Author Archives: Robbie

Dear Zillow-meisters – Better start makin’ copies of the Trulia-nator

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The folks at Trulia, have just released a new feature that is cooler than the frozen tundra of Lambeau Field. In fact, I think Zillow and Realtor.com will need to order more photocopiers. Trulia has just released their Trulia Publisher Platform, and the coolness of this feature is that it lets publishers use their search technology, with your listings, with a publisher’s co-branding, and at no cost to the publisher. This is the real estate equivalent of Google AdSense and will change the nature of the real estate web advertising game, perhaps drastically.

Currently, Trulia has signed up Kiplinger, American Towns, and perhaps most interesting, Seattle Weekly. Getting Seattle Weekly as a publishing partner has to annoy Zillow more than Apple giving free computers to Redmond-area schools annoyed Microsoft. If Trulia can sign up more publishers (frankly the value proposition is so simple & compelling for small to medium sized publishers, I can’t think of a reason why they won’t sign up) they are going to have to upgrade their servers to handle the increase in traffic.

What’s this mean for publishers? Well if they are small or medium sized, they just got a much more effective way of associating their brand and increasing real estate related web traffic. Granted, Trulia controls the listings and the technology, but if your core competency isn’t real estate search, getting a co-branded search tool is much more cost effective. And since Trulia has over 2 million listings, the publishers will probably get more traffic & ad revenue too. Seems like an easy decision to me.

If you’re a big publisher, it’s a much harder decision. But since developing technology is expensive and getting listings critical mass is difficult, I suspect the desire to partner w/ Trulia got much stronger unless you’re a direct Trulia competitor. If Trulia gets big web media players to partner with it, things could get very interesting.

What’s this mean for Realtor.com? I dunno, but it’s increasingly looking like they are going to get HouseValued (yes, I just made that verb up), if they don’t show some brain activity.

What’s this mean for Zillow? Just when Zillow’s listings feed program was getting off the ground, Trulia does this! I’m guessing the sales & engineering departments just learned what they are going to be working on for the next several months.

What’s this mean for the broker in the trenches or realtor on the street? Well, if you have a Trulia listings feed, you just got more free exposure. If you pay Trulia to feature your listings more prominently, well you just got a much better return on your investment. If you liked the free traffic Trulia gave you before, you’re going to LOVE them now. Perhaps even more than the 12th man, loves his Seahawks.

Deep thoughts & a shameless plug

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Happy 2008 everybody

For most of the past 6 months, I’ve been working too hard writing e-commerce software at my day job. So, in case you’re curious why I’ve had a lower profile than usual, it’s because I’ve been spending too much time living in e-commerce land, instead of real estate land. On plus side though, our big project is nearing completion and my software engineering skills are approaching Ninja Warrior levels, so I feel good about the year that just passed. Fortunately, I’ve still been reading RE.net blogs actively, despite the fact I haven’t been writing as much as I’d like. Frankly, my brain is kind of tired from trying to co-develop an Amazon clone for the past year.

As 2007 has come to a close, I’ve had to a chance to reflect upon what the past year has given us and where the future may take us. Despite the bearish real estate industry outlook nationwide, I’m an optimistic that 2008 will be a very interesting year. Here are my thoughts on the year ahead

Inman missed somebody

Although, Inman’s list of 10 people to watch is insightful, I personally would add Michael Wurzer of FlexMLS to that list. His recent passionate and tireless efforts to be an advocate for RETS, and his current efforts to bring many of the players of the industry together is very encouraging. I’d almost be willing to say 2008 will be the year of RETS, like 2005 was the year of the blog, 2006 was the year of AJAX maps & 2007 was the year of the feed. I’m starting to feel like RETS will be like NBA basketball in Seattle (just because it’s not here, don’t mean it’s not the real deal elsewhere), which is a marked improvement to how I felt a year ago. Perhaps, I need to write an Open Letter to NWMLS brokers, agents and vendors, similar to what Michael & David Harris have done to toward the industry?

Will data visualization be the next big thing?

I also think that Real Estate data visualization or analytics is bound to become a real big deal in the near future. The efforts of Altos Reasearch and Zillow are making it easy to convert market information into pretty pie & bar charts, and the heat maps from Cyberhomes and HotPads are very insightful. Granted, Wall Street has been doing some of this for quite some time, but I think the real estate industry is ready to take the next step. In order to create cool charts, you need the raw data, and RETS will make that possible (or at least much easier). Once Joe Broker can get at the raw data, the cool charts can come courtesy of Microsoft Office, Google’s new charting API, or something a bit more powerful. I get giddy just thinking about the possibilities.

I think it’s going to take more time, but I think heat maps are going to get much bigger / better too. With Microsoft finally adding first class geospatial support to SQL Server this year (finally joining the party that Postgress, IBM DB2, and Oracle were already at), and Microsoft’s & Google’s ongoing battle for control of digital earth becoming a fertile playground for other map/data vendors, I think the MLSes / big brokers will probably start embracing data visualization on their web sites, since the technology is becoming more affordable, easier to use, and because most brokers / agents want pretty charts & maps with their name & brand on it, instead somebody else’s.

The glass is still half full

Having lived through the great tech wreck (or dot.com bubble if you prefer) I think it’s helpful to remember that someday the mortgage meltdown and real estate slump will come to end. If you believe in the future of real estate in your community (and most of you wouldn’t be reading this blog if you didn’t), now is a great time to invest in your business or yourself while your competitors exit the business in bad times. If that means adding great people to your staff, encouraging the less effective agents to get out or get better or finding better opportunities elsewhere, learning more about technology, or just plain blogging more often, just do something, to make yourself better. When the market turns around, you’ll hopefully be more successful than ever with fewer competitors.

Also, despite the fact I often complain about the state of MLS data in the industry, the real estate industry aren’t the tech laggards they portray themselves to be. After the tech industry, real estate is probably a very close second in terms of blogging and consumer transparency. You’re probably among the leaders in using mobile technologies, you’re your helping push the limits mapping technology and helping vendors define the direction. For example, a typical e-commerce store finder is way inferior to the AJAX maps so many real estate web sites now have.

Warning: Shameless plug ahead

My star client (Gordon Stephenson of Real Property Associates) finally set up his Real Estate from the Trenches blog at http://blog.seattlehouses.com/. I especially enjoyed his predictions for the new year post. I also had next nothing to do with it (I only helped w/ domain black magic and added links to their blog from their main web site), he did all the heavy lifting himself (see anybody can set up a blog). I also want to thank him for his business this past year, and introducing me to Rod Mar’s (Seattle Times Sports Photographer) – Best Seat in the House blog. I have a new appreciation for photography & the Seahawks thanks to his entertaining blog. Anyway, add them both to your favorite feed reader.

A Fistful of Feeds

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The man with no nameCue up the Ennio Morricone music and head for the hills! There’s been some recent talking among the town folk, about the feeding frenzy that’s happening out there on the wild web of the west. Let’s just say San Miguel will never be the same once the schema with no XSD enters town.

Just when you thought it was safe in digital listing land, it’s going to get a little wilder. You see, Jesse ‘Zillow’ James has got a new six shooter and is getting ready to take your listings, publish them for the world to see, and give the town sheriff something else to think about. Right now, Jesse is just at target practice, but high noon at the O.K. Corral is coming soon enough.

Even better, Jesse has been taking marksmanship lessons from Wild Bill Gates’ old play book. It’s every bit as clever as the lead shield old Clint used in the movies. You see, Zillow’s doing 2 things which show they’ve learned the “embrace and extend” tactics from yesterday’s web slinging masters.

First, Zillow is embracing Trulia’s feed format – This move means that anybody who already has a Trulia listings feed will be able to get their listings onto Zillow with than less than 10 minutes of effort (the amount of time it takes to fill out a form with your feed url). It’s entirely possible that by doing this, Trulia’s feed format will become the “de-facto” industry standard. (Which wouldn’t be all bad)

Secondly, Zillow’s extending the purpose of Trulia’s format, by coming out with their own feed format – OK, some of you are already thinking, oh great, another XML format I need to implement and support. However, I think Zillow will be able to garner support for their ZIF format because of the following reasons.

  1. Their spec is simple to understand. Unlike GoogleBase & edgeio, which seem to be trying to win an Obfuscated XML code contest with their name spaced RSS mess, Zillow’s feed documentation is every bit as clear as the current industry feed leader, Trulia.
  2. Their spec is comprehensive. The only industry schema that compares to the breadth and depth of the Zillow’s XML Schema is RETS. Except Zillow has the benefit of not having to getting 900 MLS boards to play nice together.
  3. Doc ‘Trulia’ Holliday is not dumb. A master gun fighter in his own right, nothing is preventing Trulia from embracing the Zillow feed standard as their V2 spec. If that happens, RETS may suffer the same fate as Lester Moore. Out here on the wild web of the west, there’s the quick and the dead.
  4. Oh yeah, they also get about 4+ million monthly visitors on their web site.

Anyway, grab the popcorn; it’s going to be show!

Steal This Blog Post – Friday Fun with Splog Busters!

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I recently discovered my last blog post was spotted on several different splogs. On the one hand, I’m flattered that somebody thinks highly enough of my content to copy it and on the other hand, it’s still theft and it could cost you money.

It’s no secret that Mr. Swan holds splogs in same high regard that the Viacom holds YouTube & Google in right now. In fact, he has even attempted to contact splog owners in order to get them to remove the offending content. (Good luck with that Greg – your gonna love this blog post). Mr. Luther has more enlightened attitude toward the problem. He believed that if someone is stealing your content, that almost always means that you’re writing good stuff!

I used to be closer to Dustin’s feelings than Greg’s. However recent events have caused me to rethink my position on this matter. You see, I recently learned that bandwidth isn’t free. Because of all the MLS image downloading, web page serving, and image transferring my server applications and web sites did last month, my hosting company hit me with a $50 fee because I exceeded my 100 GB/month bandwidth quota. Needless to say, I wasn’t pleased to be paying more for hosting (Anybody know of any co-location companies on the Eastside besides Isomedia? If this becomes expensive, I might be going data center shopping again).

Despite this unfortunate event, I did learn that conserving bandwidth does save money and improve site performance (previously the financial aspects of bandwidth conservation never hit home). So, I’ve recently had an enlightened change of heart.

I obviously don’t value my content like Greg value’s his. I see my content as just my semi-interesting rambling that has the nice side effect of creating name recognition for myself, my company, and Rain City Guide. After all, when a splog steals a blog post, they keep the original links and images intact. And since all those links usually refer back to Rain City Guide, it probably helps our Google Rank more than hurts. And it doesn’t cost me anything, if you make a copy.

However, I value my bandwidth. If you hotlink to images on my web site or my blog, you are now costing me money. Although, there are easier ways of avoiding the issue, I decided think like a geek instead of thinking like a real estate blogger.

While you send e-mail to people that may not exist, I just break out the ye old C# compiler and the HTTP documentation and invent an ASP.net HTTP handler that returns a dynamic image and embarrasses the splog host to stop hot-linking to my images.

Anyway, if you’re interested in how easy this trick is to pull off, I’ll post the C# source code for this dynamic image on my blog this weekend, so at least Greg can fight back against sploggers and Greg’s computer genius son can learn a new web trick from an old master… (PS – Although, I’m not a native PHP speaker, I’ll help your son translate it, if he doesn’t get what I did)

If you hosted this image from a web page on your web site, like I did on my blog, you’d see a “[your website] is a splog. Visit raincityguide.com” image. And if you hosted this image on raincityguide.com, you’d get the following image.

Needless, to say, once you understand the technology involved, it opens up all sorts of fun possibilities. For example, you could…

  • Create blog posts with invisible images, that turn into giant splog warning images when hosted by a splog
  • Create images that display genuine content on your site, but display pornography or other objectionable content on a splogger’s site
  • Create images that display genuine content on your site, but turn invisible on a splogger’s site
  • Create images that display content on your site, but return HTTP 403 Forbidden codes on a splogger’s site

If you host your own blog, and aren’t quite so geeky and cheap to write code to solve problem, you can use software like Port 80 software’s LinkDeny on Microsoft’s IIS which is by far the most flexible solution to dealing with image leeching problems. If you host a WordPress blog on a LAMP platform, you can probably configure Apache Mod-Security or Mod-Rewrite to pull off similar tricks.

Where should the MLS end and the IDX begin?

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The whole ruckus over the NWMLS no longer sending its member’s listings to realtor.com inspired many unlit pixels of commentary and many more wasted bytes of hard drive space. As I pondered a while ago, the industry appears to have a healthy appetite for technology. However, one of the comments was really insightful….

I still feel that this decision made by the board was wrong. As was the decision last year to disable the client email updates from Locator. We have the technology but are unwilling to use it. I have no love of REALTOR.com but I see no problem with sharing a limited set of data with them and offering our sellers maximum exposure of their listing. In fact, perhaps one of the reasons they discontinued the feed was because as Galen said, “Realtor.com was given the exclusive non-broker feed…” and they were getting pressure from Google and others to get a similar feed. I say give it to them. NWMLS has the ability to provide its members, all of them, with the technology usually reserved only for those with very deep pockets.

The whole thing got me wondering if this just a tactic for the big brokers to keep their upstarts at bay? Because of the MLS system, the big brokers share their listings inventory, with the smaller and independent brokers. However, perhaps the big brokers want the technology out of the MLS, because it harms the smaller upstarts without withholding listings from them?

Maybe there’s a less nefarious motivation. Since the NWMLS board appears to be dominated by members that belong to big brokers, perhaps they don’t want the NWMLS spending its’ limited computing resources (at the end of the day, even the Google’s & Microsoft’s have limited budgets, they just have a few more zeros at the end than most of us do) in areas where a big broker’s IT department or a motivated IDX vendor could do a better job. Regardless of the motivations, it does bring an interesting issue to light.

What should the MLS responsibilities be in terms of listing change notification, statistics/reporting, automated listing distribution, listing access via mobile devices or any number of things that either an MLS or an IDX vendor could provide?

I’m sure the big brokers are less enthusiastic about this type of thing because some have probably already invented these kind of technologies in house years ago (and paid for it out of their own pocket). They probably also see the MLS as competition for viewer eyeballs and would rather the MLS make it easier to combine listings data across their empires instead of being a shared technology provider. MLS regionalization is probably much higher on their MLS IT wish list. After all, the point of an MLS is to share listings data, not share listings technology.

The independent agents and the smaller brokers, probably want the MLS to provide these services, so they don’t have invest any more money in their IDX vendor / IT infrastructure that they don’t have to. I also suspect a lot people in that market segment see technology as an expense and not as an investment. They only want it, if they don’t have to pay for it.

As for me, I’m just an IDX vendor (I don’t have a dog in the fight). From my biased perspective, the less the MLS does, the more valuable my technology becomes, the more useful my services become, and the more opportunities for paying customers I get. I want you to spend money on your IT infrastructure and your IDX vendor! Apparently, the big brokers want you to do the same via their MLS policy direction!

Homepages.com – Now less bad

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I was reading an article on HouseValues on the Motely Fool. I discovered they relaunched their site recently. Anyway, here’s a quick rundown of the things I noticed…

  • They are now using MS Virtual Earth instead of their old flash map
  • I like how they integrated “Home Buying”, “Home Selling”, “Loans” into tabs onto one site
  • Home value feature is still a lead generator for agents
  • More ads from non real estate advertisers (T-mobile, Dish Network)
  • Site feels sluggish

It’s a little better, but not by enough to change any business issues that the company has.

Adventures Revisited – Is Realtor.com brain dead or just dead?

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As you may have heard, the NWMLS has decided to no longer license the display of its member’s listings on REALTOR.com® or to continue sending those listings on a broker’s behalf, effective June 1, 2007. You can read details about this here. Perhaps this is the beginning of the end for the old standby? The lumbering beast that is Move.com reminds of another lumbering beast that was once in a state of corporate old age. However, I don’t see Louis V. Gerstner, Jr. (IBM’s CEO alumnus) coming to Move’s rescue any time soon.

Anyway, because of this decision, if a broker wants to get their listings on Realtor.com it is now the IDX vendors responsibility to export or upload their client’s listings to Realtor.com. Of course you could use to just Move as your IDX vendor, but given the general lack of innovation they’ve had on their web properties, I wouldn’t want to go that route.

This is significant for many reasons. The first of which is the increased responsibility of IDX vendors now face. Historically, we just had to download MLS data and maintain web sites. Now, we have to do that and create & maintain feeds or mechanisms to other 3rd party consumers of real estate content (Trulia, Propsmart, GoogleBase, etc). Sure there are vendors like vFlyer or Postlets that help with this dilemma, but I suspect many brokers with any significant inventory would rather have their IDX vendor just automate everything.

The second of which, is now Realtor.com has to compete for the mindshare (to paraphrase Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer) of “IDX Vendors, IDX Vendors, IDX Vendors” and “Brokers, Brokers, Brokers”. If the happenings with NWMLS, become a nationwide movement and Realtor.com no longer has MLS support, then it will have to compete against Trulia, Zillow, and a cast of dozens for your listings.

I’m sure brokers and agents have many interesting things to say about Realtor.com, however as an IDX vendor I really don’t care about the industry politics. I just want to serve my clients in a cost effective manner, make them happy, and make a fair profit.

Unfortunately, whoever designed this specification really has no clue as to how things should be done in the 21st century and didn’t read my Adventures in Digital Listing Land blog post. Sure, if this had happened in say 1992, the approach they took for listings data uploading would’ve been a reasonable approach. And although I liked 1992, I don’t use 486 66’s anymore!

For comparison’s sake, here’s what I had to do to support Trulia (BTW – Oodle and Propsmart were equally easy to support, I’m just using them as an example because they read my blog posts).

  • Create an XML document that contains listing data, not unlike an RSS feed (OK, change some XML tags and tweak a few things, whatever)
  • Make sure listing photos are accessible via http urls (I already have them on a web site, so this is easy enough to do)
  • Tell Trulia what the url is for the feed, watch the listings appear on Trulia with no additional effort on my part
  • Blog about the pleasant experience

And here’s what I’ll have in order to provide a feed for realtor.com

  • Set up an FTP account with Realtor.com (great, one more username and password to lose)
  • Realtor.com requires pipe delimited text for listing data (everybody else uses XML, grrrr)
  • Realtor.com requires I upload the listing data to them via ftp (everybody but GoogleBase downloads it via http, yuck)
  • Realtor.com requires I upload the images to them via ftp (everybody else downloads them via http, lame)
  • Realtor.com requires I package said images up in a zip file (Nobody else has this requirement, Lame)
  • Realtor.com requires I name/number the images a certain way (Nobody else has this requirement, LAME)
  • Realtor.com prefers I resize the images to certain size (Nobody else has this requirement, LAME!!!)
  • Realtor.com prefers I only do incremental photo uploads (Nobody else has this requirement, are you kidding me!?!?)
  • Complain to Dustin (WTF dude!)
  • Explain to customers why I have to bill them for 8 hours of engineering time, instead of 2 hours (It sucks, I’m sorry, it’s not my fault)
  • Blog about the whole rotten experience while I write my image zip / ftp uploading code.

When Zillow, MS Live Expo, Realtor.com 2.0 or the next great startup wants to get into the digital listing importing game, I have 3 words of advice, Embrace and extend. Or to put it in terms more people would understand, Copy Trulia.

Like a Virgin

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Ever since I started my own blog, I feel like a virgin. It’s like I’m blogging for the first time. I feel so shiny and new. Although, there’s one thing I haven’t quite figured out. Perhaps the multi-bloggers out there can chime in. You see, I’m not quite sure where my blog begins and Rain City Guide ends. Right now, I try to keep the geekier stuff on my blog and the more general interest stuff here. Of course since Rain City Guide has such a large audience, there’s always the temptation to post everything here (even if it doesn’t belong here).

For example, I’m getting ready to start work on the next version of Zearch (codenamed: NIMITZ). I’m thinking about putting my design ideas & implementation notes on my blog. Does it belong there? Well, I think I’ll cross-post things that pass the floor wax and a desert topping test. If it’s geeky and real estate-y or blog-y (BTW – are those real words? It’s so much easier to add a -y than spell out real estate related or blog related) I probably should post on both, but keep the meat on my blog (kinda like what I did with my blogging with Word 2007 post).

I’m sure many folks who participate on ActiveRain face similar dilemmas. The Queen of RE blogging has given me her advice, but I figured more advice is better than less advice. Besides, I don’t have as much dirty laundry to air as she does. I guess I’ll just do what Madonna would’ve done. I’ll just get into a groove and post where it feels so good inside. Ooh baby… Yeah!

Blogging in luxury & style with Word 2007

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Well, I’ve had my own blog for a couple weeks now. So far, I am loving Subtext. Comparing Subtext to WordPress is like comparing a Cadillac CTS-V to a BMW M3. The standard is the still the one to beat, although the race is much closer than you might think it should be. Although it doesn’t have the refinement of the BMW, it does have a close working relationship with the Corvette parts bin and has the potential to be a world beater.

However, during that time, I’ve discovered something even cooler than a V-series Cadillac sitting in my blogging garage and that’s the new Microsoft Word 2007. Think of it as the Lexus LS-460 of blogging sedans.

Anyway creating a blog post with pictures is as easy as using Word (and it creates clean HTML markup too). If you don’t believe me, the View Source command is just a mouse click away. That’s OK, I’ll wait…

Now that I have your attention, here’s a guided tour of how I created this blog post with Word 2007. First, you need put your keys in the ignition and start your engines (or just start winword.exe using your favorite command shell). After your hard drive is done doing its 0 – 60 MB sprint, you’ll see an empty document window.

Now you need to click on the “pearl” (aka the Office button), and select Publish – Blog from the menu. Now that you’ve created an empty blog post document, you need to configure Word 2007, so it’ll be able to post to your blog. If it’s your first time, Word 2007 will prompt you for a Blog Account, otherwise you’ll to click on the manage accounts button in the ribbon (aka where the toolbar used to be) to add your blog. For my demo, I’ll add my Rain City Guide account settings.

From the Blog Accounts dialog, click New and you’ll then see the New Blog Account dialog. Word 2007 has support for Windows Live Spaces, Blogger, SharePoint, Community Server, TypePad, WordPress, and other blogs that support the Atom or MetaWebLog APIs. Since RCG proudly uses WordPress, I selected that and proceeded to the next dialog. (FYI – Subtext uses MetaWebLog)

Then on the new WordPress Account dialog, you enter the blog post url and your account info, click OK and your ready to burn some rubber. Since I’m behind on my quota for my blog, I plan on writing a comprehensive review of what Word 2007 can do for your blog on my Caffeinated Blog this weekend.

Anyway, if you’re a blogging enthusiast, I highly recommend you take Word 2007 out for a test drive. I usually don’t impress easily, but Ecto and Blogjet has some formidable competition now.

What I admire about real estate

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I was thinking about what my technology & business development plan is going to be for the next version of Zearch, and it reminded me what I really admire about real estate professionals.

You see, it’s occurred to me that people in this industry are self-employed entrepreneurs, free agents, and independent consultants. It doesn’t matter if they own a RE/MAX franchise, an independent brokerage, or is just an agent starting out. They don’t have a safety net of a 9-to-5 job. They also don’t have to deal with the inane responsibilities that life in a cube farm curses you with. But most importantly, they bare all the responsibilities and they reap the ultimate rewards of their eventual success or failure. For the most part, they only answer to themselves and their clients.

As somebody who shares the dream of becoming self-employed, I certainly admire the difficulties of obtaining that objective. Which brings me to asking the following questions of my entrepreneurial mentors?

  1. How did you get involved in real estate? Was it your first career choice or your second (or third, etc.)? Did you have any mentors or role models when you started?
  2. Why did you get involved? Was it the freedom that working for yourself brings? Was it the possibility of having a larger income (with a lot of effort, of course – there is no easy way)? Did you enter the industry because you enjoy helping people attain the American dream of home ownership?
  3. How long did it take you to “make it”? When did you know that you’ve “made it”? Did you try to work a day job when you got started or did you jump in with both feet with no safety net?
  4. If you haven’t made it yet or didn’t make it, what have you learned from experience?
  5. Knowing what you know now, what would’ve done differently when you started out?
  6. Any other insights you’ve gained on the road to being your own CEO? Has the journey been all that you hoped it would be?