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.
Diane Tuman of the Zillow Blog asks, how cold is it in Fargo?
Here’s what my weather widget shows right now:
Here’s a picture taken minutes ago from my office window looking out at my Prius in the middle of a near blizzard right now:
See, the weather here stinks, which is why we’re so darn productive and do more than our fair share to boost the economy that all the big city folks seem intent on collapsing.
Even though the winters are rough, we make the most of them by snowmobiling, skiing, skating/hockey, and all sorts of other bravehearted outdoor activities. Here’s a picture of my daughters getting ready to sled down a hill.
And here’s a picture I took of my family at a UND hockey game, which is the best hockey anywhere in the world:
And then we have summers. Fargo borders Minnesota and is just an hour from some excellent lakes both in Minnesota and North Dakota. Here’s a picture taken last summer from my dock at our lake place in Minnesota (all of these pictures were taken with a phone, which is why they largely stink):
The kids have school off tomorrow for conferences, and so I may head off to Alexandria with my youngest daughter for some skiing with the fresh snow. It’ll be cold, but we’ll have fun!
P.S. A little known fact about the movie Fargo is that none of it was actually filmed in Fargo. They came here to film the opening sequence, but there was no snow and so they had to go further north to find some. Also, only the opening scene was placed in Fargo. The rest of the movie takes place in Minneapolis and Brainerd, MN.
Russell Shaw just posted a great series of articles I highly recommend to agents, brokers, MLS execs, and anyone else involved in real estate:
This series from Russell is a tour de force demonstrating the value of good real estate sales people.
To add my own small twist, here’s a personal story that evidences many of Russell’s points:
My brother and I (and our spouses) own a lake cabin on West Battle Lake in Minnesota. It’s a nice little cabin on a small lot, and we love to spend our summer weekends there. Frankly, it’s too small for our two families but we make do because it’s all we can afford given the value of lake property these days. Nonetheless, we’d often boat around the lake and fantasize that some of the places we liked would come up for sale, which would rarely happen because our lake is really great.
The last few years, we became even more serious about getting something bigger because our kids were getting older and wanted to bring friends down, and there just wasn’t room. So, we had an agent sending us updates from the MLS system (yep, a flexmls Web system!) to keep us apprised of what was coming on the market. Typically, we’d get the emails and pass them around with our spouses, exclaming, “Sheesh, can you believe they want $X for that place?” or something to that effect because our place was always better. Because we thought we’d never find our perfect place, we decided to add on a few bedroooms and a bathroom this last fall and the construction is nearly complete now.
Last week, however, we received an update that a nearly perfect lot (with a tear down cabin) had come up for sale on the best beach on the lake. The lot was on the same beach as some of our relatives, was twice as big as ours, and had the same ideal combination of level lot to a sandy lake bottom that we already had. This was our dream lot come true. My brother and I rushed down there to meet with the listing agents, Pat and Connie.
I had not previously met Pat or Connie, but they exemplify the “joy” Russell describes in his “doing meaningful work” post. Pat and Connie made a great team, had a lot of passion for selling lake property, which passion translated into a lot of knowledge about the development history of West Battle Lake (and, I’m sure, the other lakes on which they sell). Our extended family has owned property on West Battle Lake for something like forty years and yet these agents were able to tell us a lot we didn’t know.
They also knew how to price the property. Want evidence? In the dead of Minnesota’s winter, with a tear down cabin, the property sold in less than two weeks on the market. As Russell said to John, “If it is in MLS correctly, on lockbox and not sold it is overpriced.” Clearly, this property was not overpriced. (Even in this down market, there is still a lot of demand for quality lake property.)
Ah, you might be wondering, did we realize our dream, were we the buyers? No, we chickened out at the last minute. After having a two-family heart-to-heart that evening, we realized that we were happy enough with our place and that investing twice what we already had and going through the process of building something new was more investment and work than we wanted.
However, if we had moved forward, we would have had Pat and Connie list our property, even though we also would have been dealing with them as the seller representative of the property we were buying. Would that have created all sorts of crazy conflicts? Sure, no doubt, but there’s little doubt in my mind it would have been efficient and worth every penny of commission to both us and the seller of the other property. Would a discount broker have provided that same level of value? I wouldn’t have been interested in going through the hassle of trying to find out. I just would have wanted the deal done, and done quickly.
So, as I read through Russell’s posts linked above, they all rang true to me. Read through them yourself and go comment on Russell’s blog. It should be a good conversation.
A few days ago, I commented about the uproar and retraction following Facebook’s attempt to clarify their terms of service so users would know what they post for others is no longer necessarily theirs. (Kristen Carr also has a post on the Facebook terms of service issues over at her new blog for Bridge Interactive.) I followed my earlier comment on the Facebook terms of service with a post asking whether CRM data is the broker’s or agent’s in the context of real estate.
It’s pretty clear from that post and the comments that followed that the contract between the broker and agent answers the question. I’ve never seen such a contract, however, and I’m wondering if they’d address some of the issues presented by consumer interactions allowed by current MLS, IDX and CRM systems. For example, imagine the following scenario:
Here are some of the questions:
It seems to me that, as before, the answer to these issues depends on the contracts involved, so what do yor contracts say on some of these issues? Do they address them at all? Is it important to address these issues?
