Where Real Estate Gets Its Dirt

Wilmington Regional AOR switching to ShowingTime

About time…

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WILMINGTON REGIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS® PARTNERS WITH SHOWINGTIME TO PROVIDE APPOINTMENT CENTER SERVICES TO MEMBERS

NEW SERVICE TO LAUNCH BY JANUARY 7TH, 2014

Chicago, IL – January 6, 2014—The Multiple Listing Service of the Wilmington Regional Association of Realtors® announced today that it selected ShowingTime, the real estate industry’s leading showing management technology provider, to provide appointment center services for its 1,650+ Realtor® members beginning Tuesday, January 7.

“The ShowingTime Appointment Center’s extended hours, two-way text messaging capabilities, branded calls and emails, and overall use of technology to automate the scheduling process is exciting,” said MLS President Sandy Beals. “I am looking forward to a long relationship with ShowingTime. I am so confident they will exceed members’ expectations.”

ShowingTime’s technology-rich Appointment Center, along with its online scheduling system available 24/7 in the MLS, will enable WRAR members to call to schedule showings from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. Eastern time, seven days a week, or login to the MLS anytime to schedule showings. Members can also use smart phones, tablets and the ShowingTime Mobile App to request and manage showings and feedback.

ShowingTime products – currently used to schedule more than 2 million showings per month in more than 190 markets representing 400,000+ real estate professionals – use technology to improve efficiency and streamline the appointment scheduling process, resulting in quicker showing confirmations and less phone tag. The Multiple Listing Service of the Wilmington Regional Association of Realtors® is ShowingTime’s 70th market-wide subscribing customer.

“We are thrilled to partner with the Wilmington Regional Association of Realtors®,” said ShowingTime President Michael Lane. “WRAR members will have access to many unique features that will help them be effective, including our patented two-way text messaging system for homeowner approval of showings. Our services will equip the members of WRAR to provide great service to buyers and sellers.” he added. “We’re also pleased to be able to offer job opportunities to many of the appointment specialists from the prior showing service that lost their jobs prior to the holidays.”

About ShowingTime
ShowingTime equips MLSs, Associations, offices, brokers and agents with tools to schedule showings, generate feedback and report on activity. Its products are used by more than 6,000 offices nationwide and integrated with 190+ MLSs to manage two million showings every month. Visit http://www.showingtime.com for more information.
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FOR MORE INFORMATION, contact Tom Denk, ShowingTime, 312-568-8001 x130 tdenk@showingtime.com

TREND selects CoreLogic’s Matrix as primary MLS platform in multiyear deal.

Brian de Schepper
Brian de Schepper
Early this year CoreLogic promoted Brian de Schepper to head all of MLS sales for CoreLogic. Brian as many of you know was part of the Tarasoft team that CoreLogic bought a few years back. I spoke to Ben Graboske, VP of CoreLogic, at a recent event and he told me that he has full confidence in Brian. Looks like the confidence is justified in regards to this recent deal with TREND MLS.

25,000 members (per month) is a huge win. Switching from TREND MLS’ home grown system was a big decision. As everyone knows Tom Phillips and his team at TREND MLS are a careful bunch and I can imagine the process that Corelogic went through to get this business was, to say the least, involved. Congrats to Brian and CoreLogic.

Here’s the full press release.

Nextdoor, a social network for neighborhoods, raises 60 million.

I’ve written about Nextdoor before. No revenue yet, but these guys now have 90 million in the bank and Zillow’s co-founder Rich Barton on their board. I like the idea here, connecting online with your neighbors. Seems a little counter intuitive (why not just say hello instead?). But with everyone as busy as they are it seems that making a connection online is great way to start a relationship (online neighboring?). Here’s a quote from their CEO Nirav Tolia.

“And Mr. Tolia says Nextdoor is adding members at a healthy clip and believes it can fill the information void left by the erosion of local newspaper readership and local television viewing. The company is also attracting classified ads, robust discussions on its message boards about everything from crime to local businesses and services, and becoming a forum for neighbors to meet one another.”

Clareity Store partnerships will reach 900,000 agents

LPS to offer Clareity app store to 250,000-plus subscribers.

Via Inman News

““The momentum is building every day with MLS operators and the vendor/merchant community. In addition to deploying dozens of regional stores in 2013, we are also adding three to four new merchants and numerous products to the Store’s master catalog each week. My team is looking forward to the Inman Connect conference as the place for us to build new relationships with the vendor community,” Larson added.”

900,000 is huge number!

CoreLogic buys DataQuick

SumoCoreLogic set to beef up data capabilities with $661M acquisition.

Via Inman News:

“Marking what is probably the biggest deal in the real estate tech space so far this year, data aggregator CoreLogic announced today that it has entered into a definitive agreement to purchase a pair of technology companies for a whopping $661 million, a move that will strengthen its footprint in the insurance industry and beef up its property data and analytics capabilities”

This is a HUGE deal. CoreLogic is prepping itself for a battle. When I read this I kept thinking about Bill Foley’s recent acquisition of LPS. Like two Sumo wrestlers preparing to enter the ring.

Move, Inc. renews contract with Microsoft.

Spencer Rascoff, CEO of Zillow
Spencer Rascoff, CEO of Zillow

Nice win for Move, Inc.

Was anyone else surprised that Microsoft sold the name HomeAdvisor to ServiceMagic? I guess I missed/forgot the news last year.

Also I looooooove this little tidbit from Move, Inc.’s press release….

““We know that Microsoft had a number of choices in online realtor partners and are pleased to announce our continued long-standing relationship with MSN to deliver the most accurate and trusted real estate information to the MSN community,” said Barbara O’Connor, executive vice president of marketing for Move, Inc.”

In a nutshell, what Barb is saying, is Move, Inc. won the business from Zillow.

And there’s nothing sweeter than kicking your competitors ass on their home turf (Seattle).

Congrats to everyone at Move, Inc.

Trulia and Market Leader analysis…

Good analysis from Brian Boero at 1000watt Consulting. Go read it, it’s really smart. I agree with him on most points. But just one quibble.

Brian Boero:

Thoughts on the Trulia/Market Leader deal

“Interesting energy

This is admittedly fuzzy, but both of these companies have suffered from something I will simply call “bad vibes” in the industry (yeah, I know, incisive analysis!).

I’ve been in this business since 1997. And you hear things. Opinions. Rumors. Rants. And I’ve heard more of these types of things about Market Leader over the years than just about any other company. I’m not certain it was ever justified, but it was in the air.

Trulia has been dogged by this too. Some in the industry fear Zillow. Some resent Realtor.com. But a lot of people I know always felt suspicious of Trulia. I think part of this was taken care of pre-IPO, and it seems to be getting better, but, again, it’s there.

Of course, a few bad vibes didn’t stop either of these companies from getting where they are today, but it will be interesting to see how this plays out.”

I’m not exactly sure what Brian is talking about here. If people have been suspicious of Trulia I think its because they’ve kept things closer to the chest, whereas Zillow has pounded its chest like a gorilla. In regards to Market Leader, maybe the “bad vibes” that Brian speaks of is due to the multiple pivots Market Leader has made over the years. Nobody likes changes, but good leaders like Ian Morris and his team deserve kudos for keeping their company relevant.

Bad vibes indeed.

LPS powers consolidation of 13 Indiana MLS providers.

LPS Technology Selected to Power Consolidation of 13 Multiple Listing Services Into A Single Indiana Regional MLS
LPS Paragon Will Serve New 5,000-member MLS

“For the first time, more than 5,000 real estate professionals across Indiana – who formerly used 13 independent MLS systems – will now have unrestricted access to more than 750,000 real estate listings through LPS Paragon’s advanced capabilities. Newly formed Indiana Regional MLS (IRMLS) will collect from and distribute listing data to the 13 Realtor associations in Indiana, allowing members to search across multiple markets and pay only one MLS fee to access the IRMLS data.”

These deals are complicated (technology and politics) so a nice win for LPS.

And there’s this…

“Kendall said the participating associations worked collaboratively with industry consultant Kevin McQueen of Focus Forward Consulting Inc. and LPS to meet the challenge of a consolidation of this magnitude and achieve successful results. “In addition to combining the listing data information, the resulting cost efficiencies are going to provide members additional benefits, including public records information, appointment services and a consumer-facing website,” she said.”

Mark one on the score board as well for Kevin McQueen of Focus Forward Consulting.

Smarter Agent and CoreLogic ink patent licensing deal.

CoreLogic and Smarter Agent Announce Patent License Agreement

““We are pleased to have formalized a licensing agreement with a market leader like CoreLogic and look forward to working with them in the future,” said Smarter Agent CEO Brad Blumberg.

Ben Graboske, senior vice president of Real Estate and Financial Services for CoreLogic added, “We are always looking to provide the best, most innovative products to our customers and this agreement with Smarter Agent, enhances our ability to deliver on that promise and to provide mobile data solutions to our clients.”

As an independent software developer I have mixed feeling about software patents. But from the perspective of my previous post regarding “home grown” MLS systems you can see CoreLogic’s play here.

Home grown MLS systems – Another one bites the dust.

Metrolist Selects Corelogic Matrix MLS System

“For more than 25 years, Metrolist developed and hosted its own proprietary MLS systems. “The pace of innovation has profoundly accelerated since the company was originally founded in 1984 and we found that a transition to a vendor-based product suite made a lot of sense,” commented Metrolist President and CEO, Kirby Slunaker. “We’re really here to empower our customers and help them drive their business success. Through this partnership with CoreLogic, we will be able to offer our customers a comprehensive set of tools that extend beyond the MLS platform and deliver on our service promise to Colorado Realtors®.”

This is old news of course, everyone knew Corelogic won the Metrolist contract. It appears their bundling strategy is working. When you have so many products to throw in with the deal it can make it difficult for other Vendors to compete. In a sense Matrix is the wheelbarrow that allows Corelogic to load up!

A few other things worth mentioning. The first, is what is not mentioned in the press release, Fusion. Pretty obvious that Fusion isn’t part of Corelogic’s long term future. Now you can see why Corelogic’s 30 million dollar acquisition of Tarasoft made sense. Can you imagine Corelogic without Matrix? Tempo and Fusion? Neither system will work both on an iPad or a Mac. Yuck.

The obvious thing here is the death of another “home grown” (I’m not sure I like this term, we should have something better) MLS system. Is this a trend? Yes, you can point to a quite a few “home grown” MLS systems that have converted to main stream MLS Vendors in the past several years. But you can also point to other MLS Providers who are “doing quite well thank you very much”. UtahRealEstate.com, and IRES MLS (just a bit down the road from Denver) just to mention a couple. RMLS in Portland also looks to be going strong despite their neighbor to the north, NWMLS (another Matrix account). So what’s the secret? How can some MLS providers thrive with their “home grown” MLS systems, and others cannot? Might be a good panel conversation for CMLS.

Despite all this, the facts remains clear, Corelogic’s strategy is working. Congrats to Ben and his team.

Update: David Charron reminds me of another “home grown” MLS provider, that is not only surviving but thriving, Annie Ives at TheMLS/CLAW.

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