Where Real Estate Gets Its Dirt

SIBOR adds voice enabled search

Staten Island REALTORS® Select Voiceter Pro 
As Voice-Powered Home Listing Search Provider

“By saying “Alexa, Open Staten Island Real Estate” or “Hey Google, talk to Staten Island Real Estate,” consumers can have a conversation with their favorite personal assistant, who will guide them through their search of home listings.

Free to use, consumers can specify their desired location, price range, number of bedrooms and other information to find homes that meet their needs. Alexa and Google will verbally report the top three matches and consumers will receive an email with complete listing details for all results with links to the listings at siborrealtors.com.”

I’ve seen a few demos from Voiceter and they are impressive. I think the use cases for real estate are interesting. Search is a tough use case in my opinion. My thought would be for market updates/listing alerts. As in…”Hey Alexa, tell me about homes for sale in my neighborhood.” Then I could passively listen to listing details, almost like when I ask “Alexa, how is the weather today.”

Still, I wonder how far they have gone to incorporate the colloquialisms of Staten Island natives.

“Hey Alexa, find me a house that’s dope!”

“Hey Google, find me a new condo that’s banging”

MARIS launches new website.

MARIS MLS launches content-first website

“The new marismls.com utilizes a ‘related’ feature that integrates products, education, news and support – making it easy to learn how to leverage MLS tools and access a wide range of business products. On-demand education is available 24 hours a day in the form of a brand-new video library, and online support materials. This content is available widely, outside of any login or paywall, to streamline access.

Website design was crafted by 1000watt, a creative and strategic agency for real estate, who also used the website launch to roll out a new visual identity they designed for MARIS. The new visual identity system was designed to be digitally native and reflect the company’s friendly and professional approach to serving its membership.”

Can’t say enough how impressed I am with this new design. I just love the vibe of the site. The site is not at all corporate, which works well for some, but not others. The site has a really simple, friendly feel to it but is full of forward thinking features. I believe the Products section is a re-skinned Clareity Dashboard –clever!

I had a chance to talk to Quinn Nichols, MARIS’ new Director of Marketing Communications about the challenge of educating their membership of the choices available and what products were best for what task. This can be daunting since there may be feature overlap in some products. That’s why I think the “Learn” section is really smart. It gives members a quick way to learn about products, watch videos and sign up for upcoming webinars all in one place.

I also love the “MARIS Asks” section just below the fold on the home page. MARIS asked several industry thought leaders “Why is the MLS important?”. Glenn Kelman’s response is just priceless.

I also sat down with MARIS’ CEO Tim Dain at the recent Fall RESO Conference and record a Listing Bits episode about launching the site and other MLS industry issues, look for that coming out later this week.

I’m glad to see more and more MLS providers taking the time to focus on their own company website. MARIS’ new site is going to be hard to top. Kudos to Tim, Quinn, and 1000watt for raising the bar.

Trestle Web API goes Platinum

CORELOGIC TRESTLE WEB API EARNS RESO PLATINUM CERTIFICATION

“Reaching the Platinum Web API standard is an important milestone for Trestle,” said Amy Gorce, principal of business development for CoreLogic Real Estate Solutions. “Platinum certification verifies that Trestle implements 100 percent of the RESO Web API functionality, providing maximum flexibility and interoperability. This achievement supports the efforts of clients and real estate technology providers to create a new class of solutions with on-demand access to the most up-to-date listing information available.”

We have had some limited interaction with CoreLogic’s Trestle group and I’ve been impressed with their responsiveness. I know the team wants to create something that will work in “the real world”.

I’m looking forward to RESO’s Fall Conference in a couple of weeks. I’m still not clear on how vendors, like W+R Studios, can help the effort. It seems that there is a lot of work to be done before vendors can start successfully using the new Web API. And I’m not sure where’s the bottleneck. Right now, I don’t see it being vendors.

Jim Speer named CEO of newly formed regional MLS.

MLSLI and HGMLS Merge to Form Regional MLS

“he Multiple Listing Service of Long Island, Inc. (MLSLI) and the Hudson Gateway Multiple Listing Service (HGMLS) have merged to form the New York MLS, LLC. The new MLS will consist of approximately 40,000 real estate professionals, serving Nassau, Suffolk, Queens, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Bronx, and Westchester, Putnam, Rockland, Sullivan and Orange Counties.
….
Jim Speer, the Sr. Vice President of Operations for MLSLI for over 30 years, will serve as Chief Executive Officer for the new MLS. Speer says, “With the alliance of two successful MLSs, members gain entry to a vast selection of integrated technology tools and resources which will better serve their buyers and sellers.”

Combined it looks like the new MLS will be over 40,000 agents. I saw Jim speak at the CMLS conference, along with Richard Haggerty of the Hudson Gateway Assn. where they went over some of the details. While I’m sure there were some bumps in the road (and a few ahead) it really sounded like the process wasn’t overly dramatic for a MLS that size. Big Congrats to Jim, MLSLI and HGMLS.

UtahRealEstate.com releases Amazon Alexa Skill

Available Now – UtahRealEstate.com’s Amazon Alexa Skill

URE is changing the way consumers find homes for sale and interact with real estate professionals. Users with an Alexa-enabled device can enable the URE skill, called UtahRealEstate.com, and then make requests such as “Alexa, ask Utah Real Estate about homes for sale in the city of Salt Lake City for the last week.” The Alexa-enabled device will then read back listing details, and if there is a screen available on the device, the skill will display results visually, including photos of the property. The skill also provides credit to the listing agent and brokerage for every property.

So fun! I just hope it complies to IDX rules. ????

NextHome launches Imprev

NextHome CEO: ‘We’re Raising the Bar in Real Estate Marketing’

“At NextHome, we’re passionate about empowering our agents to deliver tremendous value to their clients. That’s why Imprev’s Marketing Automation is such a natural fit for our brand,” James continued. “With automation, agents have a repeatable way to deliver their marketing promise to clients — without wasting precious hours on repetitive, manual tasks. Imprev understands how important it is to deliver a consistent brand and marketing experience to our clients at every point in the home-selling process, which ultimately makes our brand even more valuable to an agent’s business.”

Glad to see these two great companies working together.

Ginger Wilcox joins Capsilon


Capsilon Taps Ginger Wilcox as Senior Vice President of Marketing

“Capsilon, the leading partner for delivering a cloud-based end-to-end digital mortgage solution, announced today that it has tapped Ginger Wilcox as SVP Marketing, where she will be responsible for leading marketing, brand positioning and growth for all Capsilon products. A startup veteran and recognized leader in the mortgage, real estate and technology industries, Wilcox was most recently part of the team that launched digital mortgage startup Sindeo. As CMO and Chief Industry Officer, Wilcox led brand marketing, customer acquisition, communications and strategic partnerships.”

Don’t call it a comeback! Congrats to Ginger and Capsilon

Could Cloud MLX be the answer to your consolidation efforts?

CLOUD MLX LETS BROKERS AND AGENTS SEARCH DATA FROM MULTIPLE MLS PROVIDERS USING A SINGLE MODERN INTERFACE

“Rather than combining data into a single database, Cloud MLX acts as a virtual MLS layer on top of multiple MLS databases. Real estate agents are able to search for listings similar to how they search on Google, providing a modern way of searching, sharing and collaborating with MLS data, clients and other agents.

I’ve been excited to share this with everyone. I think Cloud MLX can serve as another tool in regard to consolidation challenges. Right now SFAR and BAREIS are on Rapattoni, and BridgeMLS is on Paragon. Theoretically we could have any type of MLS System under Cloud MLX and multiple MLS providers, and all those databases are still separate. This allows everyone to maintain their independence while providing their respective members with seamless access to the MLS data they need.

With this type of setup we could have launched BrightMLS (BrightMLX?) in under a month. It could also work for combined single database efforts like GRID MLS (GRID MLX?). You could have agents search either their local traditional MLS system, or login in to Cloud MLX and have access to multiple MLS providers with an easy to use modern interface. See below for a quick promo video we created to promote the Bay Area launch to get a better idea.

As is often discussed, the tech is somewhat easy, the politics are hard, but the MLS providers in the Bay Area made it happen. Kudos to K.B., Walt, DeVina and the others for starting this journey with us.

And if you are interested in learning more about Cloud MLX this video is a good start.

ShowingTime launches MarketView, new product for Brokers to help with recruiting and market knowledge.

ShowingTime Introduces MarketView Broker, a Browser-Based Application for Brokers to Recruit Top Performers and Determine Market Share

“We believe MarketView Broker will become an essential tool for brokers to recruit top agents, gain market share, have a deeper knowledge of the markets they serve and provide a clear competitive advantage in a highly competitive marketplace,” said ShowingTime President Michael Lane.
“It can be accessed on any device from anywhere, and will be available to customers and prospective customers looking to grow their presence in the 300+ markets where ShowingTime offers services.”

I’ve always been impressed with ShowingTime. They are doing a lot of things right and you can tell there is a lot of thinking from the top down. Here’s a few observations.

1. They invest in themselves – They’ve made some savvy acquisitions to increase market share of their core product ShowingTime.

2. They made their data an asset – They are creating a proprietary dataset based on the data they collect through their own products. Their ShowingTime Showing Index tracks the average number of buyer showings on active residential properties on a monthly basis.

3. They give their customers better ways to leverage their data. – They are also creating (or acquiring) other products that leverage that data with products like MarketStats, and now MarketShare.

A couple small quibbles – Their UI, mostly on their MLS product, and having an API (iframes are not cutting it anymore). While I think they are doing a good job in data visualization in reports, I think that some focus on UI would really pay a lot of dividends. And making it easier for developers to access their data (via an API) for other apps would only increase its value.

Triangle MLS selects ShowingTime

TRIANGLE MLS, INC. SELECTS THE SHOWINGTIME APPOINTMENT CENTER

““ShowingTime’s advanced technology will be a great resource for our subscribers,” said Tessa Hultz, CEO at TMLS. “The ShowingTime Appointment Center is a service that aligns with our vision to provide subscribers with the most innovative tools available. We’ve been using MarketStats from ShowingTime for several years and have greatly benefited from the predictive analytics it provides, which will now include showing data for our market area. It just made sense to select ShowingTime.”

ShowingTime’s showing-related products and services – which improve efficiency by streamlining the appointment scheduling process – are used to schedule more than four million showings per month in 190+ MLSs across the U.S. and Canada representing 900,000+ real estate professionals.”

And according to the press release this is the 33rd MLS they signed up just this year for its showing management and market stats product. Super impressive. Hats off to Mike and his team.

Sponsored By MLS Reset