May 07

VHT CEO, Alex Zoghlin, quoted in recent AgBeat article about listing syndication

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Alex Zoghlin, CEO of VHT Inc. told AGBeat, “I’m not surprised there’s an escalating firestorm over third-party listing aggregators. They’re using brokers’ most valuable assets to make money, build their businesses and divert customers away. Contrary to what many brokers believe, their competition isn’t the brokerage down the street – it’s the fast-growing, third party ecosystem of listing aggregators, online publishers, virtual tour providers, advertising networks and media companies that are dominating search engine results in order to capture online leads.”

“Aggregators make it difficult for consumers and search engines to determine who owns the property listings displayed on their sites and make it harder to for brokers to use their own websites as a lead generation tool. They “cook” their search results by giving preferential treatment to agents/brokers who pay for featured listings. They provide incorrect property details and out-of-date information that frustrates consumers and reflects poorly on brokers.”

To read the rest of Zoghlin’s comments and for a link to the full article click here.

May 02

San Diego Broker Questions Zillow’s Ethics in New YouTube Video

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The battle with big aggregators heated up again this week with Jim Abbott, President and Managing Broker at San Diego-based ARG, posting a new video on YouTube suggesting Zillow has engaged in bullying tactics after the brokerage pulled its listings from big syndicators.  Abbott questioned Zillow’s “motives and ethics” in contacting ARG’s customers and sellers after it stopped sharing listings and said the aggregator “went so far as to call into question our competence.”

Three months after taking back its listings, Abbott said “every single ARG seller has stayed with us” and its agents are selling homes faster.  “Let me assure you, there is life after listing syndication and it’s a better life. No more sad messages from disappointed buyers calling on properties that sold months ago. No more frustrated buyers forced to comb through thousands of unavailable homes.  No more wildly incorrect value estimates and improbably mortgage offers. “

Abbott compared Zillow to the old file-sharing site, Napster, which “engineered the criminal theft of millions of copy-protected songs and movies…Napster in many ways is less guilty than the real estate syndicators…(that) take our creative content and resell it to our competitors. And it’s not a $10 petty theft, it’s more like grand larceny,” he said.

Abbott urged brokers and agents to read the fine print in their user agreements with aggregators.  “Once they get your listing data, your photos and your virtual tours, they own it – lock, stock and barrel,” he warned.  “They may use it any way they want to and forever.”

Click here to view the full video

May 01

Sexy real estate agents can tempt a much higher price, says a new study

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The study, which goes by the impressively long title – “Broker Beauty and Boon: A Study of Physical Attractiveness and its Effects on Real Estate Brokers’ Income and Productivity” – found that real estate agents who are considered ‘physically attractive’ tend to sell homes at much higher prices than ‘less attractive’ agents do, on both the selling and the listing side. Researchers noted that ‘good looks’ seem to be twice as effective on the listing side when compared to the selling side.

Realty Biz News has the full story.

Apr 30

“I Can’t believe it’s Not Brokerage!” and better drinking through technology

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Brian Boreo from 1000WATT Consulting gives his thoughts on agents, managing business leads, and Zillow in his latest blog post.  This articles serves as a call to action to brokers to create new ways to engage consumers and deliver value to agents.

Follow this link to learn more

1000WATT Consulting works with real estate brokerages, media companies, technology companies and MLS’s to strengthen their brands, improve their marketing, and out-innovate their competitors.

Apr 18

If it walks and talks like a brokerage…it might be Zillow

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When Zillow rolled out a new CRM tool for real estate agents on Friday, it hit a nerve with brokers who are already offended by big aggregators’ controversial tactics to get in between them and their customers.  Now it looks like Zillow is also trying to get in between them and their agents.

Zillow describes Agent Hub as a key step in moving Zillow beyond advertising with a suite of tools and services giving agents a central hub for marketing and managing their businesses and becoming more productive.  Agent Hub is said to provide agents with analytics dashboards to monitor listing and agent profile metrics, as well as marketing and social media training and industry news updates.

All this prompted industry observers such as  Geekwire to suggest that Zillow’s agent strategy is targeted at competing with Market Leader and other industry outsiders that are aggressively pursuing the billions spent annually by real estate professionals on marketing and advertising.

But there’s more going on here than competition between two companies in the same space.  In this battle, it’s real estate brokerages who are in the crosshairs of Zillow’s ongoing expansion plan.

Understanding why that’s the case requires understanding how the Internet has changed consumer buying habits.  Once upon a time, agents were the source of clients for brokerages.  But now, consumers have direct access to MLS listings and they’re spending weeks or months shopping for homes on the web without help from agents.

Today, agents have to pay Zillow and other third parties to help them find these online buyers.  And these savvy third parties are investing big bucks in developing a range of CRM, lead management and other support services that are easy for agents to access and free or low-cost to use.  (Zillow’s plan, the company disclosed this week, also includes opening a new California office and adding 100 employees to its sales force to promote the Agent Hub offering.)

Here’s an interesting comparison.  If you look at some advertising by brokers trying to attract agents, and at what these industry outsiders like Market Leader are marketing to agents, you’ll see some interesting similarities:

The broker’s message in the above ad — about providing the “best tools, training, support and lead generation” to agents — has been borrowed by third party companies like Market Leader.  Its brochure ware says it offers agents “integrated websites, contact management, a marketing center, and lead generation services that generate a steady stream of prospects plus provides the systems and training for converting those prospects into clients.”

The only difference in the services is that these third party players aren’t restricted by all the rules and regulations that a brokerage must adhere to.

With Agent Hub, Zillow is helping to undermine brokers’ value to agents and eclipsing their role by providing services directly to agents – services that traditionally have been provided by brokers.   Like Market Leader, they’re taking money out of brokers’ pockets, undermining agents’ loyalty to brokers, and basically competing for the low hanging fruit – agent marketing dollars.

Apr 16

The Mystery of the Zestimate

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This week, the Washington Post warned consumers to do their homework on real estate portals such as Zillow, Trulia and Realtor.com because information on the sites can be “inaccurate or misleading.”

Those “mysterious” estimates of home values are often incorrect. And outdated listings leave buyers frustrated when homes they thought were available are actually sold. They can leave sellers angry when price reductions aren’t reported quickly, the Post story said.

The story is significant because finally, the consumer press is recognizing what brokerages have known for years. The Zestimate can be wildly inaccurate, thus confusing consumers more than helping them. Zillow lacks reliability because it cannot take into account any form of property renovations, condition of properties and upgrades such as landscaping, roofing, new appliances, etc.

A study by University of Texas at San Antonio found that 40 percent of Zillow’s “Zestimates” were overvalued by 10 percent compared to the actual sales prices.

Listing aggregators, in their quest to sell advertising, leave potential buyers baffled about who the listing agent is. But a non-listing agent doesn’t have the same financial incentives to help a seller. Meanwhile, buyers are unknowingly dragged into a fight for business by agents who know little or nothing about the property they asked about.

All this isn’t good for consumers or brokers. As VHT CEO Alex Zoghlin noted in a recent white paper, Friend or Foe?: The Battle with 3rd Party Aggregators, it’s just a play for more revenue by the fast-growing aggregators.

Apr 13

Real estate heavy-hitters talk tech in Orlando

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Real estate heavy-hitters talk tech in Orlando

In late March, VHT took a trip to sunny Orlando to participate in the annual conference hosted by Leading Real Estate Companies of the World, one of the most highly respected groups of brokers in the United States.  The network is comprised of independent real estate brokerages from across the nation and has a membership roster that reads like the “Who’s Who” of real estate, with 15 of the top 25 real estate companies in the U.S.

The event brought together some of the premier names in real estate to trade insights and talk about the dynamic industry landscape –  including nearly 1,000 top real estate brokers, managers, relocation professionals and industry experts from the U.S. and over a dozen countries around the world.

It was no surprise that technology, digital marketing and listing aggregators were hot topics.

It was VHT’s eighth year at the conference and this year, VHT Chairman Brian Balduf was invited to speak at a session on lead management, while VHT CEO Alex Zoghlin shared his perspective on how the broker-agent value proposition has been impacted by the Internet and changing home buyer behavior.

As the industry begins to bounce back from its economic woes, brokers are recognizing just how much technology has changed how home buyers behave, how they search for properties, the kind of information sources they utilize, and ultimately who they choose to represent them. We know that consumers start the buying process on the web rather than by contacting a real estate professional. But who’s responsible for finding these online buyers and capturing their business? Agents or brokers?

We believe it’s time for brokers to rethink both their marketing priorities and their value proposition to agents. Brokers need to reassert themselves on the Internet and aim their marketing resources at capturing these online consumers early in the buying process, before competitors do. They must refocus their value proposition to lead-hungry agents by providing them with plenty of potential buyers so they can close more sales.

The more prospective clients a brokerage can bring to its sales agents, the less money they’ll spend buying leads from third parties, the more transactions the company will close, the more clients it will have and more loyal its agents will be. Read more about this in VHT’s white paper entitled How the New Buyer Lifecycle is Impacting the Broker-Agent Relationship.

Speaking of white papers and the Orlando conference, here’s how a recent article from the WAV Group summarized brokers’ message during a session about listing syndication: brokers are offended by tactics of many online publishers.  Two brokers who quit sharing their listings report that publishers reacted by mailing postcards to sellers with active listings, urging them to ask their agent or broker to reconsider.  According to the WAV Group article, Fixing Online Advertising Woes, online publishers “have proven they are willing to act in ways that are far below out industry’s standards of ethics.”

Stay tuned as the conversation continues.

Apr 03

VHT Goes Inside NFL Commissioner Goodell’s New York Home

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In keeping with the sports theme started yesterday, here are some shots of NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell’s NYC pad. Goodell officially began his tenure on September 1, 2006, just prior to the beginning of the 2006 NFL season. Commentators have described him as “the most powerful man in sports”.

So, does his home live up to expectations?

Apr 02

Cubs Great Ryne Sandberg Selling 3 Bedroom Co-op

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In tune with Major League Baseball’s 2012 season opening this week, Cubs great and fan favorite, Ryne Sandberg, is selling his last piece of Chicago real estate. Sandberg’s three-bedroom Streeterville co-op is now on the market for $650k. The property boasts a great location on East Deleware framed by a view of Lake Michigan. The modest unit features with hardwood floors throughout, a fairly new kitchen, wood-burning fireplace, and the right amount of sporty flair.

Passed over twice for the position of Cubs’ Manager, most recently in the 2011-2012 off-season, Sandberg has been quoted as saying, “I’ve always said I hoped to manage in the big leagues. It’s baseball. I’m still hopeful of another opportunity. I don’t know what else I need to do, but I still hope there will be opportunities.”

After several seasons managing the AAA Iowa Cubs, Sandberg is now with the Philadelphia Phillies organization and in 2011 coached the Phillies’ Lehigh Valley team to its first winning season in years. I’m sure his neighbors, as well as the city of Chicago, will be sad to see this Hall of Fame second baseman go.

Photos were taken by VHT and the property is listed by Baird & Warner.

Mar 28

VHT’s New White Paper Featured in AllThingsD.com

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VHT’s new white paper, “Friend or Foe? The Battle with Third Party Aggregators,” is the subject of an interesting article today by Senior Editor Tricia Duryee of the Dow Jones digital news Web site, AllThingsD.com.  The story says that The Internet has forever changed the newspaper industry, the music business and travel agencies. Now it’s real estate’s turn The Internet has forever changed the newspaper industry, the music business and travel agencies. Now it’s real estate’s turn The Internet has forever changed the newspaper industry, the music business and travel agencies. Now it’s real estate’s turn The Internet has forever changed the newspaper industry, the music business and travel agencies. Now it’s real estate’s turnthe Internet has forever changed the newspaper business, music industry and travel agencies.  Now it’s real estate’s turn.  As sites like Zillow and Trulia have risen in prominence, real estate professionals are starting to push back, especially as they find it difficult to live without them.

The story quotes the author of the white paper, VHT CEO Alex Zoghlin, who says that “as an industry, brokerages have done a poor job of making themselves and their Web content visible to search engines.”

VHT’s white paper explains that brokers’ competition isn’t the brokerage down the street – it’s the fast-growing, third party ecosystem of listing aggregators, online publishers, virtual tour providers, advertising networks and media companies that are dominating search engine results in order to capture online sales leads.  In the real estate industry, big online aggregators have grown so huge that most brokerage websites simply can’t compete with them for search engine visitors.  Aggregators are like vampires sucking the blood out of brokers’ online marketing efforts.

No wonder there’s an escalating firestorm over real estate aggregators.   These third party sites are using brokers’ most valuable assets to make money, build their businesses and divert customers away.

Like the travel industry a decade ago, brokerages are at a tipping point in their digital marketing evolution. Some leading brokers, such as Edina Realty and Shorewest, recently weighed the pros and cons and decided to stop sharing their listings with aggregators.  They’ve discovered that an effective website strategy can provide more online leads at a lower overall cost.