The national news has been prolific regarding our flood fighting here in the Red River Valley. We also have been receiving all kinds of well wishes from friends and customers over the last week, and we’re very thankful for that. I should have written earlier to let all of our customers know that we have all of your data backed up multiple ways, and have worked hard to protect the flexmls Web systems.
I also would have written something sooner to let everyone know how we’re doing personally, had I only known what to say. I suspected before but know now that floods are uncertain beasts, and predictions are folly. All you can do is fight with everything you have, and then double your efforts. We’ve had people out for over a week waging war against the water, and I’m happy to say that it looks like we’re winning. At the same time, we have a storm coming in Monday and Tuesday that could reverse those positive trends. The biggest risk is the wind that’s potentially coming with the storm. The snow (hopefully not rain) will make it more inconvenient to manage the dikes and levees but shouldn’t increase the river level too much.
Regardless of what comes, we’re prepared and prepared to continue fighting. To give you an idea of what we’ve been facing, below are a few pictures from my experience with the flood. Many in our community have not been as fortunate as we have, and risk remains. Along the lines of what I’ve said above, I’m somewhat reluctant to even put forth anything about this event as it is not over yet. Also, I know my story is not representative of the community as a whole. One of the things that’s bugged me about the media coverage is that it cannot capture everyone’s story and the media likes to highlight the dramatic.
The most amazing thing about this event for me is how so many individuals can come together to produce such a huge effort. Each contribution in itself is not dramatic but, together, it’s amazing. I’m thankful for each and every person who has come together to help us. (Importantly, we need to come together even more strongly in the months to come to leverage our energy for a permanent solution to the flooding risk posed by the Red River and its tributaries.)
This first picture is a map of my neighborhood near the Rose Creek coulee on the Rose Creek golf course. When the Red River (you can see it on the right) floods, it backs up into the Rose Creek coulee (just below the yellow highlighted area) and causes flood risks to our neighborhood and a large area on the south side of Fargo because the Rose Creek coulee extends west through what is now known widely as drain 27.
Back to the Rose Creek neighborhood, the area highlighted in yellow is of the homes most at risk on the “wet” side of the secondary dike (I’ll explain further below). My house is in the group of homes just to the north of the highlighted area, protected by the emergency dike erected by the city.
The picture below is of the sandbag dike erected by hundreds if not thousands of volunteers. This dike is holding back the water that flooded into the Rose Creek coulee from the Red River. The dike is about a half mile in length and is one small part of the over 50 miles of diking I understand has been erected all over the Red River Valley.
This next picture is of work being done to construct an emergency dike down Rose Creek Drive, which separates the homes highlighted in yellow from where I live. The city erected this dike in fear of the sand bag dike failing and flooding the Discovery School just to the north as well as many more homes.
This next picture is of a completed section of the emergency dike running down Rose Creek Drive, the street that takes us to our house. Again, we’re on the “dry” side of this dike and all the homes in yellow in the map above are on the “wet” side, sealed in between this emergency dike and the sand bag dike. To get out, they have to climb over the emergency dike (neighbors have built stairways in a few places to help people get over). If the sand bags fail, the homes on the wet side are flooded and the water will be held in the area by the emergency earthen dike. Essentially, these homeowners are trapped in between the dikes. One of our employees, Bill Brooks, lives in this “wet” zone. Fortunately, the sand bags are holding strong and we’re gaining confidence that these homes will not get wet.
All of the work necessary to construct these dikes have turned our neighborhoods into chaotic worlds, where stress levels are rebuffed only by the care seen in the eyes of all of our neighbors. We’ve worked together, as well as with many caring strangers, to care for our homes and each other and we’re prevailing. It may not be over yet but we’re standing here, still fighting.
I had a lot of fun being on the “MLS In Your Face” panel at the Association Executive Institute (AEI) meetings in Colorado Springs yesterday. Marilyn Wilson from the WAV Group was the moderator and the panelists were me, Frank Llosa of Frankly Realty and FranklyMLS.com, and Errol Samuelson, President of Realtor.com.
Marilyn led us through a lot of interesting topics, but one of the topics that stood out for me was video. Errol mentioned that some research Realtor.com has done indicated that 70% of consumers would be more likely to list with an agent if they used video as part of their marketing effort. In contrast, only .33% (that’s one-third of one percent) of agents use video.
We released the ability to link videos to listings about 15 months ago, and I knew that Errol’s numbers weren’t too far off but I wanted to confirm it when I got back. Across all of our 110 MLS systems, .26% of the active listings have videos attached. That’s one-quarter of one percent. In contrast, 9.87% of active listings have virtual tours attached.
One member of the audience asked how they could promote use of video to their membership. Both Errol and Frank showed small video cameras they said made it very easy to create good quality videos and post them to the web for viewing. Errol also mentioned Realtor.com has a good how-to video on how to create good property tour videos. (Perhaps he’ll comment and give us the link.)
My suggestion was one I’ve made before here on the FBS Blog. Associations and MLSs can encourage use of video with one simple step: Make video a category on the hot sheet. If new videos were a category on the hot sheet, you’d see an instant increase in video use. Promise. Of course, quality video is important, too. So perhaps the MLS could go one step further and put the videos on a public facing site and allow voting on them. Overall, I think the hot sheet is a compelling tool both inside the MLS and outside to promote quality content in the MLS.
The new Fannie Mae Market Conditions Addendum (Form 1004MC) “will be required with all one- to four-unit property appraisals performed on or after April 1, 2009.” To help our appraiser custumers with this new requirement, we’ve modified the statistical CMA function in flexmls Web to include some new statistics broken out by the time-frames required by the market conditions reprort.
Current flexmls Web customers can preview this report using your regular login and password on our beta server. To access the report, do a search to find your comps, choose CMA, and then statistical CMA where you’ll then have the option to include the 1004 MC market conditions stats.
Let us know in the flexmls Web user forums if you see any changes needed. We expect to have it released before the April 1, 2009, deadline.
As part of our MeTAL initiative, we’ve been collecting some click data from our search results module to see if users are finding particular functions. Some interesting tidbits we’ve found so far:
It’s a very cool option (especially in combination with the arrow keys mentioned above) but our data gathering shows too few people figure out how to enable the single listing mode. We believe that most who do discover it find it from the map bubble when the select to see “More Info” but there’s also an option below the left side list to switch between the list and single listing mode.
The icons clearly are too obscure for people to understand or care about them, and we can do better to make the single listing mode more accessible to users. Once in single listing mode, it’s very nice to be able to switch from listing to listing using the up/down arrows and cruise through the photos using the left/right arrows. You can get through a ton of listings and photos very quickly without ever touching your mouse.
I’m definitely digging these new metrics we’re gathering. Next up, we’re going to start tracking the main tabs in search results (list, detail, photos, map, compare) to see which are most popular.
Blizzards like we have here in Fargo today create an obstacle to adult pursuits, but open a whole new world of opportunities for the young at heart. As our newest co-worker from Florida said the other day, bring it on!
Seriously. It’s storming big time here in Fargo, so we’ve closed our offices for the day and sent everyone home. If you have a support question that deseparately needs answering, email support@flexmls.com. This is the the first time in my twelve years of running FBS that I can recall closing FBS for a blizzard. We’re tough up here in the tundra . . . but not stupid. This picture of my back yard doesn’t even really do it justice, as we’re protected from much of the wind. Out in the open you can’t see anything. You know it’s bad with the local universities, malls and hospital close to everything but emergencies.
As I was coming home from the Clareity conference last Friday, I was struck by how many people there were in the airport given the travails heard daily in the news about the economy. Living in Fargo, it’s hard to see the impacts of the economic hardships across the country. Also, I hear rumblings about the real estate sector possibly finding bottom and even making an upturn. Yet, the news from the stock market just seems to get worse every week. So, what gives?
This piece in the NY TImes speculates about something I’ve been thinking lately, too, namely that many of the businesses closing and laying people off are using this “calamity” as an opportunity to shutter businesses that could or should have been shut long ago. Circuit City. It was walking dead. In contrast, Amazon is just gearing up.
There’s a tectonic shift occurring in the economy but its been building for many years or decades. The shift is being revealed by the financial fiasco, but that isn’t the ultimate cause. The upshot of this, from my limited vantage point, is that the economy isn’t ruined but just transitioning. Some people in some markets will suffer, no doubt. Others will prosper.
If this view is correct, there are a lot of opportunities out there. The entire economy has been battered over the last twelve months. Some of the stocks and other investments are being crushed along with the rest, and that probably is not representative of the fundamentals. Of course, self-fulfilling prophecies are real. We can think ourselves into a malaise and depression. Or it all may be so much worse than is apparent from my privileged perspective.
What do you think? Are there undervalued assets out there right now? How about real estate? Do you think the end is in sight or are we just seeing the beginning downturn?
The deadline for MLSs to adopt a VOW policy consistent with the final judgment (settlement) in the NAR/DOJ litigation may have passed (February 15), but questions about the policy remain. One of the questions that continues is what information MLSs can exclude from VOW feeds as confidential. I think the key language to answer this question is in Section III(2) of Exhibit A (PDF) to the Final Judgment, which states “Confidential data includes only that which Participants are prohibited from providing to customers orally and by all other delivery mechanisms.” To comply with this “parity” provision, I would recommend that for every field the MLS deems confidential for purposes of VOW feeds, there should be a mirror provision in the MLS rules that says the same fields cannot be disclosed to customers orally or by any other means. As a practical matter, I think this means that very very few fields can be excluded from VOW feeds and every field sought to be excluded needs to be examined very carefully to ensure that the confidentiality of the field can truly be maintained (i.e., not disclosed to customers in any way).
I’ve been meaning to write more thorough posts on both of these topics, but I just haven’t focused enough to get them written. I think the issues are important, though, and so want to highlight them for you and provide my initial reactions.
Inman recently published 10 Action Steps for reforming real estate. (Side note: The link to Inman likely is behind a pay wall. Is there any place these 10 steps are not behind a pay wall. If not, why not?) Nearly every action step involved some “magic” bullet from either the government or some other monopolistic institution like a “national MLS”. Many of the comments to the article say what I have to say, namely that regulation and monopolies are not the answer, more competition is the answer.
The CAR/CALMLS folks also are now going around California promoting their calREDD system, which I don’t think is operational anywhere yet. They visited one of our customers up in Shasta County last week, and I’ve been engaged in a good discussion with the MLS on their blog about the downsides of creating a monopoly (as opposed to competitive) MLS system. The more conversation we can have and publish about these decisions, the better. Solving the problems over overlapping market disorder while preserving and increasing competition is possible, but not through a single statewide MLS system.
I wonder how I can say this more loudly and clearly: COMPETITION, please!
Update: At the Clareity MLS conference this morning, Gregg Larson reported that SoCal MLS has voted unanimously NOT to sell to CALMLS.
