Until today, I maintained my calendar exclusively on my Treo 700p. Today, however, one of my co-workers, David, told me about Lightning, a calendar extension for the Thunderbird e-mail client, which will sync with Google Calendar. A few minutes later, I discovered GooSync, which syncs my Treo over the air with my Google calendar. So, now my calendar is synced with my laptop and phone and changes on any populate to all. Better yet, I’ve shared my Google calendar with my wife and given her edit privileges, so any changes she makes are automatically synced to my phone and computer, too. This was so easy and is so cool and cost me only $40 for a year of the pro version of GooSync. To get this level of syncing typically requires using Outlook on every machine and all sorts of complications with Exchange servers and whatnot. Instead, I got it going within a matter of minutes for a pittance, largely because of data standards.
Once again, Gary Thomas made his “Gateway” speech at another NAR convention and unleashed more speculation (behind Inman’s paywall) about what it really means. I’ve written about this before. I was pleased as punch, though, to see Brian Boero from 1000 Watt Consulting pick up on the vagueness and uncertainty in the supposed Gateway proposal and how that’s bad for the industry:
I know it’s early. And there are people smarter than me working on this. But everything I have heard and read to date makes this project seem completely unhinged from any sort of strategy.
It reflects uncertainty, not clarity.
Right on, Brian. I also agree that the Realogy IDX project being worked on by eNeighborhoods is a huge deal, likely to reverberate through the industry for years to come. I had dinner with Dan Woolley (eNeighborhoods’ Senior VP of Technology) in Vegas and suggested to him (though Dan certainly needs no suggestions from me) that, with RE/MAX and Realogy on their IDX platform, the next logical step would be to do a listing maintenance module and then use the weight of those organizations to force the MLSs to accept a “standard” listing. The benefits to this are obvious — single entry and pocket listings on their branded portals, plus the final wresting of control from MLSs, which would forever after be subservient to those brands. What do you think, is this just another misty idea like the Gateway? Or does it have some legs?
I’m pleased to report that both Jaison Freed and I have been elected to the Board of Directors for the being-formed Real Estate Standards Organization (RESO), which will oversee the Real Estate Transaction Standards (RETS). Jaison and I extend our congratulations to the other directors and look forward to working with everyone over the next one to two years to continue the excellent progress being made with the real estate standards. The full board, absent the to-be-hired Executive Officer, is:
Technical:
Sergio DelRio (T4Bi)
Jaison Freed (FBS)
Paul Hethmon (Clareity Security)
Dan Mills (MarketLinx)
Dan Woolley (eNeighborhoods/Dominion)
Business:
Kristen Carr (RMLS FL)
David Harris (First MLS)
Chip McAvoy (First American)
Gregg Petch (MRIS)
Michael Wurzer (FBS)
Advertising is “the action of calling something to the attention of the public especially by paid announcements.” A theme of the FBS Blog lately has been that advertising is bad, information is good. I’m learning, however, that this is not a very sophisticated analysis, or at least is too black and white and ignores the many shades of gray in between lies and truth.
One source of my learning is an article in the New York Times Magazine this weekend called “Dr. Drug Rep”, in which a psychiatrist outlines in amazing detail how he fooled himself into becoming a sales rep for a drug company. The easy response to the article is revulsion and that the doctor should have seen the conclusion coming from a mile away as only too obvious. The more difficult reality, however, is that we deal in a world of unknowns and that each day brings more complexity that makes it impossible for anyone to process all the details at a sufficient level to eliminate trust on every issue.
The reality is that we all need short-cuts to our decision-making and advertising (in all its various forms, from blogging to television) is one such short cut. We’re searching for a way to know who to trust, who to believe, so that we don’t have to become experts in every field. Real estate is no different. The media is rife today with articles about the “plunging” or “growing” or “shrinking” real estate market, many filled with numeric details that smack of authority. Yet, as Frank Llosa of Frankly Realty points out, all the data is easy to manipulate to reach the conclusion you want.
Two additional RE.net posts spring to mind as I write this. One from Ardell DellaLoggia outlining an excellent statistical argument for why sellers need to get real and another from Jonathan Dalton suggesting that the NAR’s economic analysis trying to persuade people to buy homes is overwraught. Both of these posts seem spot on to me, but that they are advertising is now without question in my mind, for they are trying to convince someone of something. So, is that wrong? No. Is there a better way? Probably not.
There is allure in thinking that all the “voting” and user-feedback features being added to web sites these days will expose some “truth” through statistics and the “wisdom of crowds“, but that assumes the individuals in the crowds are independent of each other and what’s scary is that we’re not. Rather, we’re influenced by each other in many subtle ways, such that even our varied and independent opinions harmonized through statistical analysis should come with a grain of salt.
So where does that leave us? Trust. To thrive in this world, we need to gather enough “facts” to trust our advisers so we don’t need to become experts in everything. Those who want to be experts need to provide those facts to us in a way that engenders our trust. That’s one reason blogging is successful, because the very format provides more information than we’re used to getting and that openness fosters trust. The posts from Frank, Ardell and Jonathan are all great examples of fostering trust. I’d hire these people any time. Was that advertising that brought me to that conclusion?
I’m not going to offer a purported answer now, I’m just asking questions, specifically: Why is real estate immune from the ideas being debated in other industries? Doc Searls wrote some time ago:
To really take advantage of open source, he explained, you need to value ubiquity in your marketplace at least as much as you value scarcity in your product portfolio. In fact, your smartest move may be to take some of the products you’re selling, and make them ubiquitous by moving them from proprietary/closed to open/public domain — literally, from scarcity to ubiquity:
This same theme is picked up by Alex Iksold at Read/Write Web in an analysis of how Google’s OpenSocial initiative could impact FaceBook:
Open Social paves a way to a potentially new kind of web culture. In that culture, companies would recognize that users are entitled to their information. It should be importable and exportable. It should not be locked in.
Why is real estate sales through the MLS excepted from this general idea? I’m not asking this rhetorically, I honestly don’t know and wonder about the answer. Interestingly enough, the idea that data should not be locked in applies just as much to companies like Zillow as it does to MLSs, maybe more so. So, what do you think is the answer? Where is MLS data on the curve towards ubiquity and commoditization?
I’m thankful for:
Thanksgiving reminds us that every day should be appreciated.
Greg Swann honored my post Data Portability Ain’t Just A Real Estate Problem with the Odysseus Medal yesterday. I’m excited by this award because it brings attention to what I think are really important issues for the industry right now.
I’m also excited because Greg is beginning to organize a real estate blogger meeting in Phoenix for this May, immediately after the mid-year NAR convention. The more I work with various bloggers across the country, the more I enjoy it and I would love to focus a few days on nothing but learning with these people. Why is blogging special? Check out this great video from Dan Green at Bring the Blog and The Mortgage Reports:
This post continues the discussion regarding listings as advertising or information and brings in days on market, data accuracy, long-tail search, hot sheets, and improving listing promotion inside and outside the MLS.
There’s a belief in the MLS world that the MLS data is the most accurate data regarding home sales. This is a nice statement of faith but often is frustrated by the members of the MLS themselves who are intent on trying to “promote” their listing and are willing to distort the data to do so. This point was driven home by David Harris, the Director of IT for FMLS in Atlanta, in his post The Listing: Advertising or Information, where he says:
Each day our compliance department has to address issues where the property may not be described accurately or the listing may contain information that does not pertain to that property (ie. a picture of the list agent as the 4th property photo
David then also alludes to the mess that is days on market when he says:
I would love to set up a ‘history’ link on a listing so you can click to see any past times it has been on market to allow for an event better idea of the property, but that could be a concern with some agents as well.
(Emphasis added.) Of course, this is the perennial issue of days on market and the desire of agents to have a low number for marketing purposes. But, as Jonathan Miller of Matrix pointed out some time ago, days on market requires one to determine “what market”, which fundamentally is dependent on price. The “market” for $1,000,000 homes is different than the market for $250,000 homes. Accordingly, Miller prefers to measure DOM:
DOM From Last List Date – Measured from the last time the list price was changed, if ever. The calculation is: Last List Date Change – Contract Date. This is the more useful of the two methods because it shows the market’s ability to absorb a property once it actually enters the market. Essentially, its the list price of the property just before it goes to contract. In other words, its the list price that brought the property into the correct market segment and attracted buyers.
Of course, Mr. Miller is coming at this from his perspective as an appraiser, which is more focused on the information. Yet DOM has become a tool for advertising, despite the idiosyncracies involved in determining “the market” and calculating an accurate DOM. So, now we have MLSs everywhere trying to figure out a better formula for DOM to tie various listings together but the real problem is that members want a low number and will often manipulate the data in order to get it, whether that’s canceling an existing contract and re-listing the property or shifting the listing to another agent in their office or a myriad of other approaches. Regardless of the rules developed by the MLS, the clever agent will find a way around it, because they are more focused on an “advertising” mentality than an “information” mentality.
Jim Duncan posts about this as well:
If Realtors could develop a product that had all of the information – All of it – They could use that as a tool to gain what everybody wants – consumers’ trust. (just having the information is not sufficient to earn trust) Everyone else is doing that (Zillow, Trulia, etc.) but for now, Realtors have the best data – for how long?
But what’s to trust about days on market or other data that is manipulated for advertising purposes?
This same issue came up following our recent release and some changes we made to the hot sheet. One user wrote to me and said that the new format frustrated her efforts to promote her listings, because users were now less likely to click on the text change section of the hot sheet, which she often used just to promote her listings. In other words, she was making changes to the text just to get it on the hot sheet, even though those changes had no substantive value. Of course, these manipulations make the hot sheet less, not more, useful.
One of the comments to Jim Duncan’s post tied these issues back to the revolution being wrought by the web for consumers:
I think the internet has changed the entire concept of selling things, but some less visionary people still don’t get it. I think the old methodology of selling things was just to cast a wide net, hoping that someone would see your ad and be convinced to buy. The power of the internet is that it allows people to be far more specific about what they purchase.
My question is whether it’s possible for MLS operators and vendors to leverage the desire to promote the property into creating more, instead of less, data accuracy. For example, could listings with more property details or photos be promoted on the hot sheet more or longer than other listings? Can listing addresses that are validated by a geo-coding proces or GPS be promoted more or longer? Or will these approaches simply result in more manipulation? Are fines the only approach to help members “get it” when it comes to data accuracy?
All of this has a lot to do with data standards, of course, and one of the better conversations I had this last week at the NAR convention involved the idea that the RETS standards and the new RESO governing body may want to consider extending the discussion to MLS rules in addition to data, as the two are inextricably intertwined. Data standards require rules about data validation. I believe that its possible to establish a “base” set of rules and data standards that allow for “blind” entry of a listing into any MLS system and move us toward true enter once, distribute everywhere. Without such a “base” standard, single data entry isn’t possible unless there is only one MLS, which, of course, is just another, more complicated and expensive, way of creating a “base” standard.
The “base” standard could involve tiers of validation that would promote listings more or less within an MLS system, as described above, such that those with more accurate and broader and deeper data would get more prominent and longer promotion in the MLS. There could be search fields for rule compliance or validation levels, for example, so that users could search only on more or less validated listings. Of course, the trick is in defining what is validated or not and that’s why broadening the discussion among the MLS community over standards is so important. There is no question in my mind that the future for MLSs requires exploring new ideas for encouraging data accuracy over manipulation and moving from advertising, which inevitably seems to involve manipulation, to becoming the trusted source for accurate and detailed listing information.
Postscript: It just struck me: Wouldn’t making the information more public be one of the best incentives for creating accurate data? After all, while agents may be willing to deceive their fellow MLS members, are they also willing to risk deceiving the public if it’s easy for them to be found out? Listing history is a great example. Why not make the detailed listing history public as David suggests? Facts are facts, to be judged objectively. Disclose them and the need for accuracy increases dramatically.
I was hoping to have more time to write while in Vegas for the NAR Convention, but, alas, my first opportunity is as I wait to board my plane to go back home. I met with many clients and a few prospective clients and the theme in almost every meeting was data sharing among MLSs. I was pleased with these conversations because our new release positions us well to serve MLSs wanting to share data, regionalize and even present a powerful public facing search engine to take control of communicating listing information to consumers with the agents and brokers at the center of that communication.
Related to data sharing is the good momentum RETS is achieving. I don’t have all the details but I understand the NAR MLS Committee is recommending that all MLSs provide a RETS server. Again, FBS is well-positioned to help our clients, as we make available RETS servers to all clients at no additional charge.
This post is starting to sound like an advertisement or something, but I’m just finding it rewarding that we’ve anticipated these industry trends and are able to help our clients achieve their objectives. I’ve got to board now.
P.S. If you’re ever in Vegas and want an amazing meal, go to Prime at the Bellagio. Simply amazing.
Advertising is lame and information is the future, especially when it comes to real estate listings. Dave Winer (who I really love reading lately) puts it well:
“Advertising will get more and more targeted until it disappears, because perfectly targeted advertising is just information. And that’s good!”
Much of the controversies surrounding listing syndication centers on the concepts of advertising, i.e., who gets to advertise what listings and when and where they get to advertise them. Competitors will never agree on these issues. Period.
The solution to this conundrum, though, is in moving our thinking from advertising to information. How can we make listings information, instead of advertising? That’s a central question I’ll be pondering as I head off to Vegas for the NAR Convention. Hopefully I’ll see you there!
Update: Realonomics has an excellent post today on a similar vein: An All Carrot and No Stick Industry.
