Reflections on NAR
I’m back in Portland and done washing off three days worth of casino stink. NAR was an enlightening trip and it was great to catch up with so many people, even if a broken plane sunk my hopes of attending the BloggerCon get-together.
Over the few days I was in Vegas I had a chance to talk to a number of people. I spoke front of a panel at the Homescape Summit, as well as presented to an enlightened group of Realty Alliance marketers and technologists. I also had numerous in-hallway conversations, where - let’s face it - the real education happens.
Here’s my take. There’s a seismic shift in Real Estate 2.0 underway right now.
The fear of new technology has largely dissipated. But it has been replaced by confusion and hesitation in the face of an uncertain market.
What do I mean? I think most people get Web 2.0 - they understand the power of a blog or a social network, for example. They understand the value of syndicating their listings. They know they should be thinking about video tours for their listings. The what? and why? questions have, for the most part, been answered. It’s the how? that they’re wrestling with more and more now.
As far as announcements this week, there were some significant developments; Zillow snagged some listings from the newspapers and introduced a Virtual Sold Sign program.
Rival REALTOR.com launched a neighborhood research tool for consumers. And CyberHomes has finally birthed itself.
I hope to chime in with a greater assessment of each of the announcements next week, but here’s something I’ll be chewing on over the weekend.
In the frenetic arms race by the portals for greater and deeper feature sets, does any of this really create a better experience for the users?
This mad dash for features has been driven by the dreams of untethered engineers, fast-tracked by the fears of being left out of the party and fueled by a need to prove a positive growth strategy for venture backers and shareholders. But, in the end, what does it all add up to?
The greater challenge here moving forward is not just the next gearing up for the next big release or more games of oneupmanship, but is going to be educating Realtors, and by extension, the general public, on how to use them.
Right now, I think this focus on features has lead to overwhelming confusion that is resulting in hesitation. The shift that has to happen is the move from the development of technology to the application of technology. The company that can best communicate the application of its product will win, not the company with the flashiest features.
Or at least, that’s what I’m hearing.
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21 Comment(s)
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- From Real Estate/Buisness News » Blog Archive » Reflections on NAR | Nov 16, 2007
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- From Others Opine on the NAR Convention : NAR Wisdom | Nov 19, 2007
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Todd Carpenter | Nov 16, 2007 | Reply
I’m not really sure they have to create a better user environment. At least not for everyone. I think the key is in layering these tools so that they are available to the data junkie, but don’t overpower the experience for someone just looking for basic information.
Missy Caulk | Nov 16, 2007 | Reply
Glad you had fun and took a bath. I am a little overwhelmed with social networks because mainly it is the same people. I joined cre8buzz this week. I am using facebook for my listings and honestly tired of getting gifts, throwing food, pirates etc….
On the good side, I’ve been asked to speak twice at Remax Michigan conference in Feb. Once on blogging and facebook. LOL
And then for the assistants break-out on how to set up blogs. So last year at this time, no one in my company had heard of a blog.
Dennis From LivePads | Nov 16, 2007 | Reply
Welcome back Joe! Look forward to reading more about NAR.
David G from Zillow.com | Nov 16, 2007 | Reply
“does any of this really create a better experience for the users?”
Read the lead post in this thread:
http://www.zillow.com/forum/site/ViewThread.htm?tid=11648
It’s just one of stacks of examples of real sellers and buyers getting real help from Zillow’s community.
John Clinebell | Nov 17, 2007 | Reply
It seems to me the whole reason these portals exist is to slowly phase the importance of involving a realtor in the process (at least early on) out of the equation. We’re noticing that a lot of real estate businesses are still managing to stay ahead of the curve by offering unique services, discounts, resources so that their online presences don’t become irrelevant amidst all of these great real estate portals.
It’s all going to come down to innovation, and I can safely say that at least for now that there are realtor sites that offer specialized, valuable tools that can’t be found on these ‘big box’ sites. So until there’s a real surge of services that people can’t live without on these big sites, they will continue to seek out local experts for the information they need to make the best choice possible.
Dan Dashnaw | Nov 17, 2007 | Reply
Great post, Joel!
I felt exactly the same when wandering the NAR expo the past few days. I was honestly surprised at the strength of focus on emerging technologies, especially from organizations like the NAR themselves. Everywhere I went there was buzz about real estate video, blogging, social networking, etc - which was quite exciting to hear for us, for a number of reasons!
At the same time I also witnessed a bit of a ’scattered’ perspective regarding actual implementation, and a bit of confusion about ‘what immediate next steps to take’, given the volatile nature of the current market. May vendors exhibiting seemed to be ’stretching’ their offerings and business models, which seemed to hint at mild desperation to me and my colleagues. All in all the vibe was, well - a bit ironic!
Anyway, nice review of the Expo. Let’s hope that the emerging trend towards more technologically-driven initiatives helps to compensate for this awkward time in the market to some degree. I’d love to see the bigger players start to really make use of the available marketing tools like video tours and blogs in order to help leverage themselves out of this slump, as I’m pretty certain that it would certainly be at least a compelling move in the right direction! We’ll see, I suppose. =]
Best Regards,
Dan Dashnaw
AgentCasts Real Estate Video Tours
http://www.agentcasts.com
Lola Audu | Nov 17, 2007 | Reply
Hi Joel,
Thanks for this update. While it is good to see that the “conversation” is being engaged by real estate professionals…it’s somewhat intriguing to read your thoughts about the fact that there is no consensus about what to do with all this new “emerging technology.”
I’m not sure this scenario is very different from the one which preceeded it…Where real estate agents bought tons of gadgets & programs; many of which sat unopened on bookshelves for years. The difference is that this time the catch up time has speeded up…we’re talking months now…not years.
Ray Giesbrecht www.myrealpage.com | Nov 17, 2007 | Reply
I would agree 100% the focus has to be on improved and I may add really easy to use applications. Well over 50% of the Realtors I sell websites to tell me they are not very computer savvy.
In the end there are only so many hours in a day to both learn and then apply these emerging web 2.0 products. In addition to these challenges is finding good quality original content to fill these blogs and social networking sites with.
With technology changing so quickly these days it seems one of the areas we will need to improve on is our productivity to better leverage the benefits of these emerging trends.
Diane Cohn | Nov 17, 2007 | Reply
I’m just a lowly real estate agent, and I’ve never been to a NAR gathering in my life. That said, my impression leaving Las Vegas this weekend is that these are good people doing their best to serve clients… but with regards to technology, they don’t know what they don’t know.
Blog? What’s that? Thank god Seth Godin harped on it a little. Now maybe they’ll have been exposed to the concept.
Yes, it was a good review of basic Realtor business techniques, but it felt so old school, so behind the times. If 83% of buyers and sellers are online… why aren’t you talking about blogging and other online opportunities post-1995. Hello? Do you even understand what blogging can do for you, your lead generation and your business?
I probably won’t go to another NAR convention for years. I much prefer smaller technology conferences like Inman (No, Joel, I am not sucking up here… I mean it) where you can really connect with forward-looking people and glimpse the future of real estate.
NAR doesn’t seem to know what that future is, at all. If anything, they seem to be clinging to the past.
retrove.com | Nov 17, 2007 | Reply
Great post, although this kind of struck me…
“greater and deeper feature sets, does any of this really create a better experience for the users?….
“but is going to be educating Realtors, and by extension, the general public, on how to use them.”
I agree that many will have to learn to use these great products but for a product to be truly remarkable, users should not have to “learn” how to use it… they should be able to access it and understand it instantly. If users must “learn” it, they will take the path of least resistance.
Creating a complicated product / service is easy, creating a easy product / service is complicated.
The product that is so simple that “anyone” can figure it out and see the value, it is the one that will win the race.
John Schroeder | Nov 18, 2007 | Reply
It seems that REALTORS may be stuck between wanting to utilize all of these new tools at their disposal to attract internet saavy customers and “getting back to basics” with their exisiting customers, clients, family, and friends.
Do most REALTORS want to spend time or even have the time to start utilizing these new tools? Do their assistants? Without a clear cut roadmap it’s very easy for them to jump from new technology to newer technology. What works?…what doesn’t work?…what works but it takes longer to be effective?
Being able to measure your results or ROI on any marketing- which includes blogging, video for listings, Facebook usage, etc. etc., is very important. The problem with that is that once you have created (hopefully) a terrific and very noticable internet prescence it becomes very hard to determine where that lead or new client came from.
Yes…I believe that showing agents how to utilize these tools is the next great step. But they also must be able to measure the results of their online activities.
Kyle Else | Nov 18, 2007 | Reply
Joel when you wrote: “The company that can best communicate the application of its product will win, not the company with the flashiest features.” I was reminded of an old post - I agree with you that …..”it’s obvious that the real estate consumers adoption and awareness of new technologies is driving the pace of the industry’s transformation.”
Tom Townsend | Nov 18, 2007 | Reply
Joel, I was unable to attend NAR, and appreciate the in sight. I am (as of last week) a former VP-IT for a Web Based National Real Estate firm. I have been working with my wife and her partner recently to ensure that they get what Web 2.0 can do for them. Because of my involvement in the industry on the Technology side, as well as my Wife and her partner on the agent side, I have a very unique perspective. My wife accepts the technology and I work hard to educate her and her partner. Her partner is old school and even though she admits she needs to spend more time learning the tech side, she will kick and scream the entire way. On her defense, is knowledge that right now their is so much new technology offerings that it is difficult to sort the wheat from the chafe.
How many Virtual Tour companies, Listing service companies, Blog companies and Lead generation companies do they receive spam from on a weekly basis ? They all claim to have the next best thing since sliced bread. It’s a wonder that Realtors are very standoffish on whole web 2.0 thing.
I believe I have an answer. Stay tuned for more.
Thomas Townsend
New Media Guru
Virtual Interactive Systems
Dave Platter | Nov 18, 2007 | Reply
Joel, I think you’ve hit on something. The Web 2.0 community tends to get excited about the latest innovations, but most users just want to see the listings that matter to them, and they may not even be frequent web users.
I think a lot of people in the tech community forget who the users really are. A successful web portal has to make sense to the person who is still getting comfortable using an ATM and hasn’t yet figured out their cell phone. We’re talking about readers of Newsweek and Time, not of online blogs.
That’s why content trumps innovation every time.
Mizan from Realasponse.com | Nov 19, 2007 | Reply
I totally agree with Joel’s thoughts surrounding the ambiguity of today’s development. Every time I attend an Expo or conference a great number of Realtors have puzzled faces as to how to carry out, manage, and execute these apps and platforms effectively. Not to mention which vendor to go with. Perhaps the new wave of apps with be based on the “how”. The problem with today’s 2.0 apps are that they speak more to “look what we have done” rather than “look what we’ve done for you. Today’s 2.0 development, for the most part, has become trendy, a dash or sprint, and ever more mediocre in true usefulness.
Jillayne Schlicke | Nov 19, 2007 | Reply
I teach Realtor Continuing Ed classes in the Pacific Northwest. I’ve been teaching a class called New Media for two years now. In that class, we go over such things as blogging, podcasts and other RE2.0 tools.
There is no way, from my street level perspective, that blogging the way it was meant to be done, will work for the vast majority of Realtors.
The majority simply do not have the time to devote, the technical acumen, the internal motivation to learn, the ability to write in a persuasive, compelling manner, the emotional maturity to handle conflict in the written form (for everyone to see!!), and the patience to build rapport with anonymous readers.
The average Realtor is going to be better off using a system that’s already in place such as Zillow or the Inman Wiki, that simplifies all steps and spells out the external, monetary benefit to the Realtor in easy-to-understand language.
All Realtors care about is the following: If I part with money (or time), will the exchange result in closed transactions and if so, how many, and how much will I earn.
Realize though, that we’re coming out of a period of time in which agents blindly gave money to systems such as HouseValues that did not pan out for many. I don’t blame them for being confused and unsure.
Joel, was the casino smell really that bad? I’ve never been to Vegas. Was it smoke?
JeffX | Nov 19, 2007 | Reply
The only four things I remember from the exhibit hall were:
The ‘Gold by the inch’ exhibit.
A clothing (dresses and the such) exhibit.
A multitude of vendors demoing the Nintendo Wii’s bowling game.
And
More people introducing themselves to me by asking ‘Joel?’…including Jay Thompson. I’m still trying to figure out how I can leverage this to my advantage.
Anywhoo…The expo was a microcosm of todays real estate and technology landscape…one big clusterfu*k…
JeffX | Nov 19, 2007 | Reply
I think Zillow used a bulk of it’s fund raising to create David G…Part Human, part Zillow.
Thomas Johnson | Nov 20, 2007 | Reply
Real life story: I got a sign call on a listing (remember those things stuck in the front yard?) wanting information about the house. Price was out of range. Offered to set up an email search in the right price range, etc. ” I don’t do email.”
You can complain all you want about Realtors being resistant to change and on and on, but let’s face it: There are 1.2 million Realtors and not all of them are in Seattle selling million dollar houses to current or former Microsoft employees. Our clients respond to what we deliver: belly button to belly button real estate.
Which $49.00/month(pays for itself with the first closing) technology doodad is going to help me close that no email customer?
If we Realtors don’t close the no email client there is no cash flow to spend on the technology to satisfy the VC guys who are wondering when the IPO is going to make them rich.
I realize that my scenario is going glaze the eyeballs in the Web 2.0 blogosphere, but maybe we can get some UN aid and a rock star like Bono to come help webify flyover country. Yes I know about the 80% looking for homes on the web, etc, I also read that if a county in the US has one broadband connection, it is considered by Dept of Commerce(?) to have broadband access for the whole county. From my little foxhole in Texas, where our counties are bigger than most New England states, it seems that the digital divide may be much larger than anyone is willing to admit.
We also have average sales prices in some of my markets that are what the commissions are on the coasts. (I have a 3/2 listed for $39,000)
All that whining aside, I am glad to hear that the rest of NAR doesn’t get Web 2.0- “Gonna be the last man standing..”
Wishing a Happy Thanksgiving to all in the Web 2.0 community.
befreenistan | Nov 21, 2007 | Reply
Here is an experiment for all of you: If you replace the term “Web 2.0″ with “Dot-Com Revolution”, as that was the term used in 1999-2000, would all of today’s prognostications sound as credible. I think all of this Web 2.0 chearleading is hogwash. It is incremental progress at best. The web itself represented a monumental change, as great as the printing press; it is truly revolutionary. Web 2.0 is simply the equivalent of a change in paper quality or in binding technology. For my local real estate agent to spend money on their own web presence is to me as absurd as my car salesman (not the dealer) to have his own web page. No one goes to real estate agent pages. They are boring and cheesy. No one cares. Agents: Save your money. Every low producing agent with two nickels to their name is going to have a blog and post on free sites like Zillow, Trulia, etc…The big dogs with real income should spend some cash to show your prospects that you’re not just trolling for clients. Any free platform is going to be crowded with non-performing agents and part-timers that don’t have real marketing dollars and everybody is going to be doing it. If everybody does it, how does it help you differentiate? The more agents that go online, it is to your advantage to increase your allocation offline. 80% might search for a house online, but remember 100% still check their mailboxes for mail. 100% drive around their neighborhoods.
Norvell Rose | Dec 6, 2007 | Reply
Joel and friends,
My associates who cruised NAR report a lot of chatter about video. Well, I humbly predict that, next year, the chatter will have grown into a resounding chorus. And the uplifted voices will be singing the praises of individuals and enterprises who unrelentingly drive forward with their vision of a video-rich future.
OK, ok… Let’s just say the future is brighter than ever for interactive Internet video that’s high quality and high impact.
Norvell Rose
Founder, CEO
http://www.RexNet.tv