Where Real Estate Gets Its Dirt

VHT acquires Dwellicious.

Some of you may have heard about this already. You can read about it on TechCrunch today.

It was a tough decision to sell Dwellicious, it was the first app we created to launch our new company, W&R Studios. But the guys at VHT are great and we think they are the right fit to take Dwellicious to the next level.

Full Press Release is below:
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Enhancement of VHT ImageWorks Platform Provides Brokers with Popular Customer Engagement App

ROSEMONT, Ill., July 14, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — VHT Inc., a leading provider of technology and services for marketing real estate online, today announced it has acquired Dwellicious, the leading social bookmarking site for real estate buyers, from W&R Studios. Dwellicious is being integrated into the VHT ImageWorks online marketing platform to provide brokerage clients with a valuable tool for communicating with home buyers.
Under the agreement, VHT has acquired the Dwellicious technology, website and clients. Purchase price was not disclosed.  

Dwellicious, a finalist in the 2009 Inman Innovator Awards, uses the power of social bookmarking to help home buyers share their favorite properties on Facebook, Twitter or other social media sites. Buyers can organize, monitor and compare listings, make notes, add tags, and share and discuss properties with friends, family and real estate professionals.

“Today, more than 90 percent of home buyers are searching properties on the Internet and they’re using multiple websites in the search process,” said Alex Zoghlin, CEO, VHT. “It’s impossible for brokers to track all the properties their clients are interested in without a confusing trail of emails and faxes.”
“Dwellicious is a clever, simple solution to this dilemma. As a result of the acquisition, we’re able to make this powerful application seamlessly available to brokerages that use VHT’s ImageWorks platform at a significantly reduced cost so their agents can develop stronger, more engaged relationships with home buyers,” Zoghlin said.
VHT ImageWorks is a comprehensive and automated marketing platform used by industry-leading brokerages and more than 100,000 real estate professionals across the country. It’s the first online marketing platform with a proven track record of producing measurable results by significantly improving brokers’ search engine-generated traffic and sales conversion rates.

“With VHT ImageWorks, brokerages can attract more buyers to their websites and take advantage of powerful tools such as Dwellicious to share real estate information online and educate buyers throughout the process of searching for their dream homes,” Zoghlin said. “And buyers, in turn, have an easy way to keep brokers updated about their thoughts and preferences.”  
The integration of Dwellicious is the first of many planned enhancements to VHT ImageWorks designed to provide smarter Internet tools for top real estate professionals and help them win the online battle for home buyers.
Located in Huntington Beach, California, W&R Studios is a privately-held web software company.

About VHT, Inc.
VHT is a leading provider of technology and services to brokerages nationwide for marketing real estate online. Since 1998, VHT has been providing professional production, management and distribution of visual assets– including photographs, video, multimedia tours and Video on Demand television spots – for more than $1.5 billion in properties for 3,500 client companies and more than 100,000 real estate professionals. VHT ImageWorks is the first turnkey marketing platform developed to position brokers as the original source of listings information on the web, while increasing brokers’ online traffic and conversion rates. Venture-backed VHT is based in Rosemont, IL.

SOURCE VHT, Inc.

Cloud CMA launches with MLS PIN

We are very thrilled to announce that Cloud CMA is now available to MLS PIN members!

MLS PIN is the largest Multiple Listing Service in New England and one of the largest in the nation.

MLS PIN is a REALTOR® owned Multiple Listing Service, Property Information Network (MLS PIN) was incorporated in 1997. The corporation has grown its subscriber base from 11,000 to approximately 30,000 licensed real estate professionals.

MLS PIN subscribers just need to visit www.CloudCMA.com to get started.  From there they can watch a short video, see a sample Cloud CMA report and screen shots.

We want to thank Kathy Condon and the rest of her team for being the first to bring Cloud CMA to New England.

[Reposted from the LIGHTNING | TWICE Blog]

Cloud CMA launches with Sandicor MLS

Excited to announce Cloud CMA is now available to Sandicor MLS members!

Sandicor, a California corporation, was founded in 1991 by eleven Associations of REALTORS® in San Diego County. Today Sandicor serves more than 20,000 REALTORS® in San Diego county and is owned by four associations; East San Diego County AOR, North San Diego County AOR, Pacific Southwest AOR, and San Diego AOR.

Many thanks to Ray Ewing, Karen Dupriest, and Paul Hethmon for helping us get going.
Sandicor subscribers just need to visit http://CloudCMA.com to get started.

[Source: Lightning|Twice, the official blog of W&R Studios]

The Vendor Alley Real Estate Events Calendar

This was one of my projects over the weekend. Robert Drummer of iMapp and I worked together on creating a site that would have all the major real estate events listed. The best way to make this happen was involve all of Vendor Alley readers. So we have two ways to enter events:

1. A form. Just fill out the form and we will update the calendar with these events on a daily(ish) basis.
2. Bulk upload. If you have a bunch of dates for your events you can also fill out an Excel file we provide and email it to us.

If you have any ideas on making it better please feel free to comment. Click the link on the top of this page or just click the link below to check it out:

Vendor Alley Real Estate Event Calendar

Thanks!

gr

Rapattoni adds Cloud CMA

Rapattoni MLS Offers Integration with Cloud CMA

Simi Valley, California, April 15, 2011 – Rapattoni Corporation (Rapattoni), a leading provider of software and services for the real estate industry, announced today that the company’s Rapattoni MLS software now offers complete integration with W&R Studios’ Cloud CMA.

Using Rapattoni’s industry leading Single Sign-On technology (SSO), the first implementation of the Cloud CMA integration was launched for MetroList® Services, Inc. (MetroList), which serves more than 17,500 members across the Sacramento, Placer, El Dorado, Yolo, San Joaquin, Stanislaus, and Merced counties in northern California.

Cloud CMA is the latest product launch from W&R Studios and offers real estate professionals the ability to create custom comparative market analysis (CMA) reports, buyer tours, and property reports. MetroList’s members will be able to log in to Rapattoni MLS, select listings to use with Cloud CMA, and then Rapattoni MLS will seamlessly send the required listing data to Cloud CMA. Without having to log in to Cloud CMA, agents can then work with the listing data within the Cloud CMA platform.

Greg Robertson, Co-founder of W&R Studios, said, “We are so pleased with how quickly and efficiently the Rapattoni team was able to make our product integrate with Rapattoni MLS. Rapattoni has been a leader in SSO technology, and we are excited that our MLS customers will now be able to utilize Rapattoni MLS to bring their listing data directly to our product.”

Tom Beede, President and Chief Executive Officer of MetroList, said, “Rapattoni always provides innovative and flexible solutions for us when we need Rapattoni MLS to integrate with different real estate software providers. We believe that our members will enjoy the integration of Rapattoni MLS and Cloud CMA, and it will help them provide added value to their clients.”

Brad Bjelke, Executive Vice President of Rapattoni, said, “We take great pride in our SSO technology, and we believe that offering our customers flexibility and integration within Rapattoni MLS allows real estate professionals to have the best software and features available to do their jobs. The team at W&R Studios was a pleasure to work with, and we know this integration will be a win for both Rapattoni and Cloud CMA.”

About Rapattoni MLS
Rapattoni MLS is setting the standard with advanced features such as integrated GIS parcel mapping, an integrated member management and billing system, the most advanced RETS data exchange system, integrated aerial photography, a robust statistics and trends analysis package, language translation, the Rapattoni Secure Logon system featuring Adaptive Authentication technology, and the ability to operate a convenient Single Sign-On (SSO) identity portal. The Rapattoni MLS is compatible with the Internet Explorer® and Firefox® web browsers and can be operated natively on PCs and Mac® computers.

About Rapattoni
Rapattoni Corporation has been serving the real estate industry under the same name and management for over 40 years. The company provides an array of integrated products and services for real estate associations and MLS organizations, including an internet-based MLS, association management software, and key-less Rapattoni Secure Logon with SSO identity portals for online security and convenience. Rapattoni’s MLS products are serving approximately 300,000 users nationally and its association management customers represent more than 85% of the nation’s REALTORS®. Rapattoni’s headquarters are in Simi Valley, California.

About MetroList Services, Inc.
MetroList Services Inc. is the largest multiple listing service in Northern California headquartered in Sacramento, the state’s capital. Formed in 1985 by the Sacramento Association of REALTORS®, the Placer County Association of REALTORS® and the El Dorado County Association of REALTORS®, MetroList’s ownership group has grown to include the Lodi Association of REALTORS® and the Yolo County Association of REALTORS®, and California Real Estate Brokers, Inc. MetroList acts as a seamless real estate information network serving more than 17,500 real estate professionals in seven counties: Sacramento, Placer, El Dorado, San Joaquin, Stanislaus, Merced and Yolo.

About W&R Studios
Founded in 2008, W&R Studios is a privately held web software company located in Huntington Beach, California. W&R Studios focuses on creating the next generation of web-based software solutions 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 Studios’ software applications are at the same time powerful, yet accessible to everyone.

For more information, contact Rapattoni’s Public Relations department at (800) 722-7338 or visit the Rapattoni website at http://www.rapattoni.com/.

I love it when a plan comes together!

Advertise on Vendor Alley

I’m increasing the size of the ads on Vendor Alley starting next month to 125 X 250 and adding two spots. I have two spots open for April. One in May and June. And a few in July and August.

For details check out the Vendor Alley Ad Sponsorships page. They are going fast!

“Early to bed, early to rise, work like hell and advertise!”
-Ted Turner

Cloud CMA Reigns At MRED

You may have read we launched Cloud CMA with MRED yesterday. It was unlike any product launch we ever experienced. We did have a few hiccups but thanks to the MRED staff and our hosting partner, RailsMachine, everything smoothed out after a few tweaks.

Key to the overall success of this was the integration of Cloud CMA with the connectMLS system. The guys at dynaConnections were a pleasure to work with.

We also implemented something new:

When we started W&R Studios one of the big things we wanted to focus upon was transparency with our customers. Transparency is a word that is thrown out a lot these days. To us we wanted to give our MLS customers, real time access to customer metrics. So we created a Dashboard View for our MLS customers that give real time stats to Cloud CMA user metrics. Here’s what a very small bit of that dashboard looks like:

Our customers love it. All of us were amazed at how many members kept activated their account and at the speed they were creating reports.

Here’s a rundown of some of those metrics for yesterday:

  • Over 830 MRED members activated their Cloud CMA account.
  • Over 840 Cloud CMA reports were generated. Here’s the report type breakdown:

About 60% of those were CMAs
16% of those were Buyer Tours
24% were single Property Reports.

  • Over 9,000 property listings were used to create these reports

The user to create a Cloud CMA report the fastest was Mario Russo. He clocked in at 47 seconds. (Think about that, someone who never used the software figured out how to use it in less than one minute. Can you say “easy to use”?)

This morning we already broke 1,000 users activated.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is what you call a hit.

[SOURCE W&R Studios Blog: Lightning|Twice]

Purple Rain! Cloud CMA launches with NorthstarMLS

We are all very excited to announce that Cloud CMA is now compatible with NorthstarMLS!

NorthstarMLS serves more than 15,000 REALTORS® in Minnesota and Western Wisconsin.

The NorthstarMLS system conducted more than $11 billion of real estate transaction volume in 2009. We give customers access to more than 48,000 Active listings, more than 1 million comparable and Sold properties, and 2.79 million property records from 87 Minnesota and 3 Wisconsin counties. 

NorthstarMLS is owned and operated by the Regional Multiple Listing Service of Minnesota, Inc. (RMLS) under a mandate to develop and deliver excellence in the technologies, data resources, programs and policies that support our subscribers in the performance of professional real estate practice. 

Many thanks to John Mosey and Tarasoft for helping us get going.

NorthstarMLS subscribers just need to visit http://CloudCMA.com to get started.

[SOURCE LIGHTNING|TWICE]

Girls in lingerie on stilts.

Wanna buy a curling iron?
Many of you may have read that Dan and I released our first non-real estate web app this past weekend. If you haven’t, you can read it here. Basically the app is designed for businesses who’s income is derived on high frequency recurring customers. This can be anyone from a golf pro to a hair stylist. The app is a simple way for these types of businesses to remind their clients to come back. We call it Heads Up!

Since one of the largest hair dressers show was here locally (International Salon and Spa Expo [ISSE] 2011, pronounced “Ice”) we decided to launch at this event. Besides hair stylists share a lot in common with Realtors. First off they have to receive a license from the state to practice, many of them are independent contractors, they work at a salon (similar to a Broker office), and they rent a chair (think desk fee). A few key differences, they do more transactions (of course) and on average hair stylists make more money than a Realtor.

Plus the event (ISSE) was supposed to have more attendance than NAR‘s annual conference.

Our booth location wasn’t the best, the show was in the main Long Beach Convention Hall we were set up in the arena, with the “Wellness” crowd. Not so bad. Our neighbors were a company called Minx, who did shrink wrap nail coverings, across from us was what I can only refer to as “boob tape”. The video being looped was interesting to us for the first 10 minutes but then got kind of creepy. Believe me, beauty isn’t pretty.

Open for business!

We set up our booth and were ready to rock. The show opened on a Saturday and the attendance we pretty tepid. This made sense we one of the other exhibitors pointed out that a lot of salon and spas are open on Saturday. Makes sense. We only signed up a couple subscriptions and called it a day.

Line 'em up!
When I arrived at the convention center on Saturday I knew this show attendance was going to be much better than Saturday, there was already a line forming to get in. While we did get better traffic, it very hard to draw people in. A lot of the exhibitors were being very aggressive with booth promotions. I decided to take a look in the main convention center.

Pandemonium!! It was like a giant CVS designed by someone does casinos in Vegas. The music was loud, you had different hair performers who would speak in to a microphone as they cut hair. Freaking crazy. My favorite was a girl in lingerie on stilts. Guess what she was selling? Curling irons, of course!!

Hair stage performer in action

I sat in on a couple break out sessions, learned a lot. We closed up the booth around six, with a few more orders. The feedback we got from attendees was great. But there were no other vendors selling technology directly to stylists, the other software companies were targeting enterprises sales to salons and spa owners. I look at this more of an opportunity than a problem.

Monday was “student day”, lots of students (dressed mostly in black and for whatever reason girls love to wear knee high boots, with short shorts, which was fine by me.). We had a few “be-backs” come back and order.

While I was hoping for a lot more orders due to the size of the show I came back encouraged. We plan on hitting a few spas and salons locally and see how that pans out. I need a hair cut anyway.

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