com/jason/status/504695581206257664

I like this idea a lot. Kind of like a “secret shopper program”. But instead of having individuals do the work why not just power buyers/homeshoppers that are already looking to do so?

NAR announces partnership with Clareity Security.

I heard through the grapevine (do they have grapevines in Arizona?) that last week at the 2015 Leadership Summit Dale Stinton announced a new partnership with Clareity Security, dubbed the “NAR Portlet Project“. Despite the unfortunate name it seems like another big win for Clareity. Clareity will begin implementing NAR Resource Portlets in about 18 to 200 local and state associations in August and September. Which should reach about 100,000 members. The new “Portlets” fit into’s Clareity’s SSO Dashboards.

A lot of members get to their MLS system through their local association’s website but its not clear whether 3rd party vendors participating with Clariety’s App Store will be displayed on this new association dashboards.

Overall I think this is great for NAR. They have a lot of resources that not a lot of members know about (REALTOR University, .Realtor domain name site, MVP member benefits, and of course RPAC). Clareity strategy seems pretty clear, they want their Dashboards to be in front of as many agents as possible. Makes a helluva a lot sense to me.

Regarding the rumor of Zillow acquiring Trulia

A few thoughts on this.

“Blue horseshoe loves….”
This could all be just Wall Street trickery. Remember how much MOVE stock bounced when it was rumored they were going to be bought by Trulia? It was significant. So maybe someone got the idea to make a bigger play by spreading a Zillow buying Trulia rumor.

Seattle vs. San Francisco
Executive leadership at both companies couldn’t be more different. Think Frank Underwood and Mr. Chips (you make a guess of which CEO fits the part) It’s really hard for me to imagine both teams being on the same page of anything, besides all money they will be making.

A deal could be a good for MOVE.
A Zillow and Trulia merger could be a good thing for MOVE, Inc. Such a large acquisition would be a huge distraction for Zillow, something MOVE could act upon. Plus they immediately bump from the #3 listing site to the #2 listing site. : )

LinkedIn ripple
If you start getting LinkedIn requests from anyone at Trulia then you know the deal is real.

Is it a good or bad thing?
Personally I think it would be bad for the industry. Competition is a good, and with less of it the industry will suffer.

The biggest loser.
Another thought occurred to me. Dominion Enterprises (a privately held company) owns Homes.com. Zillow and Trulia’s market cap is about 8 Billion. Hindsight is 20/20 but you gotta wonder if back in the day Dominion spun off Homes.com and did an IPO what that asset would be worth. Is it too late? Or is the Batten Family too fat and happy? There is big money in this space, without proper investment it will be harder and harder to take them seriously.

28 Billion Dollars?
In an article yesterday the CFO of Trulia was quoted:

““Long-term, we see this as a two-player market and evolving much like e-commerce” with EBay Inc. and Amazon.com Inc., Sean Aggarwal, chief financial officer at Trulia, said at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch Global Technology Conference in June.

He also described online real estate as a “very large category,” with real estate professionals spending about $28 billion a year on marketing. Trulia and Zillow collectively are doing about $500 million to $600 million a year in revenue, he said, leaving $27 billion plus of “potential money” that could come into that realm over the next several years.

Does anyone else think that number is crazy?

Will a deal happen?
No comment from either side. Typically where there’s smoke there’s fire, but I say no.

UPDATE: 7/28/2014 Looks like I got this wrong. Zillow is acquiring Trulia for 3.5 Billion in an all stock deal.

Former Trulian, Eric Wu, hopes to simply the home buying process to a “few clicks”.

Kim-Mai Cutler via TechCrunch

Keith Rabois’ Homebuying Startup OpenDoor Raises $9.95M From Everyone

“Before you start worrying about real estate speculators, OpenDoor is launching in three markets outside of California and is only for owner-occupied homes. Co-founder Eric Wu did not specify which markets, but he said the company is more concerned with markets where there isn’t a lot of liquidity or demand.”

“In contrast, Wu said the rest of the $20 trillion U.S. residential real estate market is one of the least liquid kinds of markets even though it represents such a vital kind of asset to Americans across the country. He argues this lack of liquidity ties people to debt and jobs or locations that may not benefit them anymore. Real estate transactions often take more than 90 days and homeowners often don’t have enough capital for a down payment or a mortgage, which makes home buying stressful.

Wu didn’t go into how the product will work, because it has yet to launch.”

I’m must be missing something. Just because you make it easier to buy a turd, doesn’t mean people will start buying lots and lots of turds.

UPDATE: 2/10/24 – Drew Meyers of GeekEstate Blog has a few ideas of how this might work. – And I still don’t get it.

Is the Market Leader deal with NRT a good one?

Inman News has a story of Market Leader (now owned by Trulia) having entered in to a multi-year deal with NRT, which as over 41,000 agents, to provide a white-labled version of their product at a “modest” fee.

Not sure what they mean by “modest”. When Market Leader did a deal with Keller Williams back in 2011 they announced that 80,000 of KW agents would pay $15/ month for “eEdge”. Not sure how much of that was going back to Market Leader either. But somehow I think this NRT deal is even more leveraged to the back-side. Meaning the up-front fee is minimal, and conversion to a “premium version” is where they make money.

Market Leader has similar deals with other Realogy brands, Century 21 and Better Homes & Gardens. NRT, as you may know, is operated by Realogy.

These freemium (or close to freemium) deals are tough. Agents are fiercely independent. It’s up to the vendor to do the leg work of first getting adoption and then converting them to a a premium version. Based on my experience the franchisors are going to little or next to nothing to help out.

It would be interesting to see what type of conversion percentages they have with each brand. The article mentions Trulia having 25K “premium subscribers”, which based on my math, and agent count, is 27% of their existing deals. Based on my experience even half of a 27% conversion rate is pretty amazing (and a good deal). My guess it would be Keller Williams first and C21 and BH&G a distant second and third (as a percentage of premium upgrades). But I do think the NRT deal with be closer in conversion percentage with KW than C21 or BH&G.

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