I have a feeling we’re going to be talking about a whole variety of things that went down at NAR Legislative Meetings & Trade Expo (aka, “Midyear”) this year for months and years to come. It’s been a great week, but rough on the sleep schedule, so these are not exactly deeply-thought-out opinions here. It’s … Read more
I’m still at the NAR Midyear Legislative Sessions and heading out to meetings soon, so this will be brief. By now, you know that NAR’s Finance and Executive Committees have approved RPR to become the platform for the hitherto-mysterious Project Upstream. Inman News has coverage of the decision. Thing is, this decision highlights precisely what … Read more
Now that I’ve been liberated from some of my confidentiality constraints (see my previous post, which required permission from various companies I had non-disclosure agreements with, as well as permission from a client to discuss work I had done for them), I can opine more freely about the topic of RPR, Advanced Multi-List Platform (“AMP”), … Read more
[NOTE: This is a post I wrote for a client, SIRMLS, and decided to cross-post to my blog because it tells so much of my personal involvement in it. Thanks to Tim Dain and to SIRMLS for the opportunity to tell the story, and granting me permission to cross-post to my blog.] “Something hit me … Read more
I recently had the pleasure of talking to Andrew Flachner of RealScout, who penned this article on Inman recently: The answer to me, and to many real estate veterans, is obvious. A strategy that directly focuses on producing more transactions, while providing more value to the client, is far more rewarding, both financially and professionally. … Read more
The National Broker Public Portal announced appointment of its initial board of managers this week. In the press release they state that the project is designed to fill “an unmet need in the online marketplace.” Unfortunately, don’t define what that need is, leaving many readers still scratching their heads wondering “Wha??” Have these folks divined … Read more
So far in Part 1 of our journey, we have examined the pressing problems facing the MLS industry. In Part 2, we identified the source of those problems. In Part 3 we proposed a solution based on a totally new architecture of the core MLS technology, the database that drives the entire interconnected system. Now … Read more
Reader, thinker, and frequent commenter Sam DeBord has written a rebuttal over at GeekEstate to my declaration of vindication re: IDX = Syndication: IDX creates efficiency for brokers, which increases financial profitability for the group as a whole. Syndication is a less-efficient platform in terms of overall brokerage profits. Real estate is, on an annual basis, similar … Read more
In Part I of this series we looked at the problems and challenges facing the MLS community of today. In Part II we defined the problems in greater detail and examined the systemic and institutional monopolies that perpetuate those problems. In this installment we will look at a possible solution, one based in technology not … Read more