Tag Archives: conference

Day Two – Realtor Mid-Year

Posted on by
20

Yes, I am tardy with my report for Day 2. There was not much going on from an interesting meeting standpoint so I visited the tradeshow floor. For anyone that has not been to a Realtor tradeshow, it is certainly an experience. Flashing buttons, contests, people throwing free things at you. Having been to many of these, it always amazes me the types of companies that have booths. For example, there were several jewelry and makeup booths. While I am not a woman, it seems odd that they would come to a real estate tradeshow. It would be like having Titleist as a vendor. Lots of real estate guys like to play golf but they don’t really fit at a Realtor tradeshow. Then again, I am pretty dense about this stuff and they seemed to have a bunch of women buying stuff so I guess they are the smart ones.

I visited a bunch of booths but a couple stood out for different reasons:

Realtor.com – They intro’d a Zillow/HouseValues-like feature on their home page called “What’s Your Home Worth.” It is a lead generation system for agents that provides basic home value data and then let’s the consumer elect to get more refined info if they want from a “featured” agent. Agents can buy territories and they apparently will rotate as consumers access the feature. Once a consumer asks for more info, the “featured” agent will get an email and that consumer will see the particular “featured” agent for a period of time each time they return. With the large amount of traffic that R.com gets, it will be interesting to see how well the lead gen system works. I tried my zip code and there was already an agent signed up! I think this will be a winner for R.com and the agents that jump on it but I also think that agents will squak when their choice area is sold out.

HomePoint – This is a Trulia-like company (although the get data via the MLS directly) that is trying to become a portal of sorts. Agents sign up for territories and get “featured” when a consumer clicks on a listing. Again, this is a lead-gen system for agents that even extends to listing agents and FSBOs. The thing that I did not get was how they were going to generate traffic. No eyeballs, no leads.

More later….

Russ

Day One – Realtor Mid-Year

Posted on by
10

I just attended my first meeting at the NAR Mid-Year. It was the MLS Association Executives Committee Meeting. There were three presenters to the group and I will provide some highlights of their presentations.

Laurie Janik, NAR General Counsel

Laurie indicated that claims against MLS under the NAR EO Insurance Policy have for the first time surpassed the number of general association claims. Out of 32 claims made this year, 18 involve MLS issues. Of the 18, 8 involve the FTC, 7 the DOJ and one involves a state attorney general. Most of the claims revolve around whether an MLS can exclude Exclusive Agency listings from data feeds to third party websites (e.g. Realtor.com). Since Exclusive Agency listing allow the seller to sell the house themselves, MLSs argue that allowing these listings to be displayed on the Internet basically enables the seller to have free advertising to attract a buyer without paying the listing side of the commission.

Laurie also discussed the DOJ lawsuit. NAR filed a motion to dismiss which raised three arguments:

First, that the DOJ is seeking injunctive relief for the VOW policy that has been rescinded and never implemented and as a result, there is no relief that can be granted under this claim.

Second, that the VOW Opt Out provision is neutral on its face, there is a presumption of cooperation and that decisions to Opt-Out are based on independent action of each broker.

Third, that the DOJ’s claim against the current Internet Listings Display Policy does not allege any anti-competitive effect.

Laurie cautioned that Motions to Dismiss are rarely granted in the 7th Circuit (where the suit is pending). She also said that 14 MLSs have been involved in DOJ subpoenas and that the NAR insurance coverage for this claim is gone so the MLSs that are involved are now spending their own money to respond to the subpoenas.

Lastly, she indicated that there was a productive settlement conference. She believes a key issue in the case will revolve around the MLS definition of “Participant

Meeting of the Mind Camp

Posted on by
12

Wow!

I just returned from MindCamp2.0… and am now just getting mentally back on my feet enough to write a quick story of my adventure.

What is MindCamp?

MindCamp is an “unconference” organized by self-proclaimed geeks… I view it is a great place to learn about cutting edge computer stuff by the people who are most interested in teaching.

The idea is that you bring together 200 people and let them quickly hash out a schedule of sessions with about 6 of them running at any given time. Add plenty of coffee (thank you Starbucks), keep the conference running for 24-hour straight, and it definitely makes for a memorable event. And yes, people did stay up all night attending event, hashing out computer stuff and playing games.

[photopress:social_networking.jpg,thumb,alignright]I attended sessions on SEO, AJAX (these guys are developing some very interesting software for enterprise deployment), Social Networking (led by a co-founder of Biznik, a great Seattle-based business networking tool), Mash-ups, geo-location tools, solving transportation problems, and coffee brewing! I learned all kinds of interesting things.

In addition, Galen and I teamed up to host a session on “Social Networking in Real Estate” which turned out to be a lot of fun and give some great feedback about some interesting uses for social networking tools in developing real estate search sites. Just as Rain City Guide was getting bombarded with the “Bubble Faithful”, our session was temporarily overtaken by someone who wanted to focus the entire conversation on why housing in Seattle is a horrible investment. I did my best to keep us focused on potential users for social technologies in online real estate tools and I hope others who participated learned a little something.

If you’re curious what an “unconference” looks like, there are a bunch of photos available on Flickr, including this classic shot of Galen.

And if you’re wondering what it takes to run an event like this, look no farther than this great group of event volunteers and a lot of caffeine. My thanks goes out to all the great people who put together this fun event. I look forward to attending more of these in the future!