Where Real Estate Gets Its Dirt

Listing Bits Episode 84: Enabling Collaboration in the Home Buying Experience – with Tom MacLeod of ZenList

In preparation for a move, Tom MacLeod and his wife were looking at properties in the Bay Area. Tom was on Redfin. His wife was on Zillow. And they were receiving listings via email from their agent.

But none of the applications talked to each other. So, Tom was making a spreadsheet when he thought, “There’s got to be a better way.”

Tom is Cofounder of Zenlist, an agent-to-client home search that enables efficient collaboration by putting everyone in the same space. 

On this episode of Listing Bits, Tom describes how @properties helped him develop Zenlist and what differentiates his app from Homespotter, RealScout and other competitors in the space.

Tom shares Zenlist’s initial growth strategy, explaining why it didn’t include targeting MLS customers and how that’s changed.

Listen in to understand how Tom’s team gets consumers to download an app and learn how Zenlist is facilitating collaboration in the homebuying experience.

What’s Discussed:  

How Tom’s experience with moving inspired him to build Zenlist

Why Tom made the decision to bootstrap Zenlist over taking venture money

How Zenlist facilitates collaboration in the homebuying experience

Tom’s experience of developing Zenlist with the help of @properties

Zenlist’s initial growth strategy and why it didn’t include targeting MLS customers

What differentiates Zenlist from Homespotter, RealScout and other competitors in the space

Tom’s ambition to serve both real estate agents and consumers

Zenlist’s mobile capabilities and how it was called into action during the Rapattoni outage

How Zenlist is overcoming the challenge of getting consumers to download an app 

How consumers benefit from using Zenlist vs. Zillow or Redfin

Connect with Tom MacLeod:

Zenlist

Email tom@zenlist.com 

Resources:

SNL Skit on Zillow

Leo Pareja at eXp

Trackxi

Our Sponsor:

Cloud CMA for Brokers

Did Amazon just choose Lundy (not Zillow) to power the real estate voice search for Alexa?

I’m hearing YES! How cool is that!?

Previously you had to install Lundy’s real estate search as an “Alexa Skill”. From reports I’m getting markets where MLS organizations have partnerships with Lundy you can just ask Alexa straight up…

Alexa,

“Find me a house”
“Are there any homes for sale near me?”
“Help me buy a home.”

Current MLS partners for Lundy include:

Park City MLS, UT
Metrolist, CA
WARDEX, AZ
RMLS, CA
Valley MLS , AL
FMLS, FL
REcolorado, CO
Miami AOR, FL
Gulf Coast MLS, FL
Stellar MLS, FL
Greater Chattanooga, TN
Mid-Georgia MLS, FL

I wish this was set up in my market so I could test. (If your are in any of the markets above and have an Alexa device test it and tell me what you think.)

Amazon is doing some cool shit with AI and voice search, check out this video from their event last week.

I know Justin from Lundy will be at CMLS next week. I’m sure he will be happy to give demos.

Bill Hurley presents 2,851 Miles

Do yourself a favor an watch this presentation given at the ALL-IN Summit by noted Venture Capitalist Bill Gurley. It only about 35 mins and worth the watch.

What lesson can we learn in our industry from the phrase, “regulation is the friend of the incumbent”?

SentriLock and NAR deal turns 20

SentriLock Celebrates 20Years as Official Lockbox Solution of the National Association of REALTORS®

“SentriLock began when Scott Fisher, founder and CEO of SentriLock, with his partners, was working on improving the existing lockbox solution used by real estate agents. As the first working prototypes were being assembled, NAR made the decision to respond to member dissatisfaction of having only one lockbox solution and purchased majority interest in SentriLock. SentriLock and its new lockbox made its debut at the NAR Leadership Summit in August 2003 and, with its return to the Summit this year, SentriLock celebrates 20 years as the NAR’s official lockbox solution allowing REALTORS® to “Unlock their potential”.

Scott’s contribution to the industry goes even farther back to PC Access, which was an earlier competitor of mine (Lightning -Easy MLS Access) in the pre-internet days. Many years later Scott and I had a chance to sit down at lunch and talk about the old days of VT-100n, Moore Data, PRC, and BORIS. Congrats.

Inventor of PDF dies

John Warnock, Inventor of the PDF, Dies at 82

“The PDF was the result of Dr. Warnock’s abiding obsession since graduate school: finding a way to ensure that the graphics displayed on one computer — whether words or images — looked the exact same on another computer, or on a page from a printer, regardless of the manufacturer.

“It had been a holy grail in computer science to figure out how to communicate documents,” he said in a 2019 interview with Oxford University.

Clay Risen, reporting for The New York Times

Hard to think of another industry that has benefited from the PDF more than real estate. From forms to CMAs and everything in between. Thank you John.

AI AI AI AI AI AI AI AI AI AI AI

Why AI Will Save the World – Marc Andreessen

“The most validated core conclusion of social science across many decades and thousands of studies is that human intelligence makes a very broad range of life outcomes better. Smarter people have better outcomes in almost every domain of activity: academic achievement, job performance, occupational status, income, creativity, physical health, longevity, learning new skills, managing complex tasks, leadership, entrepreneurial success, conflict resolution, reading comprehension, financial decision making, understanding others’ perspectives, creative arts, parenting outcomes, and life satisfaction.

Further, human intelligence is the lever that we have used for millennia to create the world we live in today: science, technology, math, physics, chemistry, medicine, energy, construction, transportation, communication, art, music, culture, philosophy, ethics, morality. Without the application of intelligence on all these domains, we would all still be living in mud huts, scratching out a meager existence of subsistence farming. Instead we have used our intelligence to raise our standard of living on the order of 10,000X over the last 4,000 years.

What AI offers us is the opportunity to profoundly augment human intelligence to make all of these outcomes of intelligence – and many others, from the creation of new medicines to ways to solve climate change to technologies to reach the stars – much, much better from here.”

It’s becoming a bit of a game to count the times a speaker/vendor says or writes “AI”. Marc Andreessen, creator of the first web browser, who has written similar thought pieces such as “Why Software Is Eating the World” has penned another great piece (yes it’s long but worth the read) that I think will give context to all the jargonism (and fear) about AI.

Steve Jobs once said a computer is a “bicycle for the mind”. Well, I think we all just traded our bicycles for a jet pack.

Revaluate asks, “Does your CRM need a tune-up?”

Revaluate Data Repair Launch and PR

“For optimum marketing performance, A complete contact record includes four fields: Name, Phone, Email and physical address.  Today’s Leads are generated by various methods that don’t standardize these fields.  Leads frequently lack complete contact records, are outdated, inaccurate or false making marketing and sales efforts inefficient and costly. Existing methods for cleaning and completing data sets is costly, time consuming and frankly, rarely available.”

I kind of love this idea. Basically this is going to append any missing data from your contacts list in your CRM. Revaluate has a list of CRM vendors they already have integrations with here. Worth sharing to any agents you may work.

Second Century extends its REACH down under

Second Century Ventures Announces Eight Companies Selected to 2023 REACH Australia Technology Growth Program

“Second Century Ventures, the strategic investment arm of the National Association of Realtors® and the most active global real estate technology fund, announced today the acceptance of eight companies to the 2023 REACH Australia program. Now entering its fourth year in Australia, the REACH growth program is designed to help technology companies scale their growth and make a lasting impact across real estate communities worldwide.”

Back in the day, the biggest 3rd party software company in real estate tech was Top Producer. Top Producer was a Canadian company. In fact, there were many Canadian 3rd party software companies doing business in the US. Now it seems that Australians are the new Canadians.

FMLS launches Lundy’s “Finding Homes” assisting the blind and visually impaired with home search

FMLS Introduces New Technology to Assist Blind & Visually Impaired Individuals Access to Listings in Georgia and Beyond

“The technology app is called “Finding Homes” and works with Amazon’s Alexa to help visually impaired homebuyers and sellers access FMLS real estate listings. Through the app, consumers can ask questions via Alexa, such as “provide property details of 111 Main Street in Atlanta, Georgia, or how large is the lot.” The data from FMLS listings are delivered in complete sentences using the voice of Alexa.”

“Alexa, find me a home below a million dollars in Buckhead”

“Alexa?”

“Alexa?”

“Alexa?”

Restb.ai partners with two MLS providers

Restb.ai now has deals with two MLS providers, UtahRealEstate.com and the Miami Board of REALTORS. From the press release of UtahRealEstate.com

“URE will implement Restb.ai’s Advanced Tagging and photo Duplicate Detection solutions. These solutions will enable URE to focus on modernizing the listing input process through digitalization and photo tagging. URE intends to utilize Restb.ai’s Auto-Pop Listing API to streamline the listing input process for its members and bring new tools to the photo upload process.”

These new features are part of a new “MLS Suite” of tools announced back in September.

Restb.ai, the leading provider of computer vision and AI for real estate, announces the launch of its new MLS suite, a group of software solutions devoted to modernizing MLSs. The AI powered products were developed to assist Multiple Listing Services in automating the listing input process, providing WCAG & ADA protections for members of IDX/VOW websites and enriching and increasing the value of MLS data. “

Super cool tech. Congrats to Lisa Larson and the rest of the Restb.ai team.

Sponsored By MLS Reset