Where Real Estate Gets Its Dirt

Anatomy of a Zestimate

Jasjeet Thind writing at Zillow Data Science Blog.

Home Value Estimates:Understanding Their Purposes And Evaluating Their Results

“In the case of the Zestimate modeling framework, which contains numerous submodels, each estimating a home’s value via different valuation approaches and data inputs, our goal of independence means that the listing price is not a factor in any of our valuation submodels.”

Fascinating read on what goes in to Zillow’s Zestimates. I also love the comparison of how Zillow’s methodology differs from Redfin’s AFTER the home comes on the market.

Boston Logic buys Propertybase

Teke Wiggin for Inman News:
Boston Logic buys Propertybase, with more acquisitions in sight

“Boston Logic CEO David Friedman declined to disclose terms of the deal, other than to say that Propertybase will retain all of its employees.

Boston Logic became Providence Equity’s “platform for acquisition” of real estate software after the private equity firm, which has $50 billion in capital under management, made an undisclosed investment in Boston Logic last year. Drawing on Providence Equity’s deep pockets, it’s looking to build real estate tech portfolios through acquisitions — a goal shared by some other well-heeled firms like Zillow Group.

“We are looking at a lot of opportunities out there,” Friedman said. “Price does not scare us away.”

Boston Logic was attracted to Propertybase because of its global reach and effective use of the Salesforce platform.”

Consolidation is happening everywhere. On a side note David Friedman was my very first guest on my Listing Bits podcast. You can listen to it here.

Clareity’s 2017 REALTORS® Legislative Meetings & Trade Expo Report

Matt Cohen does a great service to all of us for recapping some of the highlights of recent the N.A.R. Midyear meetings. You should check it out here.

I totally have to agree with this observation about the trade show.

” With all of the jewelry and other gear on the floor, one software vendor told us they thought it felt like a “flea market” down there.”

And our team at W+R Studios totally appreciates the recognition of Cloud MLX.

“Clareity has never included an MLS “front end” in this section of our report before, but we think W+R’s Cloud MLX deserves a shout-out here. There are now over 35 MLSs, covering over 200,000 agents on the platform.

HouseCanary preso at Google Next

These guys are doing some very cool stuff in regards to home valuations. Check out this video of HouseCanary CEO, Jeremy Sicklick, giving a presentation at Google Next.

Here’s the press release.

HOUSECANARY ANNOUNCES COLLABORATION WITH GOOGLE CLOUD PLATFORM

HouseCanary’s predictive data analytics engine processes thousands of data elements spanning 40 years of historical data and one billion residential real estate transactions. HouseCanary indexes, standardizes, and analyzes the data to forecast home-price valuations and market trends for 3 million residential blocks, 18,000 zip codes, and 381 U.S. metropolitan areas. Using the latest machine learning and data modeling techniques, HouseCanary’s team of data scientists and engineers have developed the industry-leading approach to modernize the residential real estate market.

MetroList Services Inc. adds RatePlug

MetroList® Gives Agents Powerful New Mortgage Affordability Tool

“RatePlug brings mortgage transparency to the home buying process, helping buyers better understand affordability issues at the very beginning of the home searching process, and it helps consumers “buy local,” as local lender data is provided by mortgage providers. RatePlug has become the nation’s leading mortgage technology integrated into the MLS and is now available to more than 60 percent of all real estate agents and brokers in the U.S. — or nearly 750,000 REALTORS® nationwide.

“MetroList agents can now provide homebuyers a clear picture of what they really can afford upfront and as they are viewing a property,” said Dave Howe, Director of MLS Operations at MetroList. “Setting accurate consumer expectations will help buyers and real estate agents reduce the number of surprises that can come from purchasing a home.”

Nice get for RatePlug. One quibble, I wish RatePlug would offer this data as an API. I know a few vendors (including W+R) that would love add this type of data but need to have formatting control to match their apps.

Congrats to Brad and his team.

Hunger makes the best sauce

GregDanAward
Dan and I want to send a big thank you to Brad and everyone else at Inman News for the unexpected honor of winning this year Most Innovative Technology Award for Cloud MLX. We also want to thank all of you who have supported us over the 25 years we’ve been in real estate technology. We are just getting started with Cloud MLX and can’t wait to show you more. Thanks!

P.S. Looks like Katie was pretty stoked too.

Annie Ives Profiled in Angeleno Magazine

AnnieNews: CEO Annie Ives Profiled in Angeleno Magazine
A fabulous looking Annie Ives was profiled in Angeleno Magazine. She was listed in the “Power Players” section. Annie really has an incredible story. Below is a quote from the profile.

“The MLS (TM) has undergone incredible changes under Ives’ 20-year leadership. In 2002, with her guidance, the company evolved from a full-service site being managed by a software company to a turnkey, fully independent entity with internally developed and wholly owned and operated systems:THEMLSPRO Member Site and TheMLS.com Guest Site.”

I will also add their new product, MLSPLUS, is getting a lot of buzz locally.
Go get ’em Annie!

Cloud Streams’ listing alerts beat all major portals

2832655241372408853I wanted to publish a little more background on Andrea V. Brambila’s article this morning on Inman News.

“How quick and reliable are portal listing alerts?”

W&R Studios did an experiment in the later part of 2015. They registered on all major listing portals, set up a saved search, and turned on their listing alerts. They started with two different cities – one covered by CRMLS in Southern California (Huntington Beach), and another city in Washington state (Auburn), covered by NWMLS. They choose these markets because they were on the same MLS system (Matrix) and wanted to test how these alerts would be affected by MLS providers that have direct data agreements with major listing portals.

In the case of Redfin and Estately they are both brokers as well as portals, so both have the advantage of getting a direct feed from the MLS. They fared well in the test, but still not enough to beat Cloud Streams.

In CRMLS listing alerts sent out via Cloud Streams came in (on average) 1 hour and 4min faster than Redfin listing alerts. Over 5 hour and 20 minutes (on average) than Zillow.

Check out the other results below:

Fastest alerts in the west

Does having a direct data agreement with the MLS make a difference? You bet. Check out below:

alert speed vs direct agreements

Also, what about “auto-prospecting” systems on the MLS? Wouldn’t these always be the fastest? Nope. Since most MLS systems send out alerts on a “Daily” basis and Cloud Streams sends alerts out in “real-time”, Cloud Streams wins again.

Plus when you add that Cloud Streams listings alerts can be sent out via text, instead of a buyer sorting through multiple emails, this increases the speed of when a buyer sees the listing.

Why does this matter? Two big reasons.

1. Being the fist to know when new listings (or updates) hit the market is a huge advantage to buyers. Especially in markets with low inventory or desirable neighborhoods.

2. This helps agents leverage their best asset, access to real-time MLS data, and gives their buyers a clear reason to use an agent, faster (the fastest) access to market data.

Want to help your MLS members compete with major listing portals?

We already have 40 MLS providers up and running with Cloud Streams. Over 200,000 agents who receive Cloud Streams as a free member benefit. Katie and I will be at Clareity’s MLS Executive Workshop this week to answer any questions. See you in Scottsdale!

Matrix users top 500,000

Matrix By CoreLogic Exceeds Half a Million Users

““This is a truly momentous milestone,” said Chris Bennett, general manager of Real Estate Solutions for CoreLogic. “Historically, the MLS industry has been fractured by many competing vendors, with no one system able to emerge as the dominant standard. Matrix has changed that.”

The 500,000 figure does not include accounts where Matrix operates in parallel with another multiple listing platform, nor does it include clients in the Matrix implementation queue, which represents more than 100,000 additional users.”

If I had to pick one of the smartest acquisitions in the modern MLS industry CoreLogic buying Tarasoft would have to be one of the top 3. Think about it. Where would CoreLogic be without it? A huge congratulations to Chris Bennett and his team, its easy to see why Chris is receiving many accolades, including being listed on Swanepoel’s POWER 200 of “The Most Powerful People in Residential Real Estate 2016”

Spacio Pro Open House app adds RealSatisfied integration

Melissa Kwan of Spacio got a nice write up yesterday on Tech Crunch. Part of post focused on her killer Open House App, Spacio Pro. If you have checked it out you really should, very well done.

They recently announced an integration with Real Satisfied.

Spacio Pro Plans To Supercharge Open House Showings With A Smart App

“Spacio Pro’s pitch is the “Paperless Open House”. In other words, increasing the conversion of data capture at open houses and helping agents turn strangers into customers. It’s app provides the check-in experience for buyers on the front end, and logs everything on the back-end so agents can revisit leads in the future. Better than pen and paper!

Spacio Pro has now done a collaboration with real estate customer satisfaction platform, RealSatisfied, where their customers can integrate their reviews and testimonials directly on the Spacio Pro sign-in form, improving their first impression with potential buyers by sharing past successes.”

I have to say the RealSatisfied has made integrating agent reviews (survey results) super easy. Smart.

Sponsored By MLS Reset