It was announced back in September that long time industry vet Carl DeMusz was set to retire this year. I didn’t get a chance to write anything back then but wanted to give him a shout out today. Let it be said that Carl was one of the good guys. I always appreciated how he never sugar-coated things and just was matter of fact about everything. He has contributed so much to the industry with his time on various conferences and advisory boards. Marilyn did a nice write up earlier this year.
I got a chance to see him at the COVE meeting in Chicago early this year. And hearing him speak reminded me of what I most like about Carl. His optimism. Which we all know we need more of, especially in these trying times.
“In a Dec. 18 letter, DOJ attorney Jessica Leal informed Judge Patti Saris of the U.S. District Court in Massachusetts that the agency had conferred with lawyers for the plaintiffs and MLS Property Information Network (MLS PIN) to attempt to address concerns that the deal’s proposed commission rule changes may not go far enough, but wasn’t satisfied with the latest version of the deal.”
““The real estate industry is constantly changing and growing, and we need strong leaders to help navigate the wealth of technology at our disposal,” said Rebecca Jensen, President and CEO of Midwest Real Estate Data (MRED), who was re-elected as a director and chosen to return as 2024 Chair of the RESO board. “RESO’s membership elects an amazing group each year, and I am honored to be given the opportunity to continue to help create and enhance standards for an increasingly global housing market.”
RESO
I know I’m a little late on this but still wanted to recognize these individuals. Thanks everyone for supporting this industry.
“The Council of Multiple Listing Services (CMLS), the professional trade organization serving the Multiple Listing Services industry and representing 231 member organizations with 1.8 million subscribers, has elected new directors for 2024. They will assume their roles on January 1, 2024.
Justin Haag, General Counsel and incoming President and CEO (Jan. 1, 2024) of Northwest MLS (Washington); and Chris Haran, Managing Director and Chief Technology Officer of MRED (Illinois), were elected to serve three-year terms on the CMLS Board of Directors. Matthew Consalvo, CEO of ARMLS (Arizona) was re-elected for a second three-year term.”
Megan Moore, CMLS
Congrats to Justin, Chris and Matt. They certainly have signed up for some interesting time in the MLS industry!
My thanks again to VestaPlus for sponsoring last month’s Vendor Alley! Following the success of THEMLSPRO®, in 2018, The MLS™ unveiled its next-generation software, VESTAPLUS™, an innovative and versatile suite of MLS software solutions founded on the idea of working with real estate professionals to develop technology solutions that are powerful yet easy to use. VESTAPLUS™ has become a leading technology vendor and winner of the 2020 HousingWire Tech100.
With the risk of letting one more tiger in to the ring I’m going to make a prediction. I first have to thank Andrea Brambila of Inman News for her live updates. Also Austin Alanzo from Real Estate News.
While it would have been ideal to be in the courtroom and see the reactions of the jurors to testimony I’m going to make my prediction based upon a couple precepts.
The issue is more complicated than it seems.
The vote must be unanimous.
So, what’s my prediction? Drumroll please……
NAR wins.
Now, I’m unsure if the jury votes on the corporate defendants separately (KW and BHHS) and I don’t know if the jury’s instruction includes a “per se” messaging (you’ll have to listen to the last few episodes of Industry Relations to understand what that means).
But based upon what I’m hearing from people inside the courtroom and the summaries I’m reading this wasn’t a “slam dunk”. So if there is any hint of uncertainty, that means an unanimous vote is unlikely.
Now I believe this is a pretty bold prediction. You’ve got a home town lawyer (Ketchmark) who apparently was close to tears in his closing arguments (tears? really? really?) and the cliche of the “greedy real estate agent”. But did they prove an industry-wide conspiracy? I don’t think so.
My thanks again to VestaPlus for sponsoring this month’s Vendor Alley. The team at VestaPlus has put together a great website that highlights the benefits of VestaPlus. The website is also a good resource to learn about the other products/features offered by VestaPlus such as Neighborhood Snapshot(tm), ShowingsPlus(tm), and Checkmate(tm) (which was recently adopted by CWMLS).
In this first week of the Sitzer Burnett trial is all about the plaintiff presenting their case. And it seems that the plaintiffs are all about showing training materials, and slides from previous conferences that use the 6% as proof that the “fix is in”!
The poor consumer has been tricked in to thinking that this percentage was never negotiable. Hell, the whole reason for scripts in the first place was that CONSUMERS WERE ALWAYS TRYING TO NEGOTIATE. Has anyone brought that point up?
Next week Lone Wolf Technologies will reveal its new platform at the T3 Technology Summit, and I’m super excited about it. Why? Let me tell you a story.
At W+R Studios we were bootstrapped, so we needed to grow organically. Our product strategy centered around making core features of an MLS system better.
CMAs on MLS systems suck? Let’s make a better one. Enter Cloud CMA.
MLS system’s client portals and listing alert emails are ugly. Let’s make them pretty (and easier to use). Voilà , Cloud Streams.
Searching on MLS systems too complicated? Let’s make something simple. Boom, Cloud MLX!
The problem was two fold. In order to grow we needed to add new products (more software) and at the end of the day is that we had 3 different software apps, each of them great in their own right, but they didn’t really work together. Also if you wanted all three you had to buy each one separately, and have 3 separate logins, and 3 separate onboarding scenarios, 3 different times you entered a credit card number, and 3 separate…you get the point.
We solved most of this by creating the “Cloud Agent Suite“, but really only scratched the surface of what was possible, then we were acquired in December 2020.
So this problem of “simplifying real estate” has been on the minds of our (W+R) design team for a very long time. How do we bring all of this together to create an end to end solution that makes sense, and still grow? Can “less software” be the answer?
Turns that the problem was about to get bigger. Starting in 2020 Lone Wolf acquired 5 companies in 9 months (including W+R); HomeSpotter, LionDesk, Terradatum and Propertybase. Now you had 9 (at least) separate logins, 9 separate… you get the point.
Sean Wheeler, CTO Lone Wolf
When I left Lone Wolf I was starting to see the green shoots of this work. Most of it on the backend led by Sean Wheeler, Lone Wolf’s CTO. One login, one credit card, one database of contacts for all products, etc. Jimmy Kelly, Lone Wolf’s CEO, talked about their effort and the concept of “less software” on a post on Inman News titled “Real Estate Doesn’t Need More Software“. I was also privy to see some of the earlier mock ups from the design group, which were super impressive.
Jimmy Kelly, CEO Lone Wolf
But, like any good meal it all comes down to ingredients. Lone Wolf from my estimation has the best ingredients in the market. The products they acquired (and the teams behind them) are not only best of class but have high adoption rates and great partnerships. Now it comes down to presentation and taste. And I have full confidence in the design chops of the team behind this. I had a chance to interview, Damien Huze, who was W+R’s Chief Design Officer and now a principal designer at Lone Wolf on my Listing Bits podcast which should drop this week.
Damien Huze, Principal Designer Lone Wolf
Am I biased? Absolutely. Am I still a fan of simple focused software applications? You betcha. But I’m a bigger fan of people. So I look forward to seeing how this particular group of talented people proves less software is better.
