Raising the Titanic - An Interview with Ian Morris

By Joel Burslem on Thursday, February 1, 2007 Filed Under: Internet

The big shakeup at HouseValues got a lot of people talking this week. Questions about the long term survivability of the company echoed through the blogosphere, much of it spurred on by the grumbling of ex-employees.

As one of the highest profile real estate 1.0 web properties, I believe HouseValues’ troubles are ultimately a result of the macro changes that are happening right across this industry. It’s pretty clear. Real estate professionals are no longer the gatekeepers of information.

On the surface however, HouseValues has not evolved. It’s main sites JustListed.com and HouseValues.com still treat consumers like children and are obviously little more than lead capture tools. Homepages.com is so confusing and poorly designed, it borders on being virtually unusable.

In the past, there may have been few other options to turn to; but consumers these days have many more friendly data sources to choose from - Trulia or Zillow, Redfin or Shackprices, just to name a few. HouseValues, who built their business selling leads on to agents, is under the very real threat of losing that business once consumers wise up.

I was curious on how they plan on turning things around and Ian Morris, President and CEO of HouseValues was nice enough to allow me a few minutes of his time this week to talk to him about how they plan on righting the ship and charting a new course.

First off, Morris insisted (somewhat tenuously in my mind) that they weren’t competing with any of these new players - rather that they were in the business of connecting consumers and real estate agents.

At the heart of that connection, according to Morris, is their Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform which allows the agents to manage any leads they receive and develop a business relationship with that individual.

Morris indicated that the direction for the company going forward is that they would be refocusing on the sales and support of this platform.

So does that mean they are moving their business model from lead farm to more of a Salesforce.com-type business model?

I suspect it might. It may be the only hope they have left.

What was clear to me however, was that Morris understood the changes in the consumer behavior that are forcing them to make some changes. “There’s no such thing as an Internet lead,” he told me. Quite a claim for someone that once was in the business of selling Internet leads.

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8 Comment(s)

Incredible Agent | Feb 1, 2007 | Reply

If you think their employees are upset at them, you should hear what Realtors are saying about them. Their products are struggling and thier pricing simply doesn’t work anymore. Especially in a market slowdown.

You can’t keep screwing agents over and expect to stay in business. Their product needs a complete overhaul, that’s why they built homepages.com. They knew housevalues.com and justlisted.com weren’t going to cut it, so they took a leap toward a new product and fell flat on their face…similar to a few other RE 1.0 companies.

I wonder if they really have a vision for pulling out of their slump or do they simply just know they have to do it. Cleaning up the books only goes so far. It’s going to take some serious innovation in order to keep up with the rest of the 2.0 world.

What did he mean by “There’s no such thing as an Internet Lead”? I don’t get that…maybe it’s a context thing.
john harper | Feb 2, 2007 | Reply

Given ther lousy nature of the “leads” they provide, I imagine it means that until you verify the info given over the Internet - it’s not a lead, it’s just characters in a form.

The whole concept of Karma - what goes around, comes around - is applicable. You can only feed people trash so long, before you’re trash.
Joel Burslem | Feb 2, 2007 | Reply

My take on his comment about Internet leads is that they aren’t are commodity that can be bought or sold; rather that consumers on the Internet are just looking for information and will self identify when they are ready to be contacted. Real estate professionals and companies need to adapt their services to match that behavior.
Jon Sigler | Feb 3, 2007 | Reply

They tried to get me to buy their leads. I could not find one single web site where there were positve comments about the quality of the leads except ones which were run by HouseValues. You can’t sell people junk and expect them to come back. Visitors to the sites want a house value and they get realtors and mortgage people trying to sell them something instead. Realtors and Loan Officers get sold home buyer leads, and that is not what the site is generating.
They need to start selling what they have to sell. If they were a cat they would be on their 8th life.
bc | Feb 4, 2007 | Reply

Ian Morris is a theif….
Andy Denton | Feb 6, 2007 | Reply

Having to spend marketing dollars to brand three different products, with no umbrella property was a big mis-calculation.

Television ads aren’t cheap. And neither are internet ads these days. Multiply these costs by 3 and you can see how expensive their overhead becomes just on buzz-marketing alone.

Add to this a (not-so)wonderful customer experience…
HouseValues - Lead capture form.
Just Listed - Lead capture form
Home Pages - Confusing home listings

All in all, they are a great company. Their product is top notch. But, they have more then doubled their pricing over the last year or so, and the customer offering is lacking, to be kind.

It will take a large strategy change to overcome their current public perception.
Brett | May 4, 2007 | Reply

I used to work at HouseValues, and left my employment with them to further my sales career elsewhere. I have secured another opportunity and am now with Count Me In, Bellevue, WA. http://countmein.com

For 15 months I had enjoyed a wonderful experience with HV. I needed more stimulation than what I was receiving every day on the phone. To be succinct, I wanted to speak to a wide variety of different businesses, not just RE agents. I am doing that now.

While at HV I learned that the executives, management, and everyone else for that matter - genuinely cares about the company and more importantly the RE agents, the customer.

Is the soft RE market the cause for the drop in stock prices and overall revenue? Is it the increased competition from similar online offerings the reason for the slide in revenue? I personally think it is a combination of these and everything else mentioned thus far in this blog/elsewhere as the reason for HV’s current financial troubles.

HV does not need to do anything differently. The business model is fine. There is nothing they can do differently anyway. HV is the best company an agent could partner with to get a few more transactions each year. They’re the best in my opinion. I think the whole online RE “lead generation” thing has just run its course. Simple. Ultimately, HV and similar companies have taught new agents, and also reinforced the veteran agents that the only and best way to run your RE business is by building a rock solid pipeline. Building a pipeline of business has been around forever, DUH! Hard work will enable agents to get those leads to transaction. Simple….
Portland Real Estate | Jan 7, 2008 | Reply

Im not sure why someone would work with housevalues. Every agent is offering a free cma as part of their marketing. Its always been that way just give then a call or email. Essentially thats exactly what Housevalues does. Except after they connect a seller and an agent together they collect a fee. I guess I give props to HouseValues, Im not sure how you did it but they did.