This was posted on December 29th, 2006!!! on our MLS access page…problem is I would never had seen it until I actually tried to access the MLS alliance to view listings 5 miles from my house, only to find it gone. Thanks for the warning!!!
This is posted on my MLS

MLS Alliance to Cease Operation January 1

SFARMLS and other MLSs in the Bay Area have been advised by e-Neighborhoods, the MLS Alliance vendor, that it will terminate the service on January 1, 2007. The formation next year of two new MLS entities (Quattro in San Francisco and the North Bay, and NCREX on the northern peninsula and the East Bay) is the likely reason. An effort is being made to put an alternative technical solution in place to allow data to continue to be shared between SFARMLS and REInfoLink on the northern peninsula but that effort may not succeed.

**Wonderful, the most obvious data connection between San Francisco and the northern peninsula might not happen!!!! If you are going to combine MLS’s why not combine them throughout the entire bay area?

In the meantime, SFARMLS users who need access to data from the northern peninsula have two options: (1) Do nothing on the expectation that SFARMLS and REInfoLink will succeed in putting an alternative technology solution in place soon;

**Let me just tell my clients that I’m going to do nothing until something happens…

or (2) Join REInfoLink and, if necessary, the MLSs in the East Bay to assure continued access to that data.

**Oh, yeah, more money solves everything.

We regret the decision of e-Neighborhoods but will do everything possible to minimize its impact on our users.

This is just another reason why I think the only people that are not going to benefit from all the technology advances in real estate are the agents…

Even though the MLS alliance was not a good way to get comps, we could use it to see past sales in the northern peninsula, now we can’t do that and have to use zip realty to view listings 5 miles from my house.

Last year, I moved from the East Bay to San Francisco and joined the San Francisco Board. Even though I still had 6 months left on my East bay membership, they discontinued my access? There was some weird issue with my broker only belonging to the Oakland board…which did not get me access, even though Oakland is part of the east bay…Basically it was very confusing and I never did get my access back, or a refund for the fees (more important to me).

Again, my prediction in 2007 - agents will get tossed around by this huge battle that will take place in the short future between the transparency of real estate and the people that want to keep it privileged information. This is definitely a story I will be keeping up on.

Popularity: 4% [?]

How many agents out there us Top Producer to manage all their customers? A lot right…I tried it for The Legacy Group, but do not use it anymore. Unfortunately they make you buy a year contract so I’m still paying for it…When I buy a product I expect it to do everything I need, and top producer just doesn’t. It crashed all the time, it was a bad interface, and it was browser specific.

Since I love open source, and I love FREE, I want to introduce SugarCRM. a Free, open source, customer relationship manager. If you think free mean “bad, or cheap” you have to look at this product. It is a commercial grade product, that can seriously compete with Top Producer, Act, Outlook, etc…

The current version is 4.5.0 which is very nice. I started using Sugar around 4.2 and liked it then, and the new version is very nice. Version 4.5.1 is coming out at the end of December with 2 added features that I can’t wait to use.

• Newsletter manager - timed delivery of e-newsletters
• Auto create web based lead forms - drag and drop form creator

The one problem with SugarCRM is that it might be overwhelming for most Realtors. We actually do not use the full product, we only use the Campaign manager. The campaign mananger allows you to send a one shot email to all your leads. We use this for our newsletter. Sugar can track views, clicks, forwards, bounces, and opt-outs. Very nice, even if you don’t plan to use the entire product, the campaign manager is great, and with the new implementation of the newsletter manager, we will be using this product more and more.

Also, since it is open source, you have access to the code. Of course, I don’t expect you to start hacking sugar, but if you think you can improve the product, you can hire someone or go to Sugar’s forums and see if someone will help you out. There are already a lot of add-ons for Sugar including mailmerge extensions, mapping, organizing…

If all you want is a newsletter manager, you might want to think about PHPlist. A small newlsetter manager, that handle sign-ups, delivery, and opt-outs. I will probably use both to capture leads this year.

I just wanted to touch on some really good products…later on i will show some more detailed examples of using these products, but right now, I have to get ready for Hawaii.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Let’s start podcasting, it’s not hard, and you don’t have to buy anything…except a computer. I’m going to show you how to create a podcast using a couple Free tools that you can get from the internet, and show you have to then add to your blog, and then I will subscribe them to Itunes.

Before we start, here is what you need for the most simple podcast.

• A Working Microphone, A broken microphone will not work in this situation… I tried.
• Sound Recorder - This is a free application that comes with Windows. To access the Sound Recorder go to Start -> Programs -> Accessories -> Entertainment -> Sound Recorder
• A blog, or another way to create an RSS feed. If you need to build a blog, go to http://realivent.com/wp-signup.php
• Itunes to play the podcast. You can also play the mp3 directly from your blog, but Itunes will let you see how other will view and subscribe to your podcast. Get this from www.itunes.com. There is also a good explanation of what podcasting is.
  http://www.apple.com/itunes/store/podcasts.html

Ok, you ready…Sound recorder is very simple, just get your mic and click on record.

If this is your first podcast, I bet you said “testing, testing, 1, 2, 3″ everyone says that the first time. I don’t know why…but I bet you did.

You have to save the file as an mp3…you can’t podcast the default .wav file that sound recorder tries to save it as. Make your recording and then click on save. You have to change a couple setting on the save file box. Change “Save As Type” from “.wav” to “All Files”. Click on “Change”, below “Save As Type”. This will open a Sound Selection box. Use the drop down to save the output as an mp3. Click “OK” and the sound selection box will close, and you can save the new recording as an mp3.

**Make sure you use the full file name. If you only use the filename “podcast” it will still save it as a .wav file. You have to type “podcast.mp3″ to save the recording as an MP3.

Now that you have you a shiny new mp3, you need to get it out to the public. There are millions of people just waiting for your information. The easiest way to syndicate is to add it to a blog. If you don’t have a blog, just go to realivent.com and create a free one. I created pods.realivent.com. To add your mp3 to your blog is easy, just go to the admin section of the blog, write a new post, upload the mp3 using the file uploader, and then send to post. Once it’s in a post, people can subscribe to it, just like they subscribe to your blog. Itunes is able to parse blogs and find only the mp3’s. When a new podcast is available it will not download it, but you can see that there are new podcasts, and then you can choose to download the mp3 and listen.

If you open up Itunes, you can subscribe to my podcast at http://pods.realivent.com/feed

I was hoping to finish this post earlier and continue to talk about enhancing the podcast, but I think I will do that later. There is a very cool music editor that you can use for free called Audacity. I will take my simple podcast and add some background music to it. Then once we get the editing down we will look at using Skype to create podcasts. When you use Skype you can create podcasts with multiple people from all around the world…should be good.

Popularity: 6% [?]

We now have Zillow comps available for all listings.

After you add a new listing, you now have the option to add Zillow comps to your virtual tour. By default they are not displayed.

Just go to My Realivent->view listings -> (choose the listing you want to post on Craigslist) -> display

you will see 3 checkboxes.

• Zestimate - this will show the Zestimate for the listing. The Zestimate is the value of the listing determined by Zillow.com
• Zindex - This will display the price trends based on the City, Zipcode, and State. This does not show the Zestimate
• Zcomps - This shows comparable sales around the listing.

If any one of the three is selected, your Craigslist post will display the Zillow logo.

We made this an optional feature, but think you should use at least the Zindex. This only shows price graphs for the surrounding areas and state. People love to click on the little Zillow icon, so it is a good idea to display it on your Craigslist posts to get people back to your virtual tour, and then see all your information.

Please let me know if you need any help with this new feature.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Here it is my first vidcast…Just wanted to get one out. I don’t care about the quality of this one. I will make the quality better as I learn how to use my camera. I do I care about the message, and this is why I spent more time on the content then on the production. If you don’t want to watch the video, I’ll highlight the message in text.

My introduction:

My name is Matt Dunlap, and I am the CTO of Realivent.com. I”m also the technology partner for “The Legacy Group”. A San Francisco based real estate team. I started the Legacy Group, after about 1 year in real estate sales. I quickly found out that I was much better at marketing and making the phone ring, then actually picking it up and closing deals. So, I talked my Girlfriend, Trang Nguyen, into becoming a Realtor and becoming my partner. I handle all the backend stuff, marketing and technology, and Trang handles all the client interaction, contracts, and closing deals. The team is working very well. It took about 6 months to get things rolling, but we see a bright future. We closed our first deal in June of 2006, and by the end of 2006, we closed over 10,000,000 in gross sales, and brought home over $200k in commissions. Not bad for a rookie team!

My role in this team is a guerrilla marketer…I basically take all the available sources, and find even more ways to use them to advertise Trang’s services and listing. I use open source products, mostly for free, and hack them for real estate. I have tried before to provide these services for Realtors, but realized that I can’t just teach it. Guerrilla marketing is a mindset, it is a way to look for opportunities, especially where other real estate agents are not . It involves, websites, forums, mail, newspapers, etc… This blog will teach you the tricks I use to market Realtors. the way I bring it across is simple ( non-technical) and most of the tips can be used immediately to get you results.

So, on to Realivent.com. To get help real estate agents, I started Realivent.com with 3 partners, Ken Bui, Bhavin Patel, and Nimisha Patel. We currently have a few free products including virtual tours, blogging software, and Online Post creators. I use all these tolls to market for the legacy group. Our products are focused on lead generation. For example our listing designer (Tool used to post pretty html posts in Craigslist) has lead capture built in. You can capture leads directly from Craigslist!!! I works, believe me, try it…It’s free, and if you want it branded to fit all your other marketing material, I can help. Or, if you want a complete marketing plan, I can help also. Just give Realivent.com a listing feed and we can create all your marketing products instantly, including print, web, mail, and flyers…

So please join the Realivent community and follow along. And please comment of course, with your input and and advice we can make this site very useful.

Popularity: 4% [?]

I love open source, I love hacking, I love guerilla marketing, I love figuring out ways to take tech gadgets and apply them to real estate.

Here is a technology that is fairly new, but coming on strong. GPS Navigation on cell phones.

I bought Trang the Tomtom GPS for her Treo 650 this year, and it’s great. Easy set up, works perfectly, and was half the price of a stand alone GPS system for her car. The cool thing is, I can take the GPS receiver and play with it on my Treo 650 without the maps, and just get my location.

I got this idea from my friend Alain (ak4life.com)

Off topic: Alain as Borat for Halloween

Alain Navigating us through Livermore Wine Country

Back on topic…
Tomtom for Treo comes with CD’s that include all the maps for America, and the GPS receiver. I loaded them up on trangs Treo, but I have not put them on mine. I don’t even know if I can, there is an activation code, doesn’t matter, I don’t want them anyways, I just want the GPS receiver.

My goal is to track where I am, get the logitude and latitude so I plot it on a google map.

I found a lot of products that will do this, but I don’t want to pay…this sounds like fun, but not for $50. I finally come across a product called cotogps. This is an awesome product, Just follow the instructions, and install to your Treo. You have to install the palm mathlib first, which you can also get from cotogps website.

It installed with no problems, Just had to make the ’serial port’ accept bluetooth and I’m off and running. ready to start tracking my location.

cotogps, tracks a lot of data, your location, speed, direction, elevation… It has a track sytem to record your location every 1 second, 2 seconds, 10 secs, or 1 minute. I set it to 10 seconds, jump in my car and head off to Best Buy…I lost my stylus, so I need another one. Every 10 seconds the palm beeps to let me know it recorded my location. it also keeps the palm on, so make sure you have a lot of battery life.

After I get back from Best Buy, I want to view my path. You can see your path from your palm, but not very much info. I need to get the data off the phone and into a gpx file to put it on a map. The palm will not directly export it. I have to download another tool from the cotogps website called cotoGPSDT. Another very cool tool, This guy did a great job.
I sync my palm with my computer, and go to my backup folder and find the track that I plotted. I open that in cotoGPSDT and it creates some very neat images.

This is the path and elevation. Looks like I fell off a cliff.

The cotoGPSDT program lets you export you path as a gpx file. A gpx file is nothing more then an xml file.
I export it to my desktop, and search on Google for ‘gpx to google map’ and come across this page:
http://www.tom-carden.co.uk/googlegpx/

Simply upload you gpx file and it puts it on a google map. In satellite mode, you can actually see which parking spot I was in. Another cool thing is that cotogps tracks your speed and allows you to add markers to your path. you can take pictures and connect them to your path.

Ok, so how does this help realtors…

If you can find your exact location, you can find all the homes for sale or open houses around you.

You can take your clients on a home tour, and create a path, mark the homes you were in, with pictures, and then create a website with that path. Your clients will love it, they will remember a lot more if they see the path to the houses.

There is also a game called geocaching, which is like a high tech treasure hunt. You can get together with other realtors and create a game for open houses. create a path, and tell your clients to follow it. I know it sounds aweful but give it some thought, it might work.

any suggestions for this technology is welcome…I’m jumping on my mountain bike and hitting the hills. I’ll have a new path later.

Popularity: 7% [?]

TRIVIA QUESTION: What %age of listings on Realtor.com have Virtual Tours (VTs) ?

Well, this was the very topic of my research today and I discovered some mind boggling stats. Since, we’re based here in Silicon Valley, we thought it would be interesting to start the research in our local market to see if we’re as techie as the valley we live in. So here it goes…

I started the search on Realtor.com using the following criteria: “San Jose, CA (no price range)” and found 2,866 properties . I then sorted the results by “Featured Tour” which shows the listings with VTs first (who would’ve thought). There were 287 property pages, with each page displaying 10 properties. I paged through the listings to see how many VT pages I would find. Well guess what ? I thought I was going to do a lot of paging, but my journey ended abruptly. After quickly reaching page 30 (2 VTs on page 30) , the virtual tours were gone! What ? 292 virtual tours ? Out of 2,866 homes in San Jose ? That means only 10.8% of the homes are marketed using VTs. That is an amazing statistic! There’s something wrong with this picture (no pun intended). Try it for your city and let us know what %age you find.

Why aren’t more properties marketed using Virtual Tours ? We don’t have the answer to that (if you do please share your insights), but there are many, many reasons why they should be used. Here are some obvious reasons (especially for a slowing market):

1. Virtual Tours Increase Traffic
As more and more agents migrate their marketing dollars to the internet to attract the growing percentage of buyers who start their home search online, it is becoming more difficult to differentiate oneself and attract the greatest traffic to one’s listing. As we can see in our example above, virtual tours can effectively increase your listing ranking and thus traffic. If a buyer were to search for listings on Realtor.com and checked the “Featured Tour” option, and you didn’t have a VT, then your listing wouldnt’ show up until the 30th page. Would you as a buyer scroll through 30 pages of listings at one sitting ?

2. Virtual Tours are Sticky
I’m not sure about this, but I’m willing to take a wild guess that VTs are more sticky than still pictures. And they are sticky not only for buyers, but also for sellers. For most buyers, its pretty obvious, we live in a multimedia world now and listings that move attract eyeballs (with the caveat that they are designed well - spinning houses gets me dizzy and that doesn’t work). Not only that, but we’re talking about VTs that provide more relevant information about the listing so that the buyer can take the next action (VISIT THE HOUSE), information such as neighborhood demograhics, shool APIs, recent comparables - all of this information together presents a better picture for the listing. Secondly, VTs are another tool that you can use during your listing appointment to show the seller that you will find more ways to market their properties.

3. Virtual Tours are Available
There are hundreds of VT companies offering VT solutions with prices ranging anywhere from $19/tour to $79/tour. Almost every MLS or local Realtor association has some type of VT affiliate program. But even then, there are not many in use. Why ? If it increases the cost/listing, we’ve got the answer, if it is for some other reason, we’d like anyone to comment.

Realivent has just introduced our Free Virtual Tour system, complete with listing details, neighborhood demographics, featured listings, and the ability to add your own home search page.

Here is a sample virtual tour : SAMPLE FREE TOUR

Just enter your listing once, add unlimited photos and panoramas, and voila - you’ve got an instant virtual tour, complete
with your contact information, your featured listings, comparables (can be turned off), mapping, neighborhood demographics, and finally the ability to add your own home search page.

Its FREE - please use it. You don’t have to use ours (but its FREE) but shouldn’t sellers deserve it ? And if you don’t, please tell us why you think virtual tours would not help you market your seller’s property ?

Popularity: 5% [?]

If you are a San Francisco Realtor an use the public home search tool for your websites, there is a little bug with Firefox browsers. Works fine in IE.

The bug relates to the framed IDX solution they provide. The problem…it does not work in Frames.
If you view in a normal page, works fine. Put it in a frame, and the map returns an error.

Rapattoni released a new version recently, and It is quite nice…but there are some major problems.

1. The main admin section does not work with Firefox Browsers. You can only use it with Internet Explorer. I guess this is not a very big deal. Top Producer is the same way, but I like Firefox, so it’s a big deal to me.
2. It’s slow.
3. this is another personal peev, but why don’t you let the Realtors get a raw data feed???? So they build there own searches. The Realtors are paying for this service, and we are stuck with either buying a 3rd party product for IDX, or we have to use the framed solution from SFARMLS, which is not very good. I know there is a lot to this issue, but personally, Just give Realtors a raw data feed so they can plug it into Google Maps, and make there own search… Only one feed per Broker Office is currently allowed and if a vendor is on record to access the raw feed, you have to try to get access from them…good luck with that!

   The Broker should access this feed, and the broker feeds it to vendors, or a broker should be able to choose how gets the raw data directly from SFARMLS. Everything a realtor does is based around MLS listing. If a broker accessed this feed, all marketing material, print, ads, emails, could be automatically created from this raw data.

 Off my soapbox…Let’s fix this bug

To find your public home search tool, log into www.sfarmls.com, don’t forget to use IE

Go to admin->IDX Search Setup. This is where you can add or remove search fields.

I would suggest removing the mapping until this bug is fixed. Make sure “Map” is in the left column, not the right.

To preview the link go to Admin->Public Access Links. The 3rd link down is your IDX Solution.

Please let me know if you need help with this, or have no idea what I’m talking about. I will be glad to help.

Popularity: 6% [?]