MLS.ca renamed REALTOR.ca

Monday June30th, 2008 the MLS.ca web site will officially be changed to REALTOR.ca as part of the re-branding approved at the Canadian Real Estate Association's (CREA) Special Assembly last October.

Existing mls.ca and sia.ca continue to operate after June 30th to allow for transition time. The new site includes interactive mapping technology, and the old existing mapping will remain on the old sites for a time.

Much alter, auto-redirects will bring mls.ca visitors directly to the REALTOR.ca site once all concerns or issues by various Boards and Associations have been addressed. Visitors will experience new features, interactive mapping, and streamlined search capabilities.

Members have often directed their clients to mls.ca, giving some clients, and even some members, the impression that mls.ca is the Multiple Listing Service® (MLS®) when in fact it has only ever been a limited selection intended as basic information for available listings. With the re-branding, CREA reinforces that listings are being made available by REALTOR®, and expect to see both trademarks - REALTOR® and MLS® - will be strengthened.

Your Own Common Sense Can Put It Together

Question mark
Originally uploaded by desi.italy

Quoted below is the beginning chunk of an online discussion. It was created to sell technology solutions to the real estate professional. I'm not going to comment on the technology, just the sales-pitch. Rather than a rewrite, you'll find below the quoted text my answer that I posted in reply to the sales-pitch.

We heard a much quoted statistic again yesterday and we decided to make it our weekly topic.

They say that 80% of home buyers use the Internet in their search for properties. What does this mean exactly? You never really see this number broken down much further. [note it isn't broken down]

8 of every 10 people look online. But what are they looking at? Buying tips, mortgage rate information, Realtor information? No, we are going to estimate that 90% of everyone who uses the Internet in their search is actually performing a directed property search. And this is normally initiated from a corporate site (remax.com, century21.com etc.) or a dedicated MLS system (realtor.com, mls.ca). Some Internet shoppers may go to a Realtor's website directly, but generally this audience prefers to select from a larger pool of listings (an MLS system).

We can't really back up this 90% with facts, but it seems reasonable don't you think? [and here he says he can't back up his 90% with facts either]

My (edited) Reply:

It's very EASY to tell a Real Estate Professional what is happening on the Internet with an Internet audience. If you don't know statistics, and don't have numbers Marty, I'd hesitate to put any of this out there.

As an avid student of human behaviour, having worked in technology since 1986, and since I'm heavily and actively involved in a wide-range of Internet audiences and always have, I have not only a good sense of Internet User Behaviour, but I also found out about a lot of the business-sales tactics of Internet professionals. Take SEO for example - you know the fly-by-night ones?

So consider this: The reason people come to a Realtor's site from an MLS somewhere is simply by the nature it is created and how Real Estate is currently being marketed (has been marketed) online. You can even look at a Realtor business card for obvious clues.

Real Estate has always been a Trust profession. Ever notice that it is the only industry that the professional members almost always have their photo on their card. It's been done this way for a long time, and the reason is that they are selling themselves to the buyer/seller and the Realtor is selling trust.

Getting online, the Realtor has no idea whatsoever about the Internet, technology, or computers more than they have to know, unless they worked the tech industry previously, are an avid hobbyist, or have a family or close friend working with it. The majority however, simply don't know what the truth is around what is being sold.

Here is the Truth about Searching for Real Estate.

As a buyer, I don't look for a Realtor, I look for a home.

• Am I simply looking for a specific home, or am I looking in a particular geographic area?

So the home-buyer hits the google page and types in, "commercial drive Vancouver property listings" as an example. Some Realtor sites are likely to show up, particularly those who have been ahead of the curve, have found the right solutions and tech-teams, and who have the success to invest in their technology and Internet solutions. But is it all Realtor sites, or are there others there too?

Anyone can answer these questions by simply running their own tests.

• Act like a home buyer.
• Remember how "little" inside knowledge most home-buyers have.
• Ask the dumb questions.
• Conduct the lamest searches, and
• the more sophisticated searches.

The more you do this, you will begin to see the results and the commonalities.

• Are they looking for you?
• Are they looking for just listings?
• Are they looking for a specific place in town?

This is what Creating New Doors on the Internet is all about.

Where the Real Estate industry and profession may have done a great job getting listings online, maybe what they've put online doesn't jive with the way people interact online. A real estate site is only one piece of the equation. Internet work is never done, it is not a static place, and it along with people always shifts and changes.

That is why StrataXL Software incorporates many elements into what they offer the Real Estate industry. Yes, it includes a Realtor site, but it also goes many steps beyond that to deliver websites that actually become representative off a geographic community and that site silently FARMS LEADS all day long and night without us or the Realtor lifting another finger.

It's not just in the Sell you see Marty. It's also in the Farming. We're not reinventing the door, we're preparing the field.

AgentXL and SellFM are Superstars at the Show!!

A small group of committed individuals have been diligently working behind the scenes to build up the foundation in support of two back-to-back Tradeshows held in the Vancouver lower-mainland area this past week.

January 29th, we attended the Vancouver event with greater-Vancouver Realtors, and January 30th, we were in Langley with the Fraser Valley Realtors.

• We had our SellFM transmitters on hand - a big hit with the Realtor crowd, selling a few units right there on site, and more trickling in after the show. We're expecting even more follow-up once people get the opportunity to review what they've brought home, and we proceed with our follow-up calls.
• We also received a new unit in just a few short days prior to the show. It took some frantic exploration and testing, and we proved the viability in today's market and brought along the BlueAgent, another talking sign technology that pushes / offers BlueTooth devices the ability to receive audio, image, vcard, and other data to their BlueTooth enabled device.
• The advances in our back-end software witnessed the birth of AgentXL. Our promotional screens, the successfully running LiveIn sites, and the onsite presentation garnered crowds of traffic at times around our booth.

What I noticed and heard as I talked to many Realtors, is that there are a lot of choices, and there is a lot of confusion with those choices, when it comes to getting a website. I felt their pain. There is nothing worse than not knowing anything about a subject that you must learn more about. When it comes to shelling out cash to buy something you know nothing about, too often we discover we've been sold a bill-of-goods not worth dirt. I've been there too.

We were very pleased and fortunate that our business model, social model, community model, and technology model are based upon a set of values and ethics that empower community, entrepreneurship, leadership, and service. As we took the time to demonstrate the various activities, how they tie together, and what we can accomplish to further the business goals of a Realtor, and provide valuable services and information to the Realtor target-audience (the community), the interest in our suite of products grew.

Active Movers:

SellFM Transmitters
The FM transmitter that shows and sells the listing when you're not there.

BlueAgent
A further evolution of the FM Transmitter, this unit is a small computer offering BlueTooth reception, or FM reception to receive different forms of communication.

Internet Traffic Building
Employing various tactics, we have various package offerings for building links and traffic to client sites. Easy to do, we teach our clients these tactics. They are time-consuming activities, and highly effective, so we also offer packaged deals to carry out the service on our clients behalf so they can keep working on the business they do best.

The Exciting Buzz

The exciting buzz was around our pilot project LiveIn sites: LiveInStrathcona, LiveOnCommercialDrive, LivingInMountPleasant. Every Realtor and Realty office immediately picked up on the value of the community focused sites as farms. The exciting part for us was the feedback we received.

Knowing what we know related to technology and the Internet, it mattered that we build the solution that meets all the parameters of a successful Web2.0 Internet user and client site. Here are just a few of the things that are critical success factors:

• Social media, community, are key elements
• Keywords and content are important
• Link-building and being an authority publisher of Internet content

We have achieved this through a variety of means and continue to evolve and develop the sites as time permits amongst our other projects. The real excitement came on Wednesday at the Fraser Valley Tradeshow when a City of Abbotsford Councillor approached intrigued and excited about applying the same approach for the City and its' residents.

As said at the show in response to her enquiry, "We're in! And we'll gladly extend the basic level of services and site-building for the city and community free of charge."

I wonder what Realtor or Realty Office will be the early-adopter and seize this as yet undeveloped opportunity? LiveInStrathcona is the most mature of these sites we've currently been developing, one of the strongest farm-bait sites available to real estate today. Just ask Rick.