A Wisconsin Realtor gets 18 months (probation) for criminal defamation…
… after writing on ActiveRain that another Realtor was linked to the Russian mob.
*note: I added the word “probation” into the title to be more clear!
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Dustin
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Joseph Bridges
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Russell Shaw
It looks like his sentence was 18 months PROBATION. Not jail time. He only goes to jail if he violates his probation.
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Russell Shaw
Prior to the settlement with NAR and the DOJ I once wrote an entire lengthy post about the DOJ based on me having completely misunderstood MY main point. I only realized what I had not understood once it had been posted. It was then I could start the rewrite process.
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Ricardo Bueno
You know, this might sound a little naive but there’s this quote that I like and try to live by:
“I will speak ill of no one. And I will speak all the good of everyone I know.”
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Toga
I’m speechless….
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Monika
He is probably very lucky…I wonder if the other party will sue for damages? In either case how stupid can people be????
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Mindy Allen
I can only say “woohoo”…finally someone made to adhere to the code of ethics…by a court…of course not by the N.A.R. You don’t talk about other real estate agents, it’s unprofessional. I don’t go to work to watch a soap operas do you? Also placing it in such a public location is obscene. The thing I don’t get, and have been struggling with in this business is that it seems to attract a lot of people with skewed moral compasses…when you mess with another agents reputation it inhibits their ability to provide for themselves, to feed their families and it infuriates me every time I see it or hear it.
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Paul Dunn
Just like email, never EVER write anything when you are ticked off at someone! Unless of course, you are good at hitting that delete button…LOL
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Marlow
What a weird situation. I Googled the victim and found this still online on a different website: http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/0/329/RipOff0329839.htm
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Dustin
Wow, Marlow… I love your ability to find the juicy stuff!
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Property Investment
Be careful there is no fall out from Marlows link. I enjoyed reading it of course, we all like the juicey gossip, but even if you take slurs with a pinch of salt, its always there in the back of your mind. Best to always smile and nod.
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It is a shame to see such comments made by any Realtor. “Draft” mode is always a good feature to allow time to cool off. At one point or another we all get angry, but a professional knows when to show it and when not to.
George
Dustin
Shell Smith, 
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Nick Bastian
This is very interesting, indeed…
Vicki (from Trulia) mentioned that we might get a sneak peak at the party tonight. -
Dave Bethoney
I think Daniel sums it up nicely on that blog post when he says “To me, the main reason you wouldn’t blog on Trulia is the same reason you wouldn’t blog on ActiveRain– you don’t own the content. When you don’t own the content, bad things can happen.”
That’s what makes Propertyqube different. Real estate agents have the ability to feed in their outside blogs being hosted on wordpress, typepad, you name it. Every time a blog entry is posted, we automatically pull it into our system and distribute it to four different local places in our platform. We import links so when a consumer clicks on your blog entry title, they leave Propertyqube and go to your blog to continue reading. That way, the consumer experiences your brand and you realize the increased traffic.
Real estate agents should own their content. Propertyqube clearly supports this (and seems to be the only willing to).
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Andrew
Someone told me this was in the works last month. It’s not surprising since they need content/pages for their site.
Agents don’t give a sh*t about owning content. With all the MLS regulations they never have. I wouldn’t be surprised if Trulia supports blog exporting and if they are smart importing. I doubt agents will even understand that they *may* not own their content.
I don’t agree with everything Trulia does. (TPP BS. They give publishers a trulia sub domain so they get credit for the traffic/pages views. They should give publishers a snippet of js to serve listings) but I think they will do the right thing with the blog platform.
I like this move. Seems natural for me. I have a lot to say about this but I will wait until it goes public.
I am rooting for them though.
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Shell Smith
I think it could be a good step forward, but we’ll have to wait and see. I strongly believe that each site needs it’s own unique thing. For example, PropertyMaps and it’s google maps/mls tool. Maybe changes will come for the better as a result of this.
Dustin
Couldn’t have said it better myself!
At the last 4RealzEd event, a wonderful real estate videographer by the name of David Toth agreed to film our event as well as some reactions from attendees. My favorite video, for reasons that will probably be obvious if you watch it, is when he captured me talking with attendees after the event:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Es4YC4UDlWk]
Here are some links so you can learn more about the people featured in the video:
- Lynda Eisenmann
- Jerry Beiser
- Jeff Corbett
- Cathy Nealand
- Devesh Khare
- Vicki Lloyd
- David Lewin
- Loren Nason
Our next event is in Pasadena on May 30th! And just like the Irvine event, we’re hoping to blow this one out of the water and close registration down early again for lack of space, so now is the time to register!
And finally, I also want to thank Jessie B of ReTrove. He went out of his way to connect us with David Toth so that the videos could be possible! Not only did he capture the testimonials above, but he also edited down our presentation into three pieces to give you an idea of what to expect if you attend (4RealzEd Part 1, Part 2, Part 3). Obviously, if you’re looking to connect with a real estate videographer in Orange County area, you should consider talking with David because the guy knows what he’s doing!
(By the way, don’t be too surprised if I drop off the internet for the next few days as I travel and present in Toronto at RealtyQuest early this week…)
Brian Requarth are discussing. -
Brian Requarth
Dustin, good stuff. It is great when you have a quality product/service and create value for others. People are happy to help you spread the gospel and it is the most effective way to get the word out. I am sure you will quickly sell out your next event.
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Dustin
Thanks Brian… It was definitely fun to get the reactions of the people in attendance. I keep learning a bunch with each event!
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Joseph Bridges
I hope that Pasadena event gets packed for you Dustin. My brother, James, and I will be talking about it this week when we are in Pasadena teaching. We always have fun at your events and I know people will not only have fun but they will learn as well.
Dustin
Been crazy for a few days getting ready for…
…in Realty Quest.
Here are some of the things I wanted to talk about this week, but haven’t had the chance:
- 4RealzEd is coming to Pasadena on May 30! The buzz from the first two events has been wonderful and I’m already seeing people sign up without any real marketing on our part! I love it!
- Move, Inc lost $4.6M in Q1 and not releasing “transformational” product. About the only positive news is that they are “announcing” a beta site that has been live (with a link from the homepage) since December. I feel bad for my previous colleague in marketing who has to spin this stuff.
- Keller Williams gets Zillow fever. Consider the great relationship between Top Producer (owned by Move) and KW, this must have been particularly painful for Errol Samuelson (runs both Top Producer and Realtor.com)
- Trulia teams up with the Silicon Valley Ass of REALTORS. The traditional walls are slowly crumbling.
- Seattle times reporter/blogger wonders covers conference with Move, Zillow and Google and wonders who will create the real estate destination portal of the future…
- Todd announces RE BlogWord… A special real estate track for the popular BlogWorld conference in Vegas. My guess is that there will be a bunch of big names from the world of real estate social media so this should be a lot of fun.
- Had a great, GREAT, meetup yesterday (dubbed: Doctor’s Note Gathering) with real estate and tech folks from the valley. Linda and Ted had nice write ups!
- Getting excited about a panel this year at Inman led by Jeff Turner called: Growing Pains: Take Your Blog to the Next Level (more announcments around RE Connect are sure to come!)
- Krunching.com launched earlier this week. I like everything about the site (from the perspective of a first public launch), except the business model. I think they will either need to be a tech provider (i.e. selling tech to consumers/professionals) OR a brokerage (commissions!), but not both. Otherwise, the site is great and I look forward to seeing more!
- Niki let me know that he launched Homethinking Mortgage earlier this week. I feel bad that I haven’t had more of a chance to check out the site, but ANYTHING Niki does is worth checking out. Some of the things, like the heat maps of average loan amount, are interesting, but I just haven’t taken the time to figure out how they will be useful!
- BeatYouThere launches (yet) another national real estate search site. I kinda feel bad for anyone trying to start up in this space at this point, even if they are well funded. Incremental improvement in the search just aren’t going to be enough at this point.
- And speaking of things that will be forgotten about in a few months… I like Louis a lot and he’s definitely doing a great job reaching out to the online real estate community, but…
- CyberHomes redesigns the site. I can’t help but wonder when will they start seriously marketing to consumers?
Dustin
4RealzEd and RCG get picked up in NYT’s story about…
…using social networking sites like Facebook to generate business.
A HUGE thanks goes out to Jonathan at the Matrix for making the introduction between Stephanie and myself!
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Hi D!
Congrats on the mention….Funny, Stephanie emailed me at 6:34pm a couple nights ago for thoughts on the story too asking to talk for 5 minutes that evening and when I emailed shortly thereafter, she never responded. Weird.
Yup, Jonathan is awesome.
Rudy
Social Media Guru at Trulia.com -
Eric Fredericks
Dustin Luther, Superstar
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Brian Requarth
Dustin, congrats on the mention in NYT. That is big stuff. I am moving back to California this summer. What is your seminar schedule like? I would like to attend. I see you have one in Pasadena. Anything planned for later in the summer?
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Dustin
Awesome Brian! It’ll be great to have you back in CA!
We’re definitely going to do some more seminars this summer. We’ve been holding off getting too far ahead of ourselves as we wanted to get a better idea of what it takes to put one of these events on successfully. With that said, with two under our belt, we’re feeling MUCH better about our set-up and will almost definitely have an event in Orange County in mid-July! Hopefully we can get you in town then!
Dustin
Redfin releases a genuinely interesting update!
According to their press release, they are now commingling MLS, FSBO and Foreclosure listings on one map… and this has me scratching my head!
Are they allowed to do this? Isn’t this type of commingling of listings against MLS rules?
Notice the purple and pink icons… Those are REO (foreclosures) and FSBOs, respectively (green icons are MLS listings).
I have four ideas about how they are able to get away with this:
- They found a loophole in MLS agreements that let’s them commingle listings (but I would find this hard to believe).
- They got buy-off from all their local MLS organizations (but I would find this hard to believe)
- They have reason to believe they can win this battle in the courts… (maybe a DOJ brief in support of this or something similar?)
- They just don’t care about the rules and believe that consumer support for this feature will be so great that they’ll risk MLS fines.
None of these scenarios seem likely to me. What am I missing?
With that said, I REALLY like how they are approaching the foreclosure data. I’ve received a few press releases recently from real estate search sites that “announce” they are now publishing foreclosures on their site. However, inevitably, when I tested out the feature, the sites were just regurgitating RealtyTrac data that required consumers to pay a fee to get the actual address of the property. Redfin is providing the address.
Also interesting, someone from Redfin let me know that they are going to phase in a flat-fee buying option in order to accommodate these new listings types.
I want to send my congrats out to the Redfin team for pushing the boundaries yet again. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, they’re working pretty darn hard to deliver features and tools that they think will do a better job serving their customers.
UPDATE:
There’s some debate in the comments about whether there are local MLS rules against commingling of data, with some people claiming it’s just a misunderstanding that the data can’t be commingled. However, someone (who wished to remain anonymous) send me the following email which demonstrates that for at least one MLS where Redfin is commingling data, the rules are pretty clear:
Check it out: http://www.imrmls.com/centsite/idx_policy.htm
“4.13. Listings obtained through IDX must be displayed separately from listings obtained from other sources, not including information provided by other MLSs.”
What that says to ME (having experience with MLS rules) is that MRMLS doesn’t allow FSBO properties side-by-side with MLS listings.
Richard Dale-Mesaros
Congrats to RedFin for pushing the envelope! I guess their challenge will be to make this available nationwide as fast as possible. We’re looking for this kind of service to add to our member offerings, but even with RealtyTrac, their coverage is spotty in certain areas (eg: New Hampshire).
The next big goal for RedFin will undoubtedly be free access to MLS comparables for the general public. The NAR is clinging onto this data by their fingernails…. I wonder how soon they’ll loose their grip on this, too?!
Yours with boundless enthusiasm,
Richard
Chief Deal Weaver
http://www.BlackWidowNetwork.com
Jan
Actually windermere.com has been “commingling” listings for years. Go look for listings in Long Beach, WA, to see both NWMLS and RMLS.
Ellie at Redfin
Glad you like the release, Dustin! As to your question about co-mingling listings, we researched that one pretty hard. We found that what the rules actually require is that we clearly mark the source of a listing, such as with different color icons for non-MLS listings and clear messaging on the listing itself. We’ve done that, because we don’t want to misrepresent a listing as an MLS listing if it isn’t.
Also, if a listing is both a for-sale-by-owner home and is in the MLS (perhaps it’s an old FSBO listing, or the seller is trying both approaches), we show the MLS listing first by default.
And finally, thanks for noticing that you get the address with foreclosures. We looked at a few ways of doing this and really didn’t like the idea of teasing searchers with a foreclosure, only to send them off to a fee-based site to get the address.
Jon
What we’ve found is most MLSs specifically note “This MLS’ Listings may ONLY be commingled with other MLS’ listings.”
However after reviewing NWMLS rules, I don’t see anything of that sort. Seems (for now) redfin is in the clear. UNLESS other rules implicitly apply to data in a Member’s (Broker) site in general (ie. Framing rules).
Anthony Longo
We launched this on our site back in January. Not quite as detailed however we did a deal with Foreclosure.com and Forsalebyowner.com and have those listings fed to our site daily.
We were unsure of the commingling issue so we dont pull onto the same page/map…rather you have to perform separate searches.
Check it out at http://Boston.CondoDomain.com click on search and you can see you can search for: New Developments, Exisiting Buildings, Full MLS, Foreclosure, FSBO and even Auction.
For Sale by Owner Center
We caught wind that our FSBO listings were appearing on Redfin searches via the Redfin press release and with further research found one of our Long Beach CA listings included ( http://www.redfin.com/CA/LONG-BEACH/307-LOMA-AVE-90814/home/7602890 )
I personally think it’s great for the consumer but part of the reasoning to move forward is for the PR attention they may get from a possible MLS that file complaints which would make Redfin appear even more pro-consumer.
Jessie B
This is from the Redfin press release…
“Consumers’ first question of any real estate site is whether it shows all the homes for sale,” said Redfin Chief Technology Officer Michael Young.
I 100% agree with the above statement and it’s exactly what is driving the development of our beta site.
Although other sites have claimed to do this… I think it will be very interesting to watch how the re.net will react to this.
Andrew
there is no rules against this whatsoever. the only site that cannot mix fsbos is realtor.com. they have an agreement with NAR that does not allow this. Google tride to strike a deal with NAR but since they were not allowed to mix listings Google said forget it.
Joseph Bridges
I think providing customers with the latest data is extremely important and real estate professionals and MLS organizations should take note and make sure that they give the customers what they want. MLS’s that give the consumers all the data first will provide more value to their real estate agents who pay them dues. After all it is in the best interest of the consumer and the agent that they get to see ALL properties that meet the buyers criteria. While the rest of the redfin model may be up for debate their committment to data to the consumer is great.
property bulgaria
What we’ve found is most MLSs specifically note “This MLS’ Listings may ONLY be commingled with other MLS’ listings.”
However after reviewing NWMLS rules, I don’t see anything of that sort. Seems (for now) redfin is in the clear. UNLESS other rules implicitly apply to data in a Member’s (Broker) site in general (ie. Framing rules).
Dustin
Looking forward to the TweetUP this…
…Friday. For those of you in the LA area, I recommend avoiding the last minute rush and registering on Upcoming now!
(and while you’re at it, consider joining the RE.net event group on upcoming so you can get updated on all kinds of good events like this!)
Dustin
Added video posts and comments to RCG yesterday, and…
… I’m really enjoying the results so far. If you’ve got a webcam, feel free to join us in playing with video conversations.
Dustin
Is Zillow worth $225M?
It’s a great question…
I thought I’d dive into this question a bit so I started writing a killer-post! My thought was to put together a fascinating post that described likely revenue opportunities at both Zillow and Trulia and I was even going to go so far as to estimate the value of Trulia…
However, after multiple iterations and rewrites, I’m simply not happy with where the post was going so I deleted most of the text and thought I’d let you create your own story out of my notes:
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Trace
That is a great question regarding Zillow. They’ve raised $87 million to date…. but the big questions are: What is their burn rate? What are revenues? When do they expect to achieve profitability….. I’m not convinced they have a clear path to profitability with their current model…. They have around 157 employees, mostly tech / engineering oriented and what they do with that many employees has always been anybody’s guess.
I’m inclined to think an IPO is in the works and will occur sooner rather then later…. I think finding the right buyer would be a challenge right now….. and their existing investors are certainly going to be weary of raising another round, but it could happen….
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David G from Zillow.com
Hi Dustin,
In case it helps with the math; Zillow had 5,2 million unique visitors visit the site last month.
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jimmythegent
Zillow is definitely worth $225 million. Is it worth half as much as Realtor.com? That’s comparing apples to oranges. It has 10% market share in a highly fragmented market, massive name recognition, almost all of the listings, $150 million+ in cash, and revenues of $300 million. One reason for the low market cap of MOVE is the change of control provisions in the operating agreement between NAR and MOVE: It allows NAR to get Realtor.com back from MOVE if the company is ever acquired or if there is change in the majority ownership of the company or board composition.
So there will never be any real change at MOVE…
However, speaking of burn rate, MOVE has an accumulated deficit of over $2 billion. They have burned through $2 billion to get to where they are today. Zillow seems to be a bit more efficient with capital. And smarter. On a smaller scale, people check Zillow on prospective homes like they check the weather. Zillow will ultimately figure out a way to benefit in a big way from this.
Trulia might be worth even more. However, one risk factor is this: Once a major brokerage decides to open up its listings, it’s open to everyone through Google Base. The decision for brokerages is a binary one: Is listing data proprietary or open. Once they decide on open, everyone is going to get it even though Trulia did all of the heavy-lifting on the business development front. Low-cost start-ups will be free riders on Trulia’s efforts. This is one reason that Zillow could actually win on both the listings front and with creative offerings elsewhere. On a pure-listings basis, it’s going to open.
Trace
Quantcast shows around 2.9 million and compete.com is at 2.2 million….
Dustin
They also show that Zillow does a great job reaching an older audience!
And for sites (like WordPress.com,) , that get quantified, they give some great info around demographics, popularity, and similar sites.
Dustin
The International Listings blogging team…
…put together another great list: 101 Tips & Resources for the Upside-Down Homeowner.
He should have spent more time prospecting and he wouldn’t have gotten in trouble.