Stat of the Day from Niki: “Since Move’s founding in 1993, as InfoTouch Corp., it’s amassed losses of $2 billion, making a profit in only two years — $20.9 million in 2006, and $500,000 in 2005, Move said in its annual report.“
Tagged: move RSS
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Dustin
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Dustin
Be Jane acquired by… Builder Homesite [4realz Exclusive]
A few days ago, Be Jane announced they were bought, but hadn’t said by whom, which led a few to speculate who the buyer might be. I’m happy to say that 4realz.net has the scoop that the new buyer is Builder Homesite.Here’s the story.
A little while ago I was introduced to Chief Jane and we had some great conversations about what online real estate companies would be a good fit for acquiring Be Jane. We talked through all the big online search sites (and I even introduced her to a few people I knew), but I got the feeling that the “right” home for Be Jane wasn’t with any of my contacts.
Fast forward a few months…
Builder Homesite is on a rampage. Last week, they announced that they are running Move’s New Home channels:“Through this new strategic partnership [with Move, Inc], Builders Digital Experience (BDX) will operate the Move.com New Homes Channel and NewHomeSource.com, the country’s two most visited new homes websites”
And then this week, I’m told that they bought Be Jane.
The idea behind buying Be Jane has to be that Builder Homesite is looking to quickly build out a portal geared toward woman… and why not. Be Jane has a library of DIY articles and videos as well as a large female community interested in the topic.
In terms of Builder Homesite, I know almost nothing about the company except what I’ve read over the past week or so and what little I can gleam from their website. Nonetheless, their flurry of recent activity tells me they’ll likely be a great partner with Move, where the discussion of acquisitions, partnerships, lawsuits, etc. was so common it felt like background noise after a while.
With these additional resources (Move’s New Home connections and Be Jane’s content/community), Builder Homesite is a really interesting player to watch in the home building space and potentially a great home for the Be Jane team.
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Brook
I always recommended that women do the work in their own homes. Though in London most people opt for building contractors to come is as it is one of those fast bustling cities where women have taken on the business roles of men (not all). But women have a certain ability to envision beautiful homes. so it is always useful to have one around in getting any work done in your home.
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Scott Nachatilo
I think the reason behind the merger is that they both need each other, in terms of making their business improved and to have a larger market.
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Leroy
Online jobs are reaching its popularity nowadays. It’s ideal for stay at home moms. At least they get even a little amount of money while being there for the family.
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more
I hope this turns out to be a good move. There’s a dire need for most women focused websites online. And not just fashion and gossip.
It turns out there are lots of women online, and we could sure use the representation.
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Dustin
Move Brings in a New CEO
From the press release: Move Names Steve Berkowitz as Chief Executive Officer:
Move “today announced that Steven H. Berkowitz, a 25-year veteran of the media content, advertising and Internet industries, has been named as the Company’s Chief Executive Officer, effective immediately. Mr. Berkowitz has served on Move’s Board of Directors since June 2008. He succeeds W. Michael Long, who is retiring from the Company and the Board.”
That’s really interesting on a number of levels, not the least of which is that Lorna Borenstein, the current President, did not get the job of CEO.
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Dustin
How much lower can Move go?
When I started at Move in May ‘06, the stock (and my options) was priced at slightly above $6. Today, I see the stock end today at $0.89, making for a very sad looking chart and definitive proof that I know nothing about timing my employment options. I’m also not particularly good at reading financials, but I do know enough to know that having a market cap of $136M when you have $140M in total assets (down from over $200M in total assets from last year) is not a good thing. I’d think they’d be an obvious take-over target except my guess is that many suitors would view the contract with NAR as more of an impediment to growth than an asset.
Which begs an interesting question… How much lower would the stock have to go before NAR steps in, realizes Russell’s dream and buys back operation of realtor.com from Move? My guess is that there’s a bunch of reasons this couldn’t happen, but still… It would seem that something will have to give at some point if the stock price keeps dropping.
On a more positive note for Move, they did win their patent case today that had to do with putting listings on a map (at least that’s how I remember the case being explained to me!).
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Jim Reppond
Let’s see… that’s works out to a loss of just over 70% of it’s value since August 15th when it closed at $2.99. I know the market has tanked for everyone. But that says a LOT for the lack of confidence investors have in this company. It probably doesn’ t help to remember that back in 2006 when they were called HomeStore.com the former COO and CEO were convicted of investor fraud and sentenced to 15 years in jail. I’m assuming they are still in jail and not running the company again… right?
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Michael Wurzer
Dustin, I’m not entirely sure but I don’t think that litigation is the major mapping patent case most have been focused on as that involves what has become known as the 989 patent.
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/5032989.htmlI’m not sure if the cases are related or not, but thought I’d mention it.
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Dustin
Michael: I came in after the lawsuits had already started and did my best to stay away from them. Considering I’m not sure which patent this lawsuit refers to means I did at least somewhat of a good job not getting involved!
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Jim Duncan
In all honesty, I’d love to see NAR look at, and show the membership, how feasible/expensive/cheap it would be to reclaim RDC.
How much closer to zero does it have to get? And what are Move’s options to earn profit other than advertising or “upselling” to the members/Realtors?
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Loren Nason
woopideedoo!
A patent to put listings on a map
BIG F****N DEAL!That patent is just as bogus as Amazons one-click patent
I should patent a special device that closes the traps of stupid patent lawyer scum.
It’s called Duct Tape
but my patent will be for STFU Tape its a special type of Duct Tape that makes people STFU.Ok I feel better now
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Irina Netchaev
It’ll be interesting to see when NAR steps in and takes over. Once they do, how will they make Move.com more realtor friendly.
Move has been taking advantage of realtors for years. I’m not to sad to see them tank.
I am sad about the timing of your stock options. THAT SUCKS!!!!
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Jay Valento - Long Beach Real Estate
Buy it back and take it down…have the consumer go to the local market to find homes from happy real estate professionals that provide excellent content on their websites.
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Jay Valento - Long Beach Real Estate
Yes. Most of my clients don’t go to Realtor.com for anything. I have found listings on Realtor.com that are a year old…I am a little confused…I list a house. Realtor.com posts it on their website for free. Then, they turn around and ask me to pay for advertising….shouldn’t they be paying me for the opportunity to display my listing to their audience? It is quite crazy.
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Kevin Tomlinson-Miami Beach Real Estate
The lower the better. Let’s get it back in our own hands.
Hey, do you think Realogy will make it?
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Jay Valento - Long Beach CA Real Estate
I know you know Dustin….is there a place to post topic questions?
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kravtee
The real 989 patent case has not been settled and no judgement has been made yet. The 989 patent case is much larger and more extensive than the one mentioned by the OP.
989 not only implicates Move but also NAR, RE/MAX, Realogy, the NHBA, and a host of other large corporations and individual agents.
A patent is a patent……..If I created something and was awarded a patent by the US government (no matter if you think it is legit or not the gov considered it legit when they awarded the patent) I would want the right to get paid if I felt my patent was stolen.
The question isn’t whether the patent is valid rather if the companies listed infringed. Part of the defense was patent validity but the judges already threw that defense out from what I understand.
Interesting stuff IMHO. Would I be surprised if those large corporations did so? Given their recent history of corruption, it would not surprise me at all.
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Jay Valento - Long Beach Ca Real Estate
Maybe we can all pitch in and buy Move? Reorganize it. Perhaps you can add a Donations button to this post to raise money to buy them….
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Robbie
Frankly, the market is killing everybody. As of today, Move has actually done better YTD than Apple & Google (in terms of percentage loss in their respective stock prices).
Even more shocking, the company Market Leader (formerly known as HouseValues) has outperformed all of the above companies.
Move will bounce back, especially if Trulia & Zillow don’t become profitable before their money runs out.
kravtee and 8 others are discussing. 
Dustin
Jonathan Washburn makes it interesting…
I thought it was interesting when he recently took a shot at Rich Barton and Pete Flint (twice), but my jaw dropped when I started reading his post criticizing (to put it nicely) Move’s opperation of Realtor.com.
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Russell Shaw
I don’t know him but I am pretty impressed with him so far – after reading that post. Thanks for pointing me to it.
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Dustin
Russell: By way of background, he is a founder of ActiveRain…
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Jim Duncan
He makes some excellent points. The problem may be the bureaucratic structure of NAR; getting them to do anything before the market turns, whether that’s in 6 or 36 months could prove impossible.
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Jonathan Washburn
Glad I gave you a thrill Dustin. I would disagree about two shots being thrown at Zillow and Trulia. The second post was a shot more aimed at the lack of effort being put out by real estate’s old guard than it was a follow up shot at Trulia and Zillow.
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Joseph Bridges
I enjoyed his post about Realtor.com. I do believe that they could better serve the real estate industry in their offerings and the price being offered to realtors. Jonathan makes a point about buying the assests but I think more importantly about NAR looking out for members in the offerings at realtor.com. We have found in our testing that money spent on realtor.com produces far fewer results than those spent on our own websites.
Dustin
Realtor.com Turns up the Heat and…
…I really like how they’ve mapped it out!
The Realtor.com team recently turned on a “heat map” option within their home valuation tool. Here’s a heat map of Ballard in Seattle where you can really see the detail of the more expensive areas (in particular the areas around the water!):
It’s clean, fast and well implemented. On my version of firefix (v 3) on a Mac, I’m not seeing the legend that others appearently can see, but that is the only hole I can find in the implementation.
To get an idea of just how detailed these maps are, it’s worth comparing to the previous implementation that exists on on the neighborhood page for this same area on realtor.com showing average neighborhood list price:
I think it is also worth noting that neither Zillow or Trulia have done much to bring the same level of detail to the maps… For example, Trulia’s heat maps are limited to the neighborhood level with boundaries…
And the option to display heat maps on Zillow no longer seems to be available (although I did find this page which shows what they used to look like on Zillow).
Anyway I love maps and think they can convey a ton of great information about neighborhoods and homes, so it’s great to see someone pushing the boundaries even if I’ve been giving the team a hard time recently for other issues (see realtor.com home values and realtor.com blog hack articles).
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Drew Meyers from Zillow
Dustin-
You caught on to the fact that we lost our heatmap functionality — it happened when we switched over to Microsoft aerial imagery a couple months ago. We do think it’s a cool feature and will try to add the feature back at some point; it’s just a matter of prioritizing that work against the other features our development team is working on. -
Dustin
I’m glad to hear it is missing because I spent at least 10 minutes searching for it… I liked the heatmaps when you guys first launched but think the recent realtor.com implementation is even better so you guys might take a few queues from them when you go to rebuild the functionality!
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Jim Duncan
Dustin – I never thought I would read that line – “take a few queues from (Realtor.com)” – Ever.
And I like the maps, too; ‘course it’s ridiculously and irresponsibly inaccurate for my market, but still … that’s why it’s “alpha” I guess.
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Dustin
Jim: I couldn’t resist!
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Bruce Breger
Dustin,
Never thought I would say this but Realtor.com nailed it. Best I have seen out there. They are starting to get it and with their hands on relationship with Realtors, their information will be accurate. Great post.
Bruce
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estewart6
Anoteh
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estewart6
Oops, shoot for backspace and you get Enter…
What I meant to say was another great tool that I’ve been using for real estate searches, etc. is the website by PropertyMaps. It has been an incredible tool. Another good thing is that they teamed up with RealtyTrac for foreclosure information.
mwurzer 11:04 am on March 12, 2010 Permalink |
Wow: “Since Move’s founding in 1993 … it’s amassed losses of $2 billion, making a profit in only two years”. http://bit.ly/9VRaqy
This comment was originally posted on Twitter