Real Estate Service Powered by Innovation
TL;DR for all my family/friends/clients and anyone else who’s not involved in the real estate industry: future real estate agents will be much more marketing-savvy, and brokerages of the future will need to be set up to provide much more marketing support. I myself, am making a commitment to building a marketing team that will help me long into the future.
Before I get into the meat of my argument, I’d just like to point out that (obviously) this is an opinion piece and should not be taken as advice or fact. I shouldn’t have to make that disclaimer, but I also know we live in a litigious society that needs more and more disclaimers. That out of the way, let’s begin…
TLDR; “Until Sellers start pumping in more inventory, Buyers will be left with less options and continue to compete over good opportunities.”
Hi Everyone, hope your dealing with quarantine safely and happily! There was an obvious affect on the local real estate market, but not the effect that some were thinking! Let’s look at the stats from April and see what kind of market we had while under quarantine…
Why it’s not the advantage you think.
Buyers and Sellers of real estate are often confused when I bring up the concept of “Agency Relationship.” In a nutshell, agency relationship refers to the relationship between client and brokerage and establishes the responsibility that each party has. This post will go over the different agency relationships that are available here in Hawaii and will cover some of the pros and cons of each.
[Read more…] about Dual Agency vs. Single Agency vs. CustomerSearch where you want.
TL;DR — Because it’s expensive, messy, and that’s not the real reason you’re here. You should search where you feel comfortable, but I recommend here.
An MLS, or Multiple Listing Service, is the common acronym for the database that a real estate industry uses to reference real estate transactions. Here on Oahu, the Honolulu Board of Realtors (HBR) uses an MLS software called “Matrix” where brokerages input their listing data for the real estate industry to access. Think of it like a central database where all the independent brokerages across the island come to share their information across the industry.
This central database also allows websites to have a central point to access real estate data. A site like Zillow, for example, accesses the MLS database several times a day and scrubs any new data that it finds for it’s own site. You’ll also find many broker websites, including our own Marcus & Associates, who have installed this feature as well. Each website pays the HBR MLS for access to that data, as well as fees to the software company who harvests that data for you. Those costs can add up.
Getting the MLS data is expensive, but displaying the data can be even more costly. Between the time and money it takes to setup your basic website alone, adding in a searchable database compounds that cost even more. I decided years ago that it was not worth my it to setup my website to handle MLS data because there are other websites (like our HBR’s own HiCentral) that do it much better than I ever could.
As a side note, HiCentral is the only website I know of that has live listings for public search. Even Zillow can only “scrape” data a few times a day, and my own website would be the same.
I also see a real danger in how some websites implement MLS data without any thought to user experience. It can get messy, hard to understand, and reflects poorly on the customer experience. I don’t want to create any experience, no matter how insignificant, that is not beneficial to my clients. MLS data is no different.
When I was laying out my website, I gave a lot of thought to “why” you would be accessing my site. I quickly realized I don’t have the resources to be the first result for a Google search of “hawaii real estate listings,” and I would always send clients customized websites directly from our MLS instead. There would never be a reason that you came to this website to access MLS data, and I didn’t want to waste anyone’s time and energy just to have the feature on my website.
Instead, I have put that time and energy into designing a user experience that I think you’ll like, and hope you understand why that doesn’t include MLS listings (maybe, for now??).
Howzit everyone! Hope you’re doing well after, what seemed like, such a weird month. It’s still snowing in April, we couldn’t eat any Romaine Lettuce, the rain was ridiculous for a weekend, and most recently: “Oahu median home price rises 11% as condo sales jump 13%.” That last one doesn’t seem as major next to real crisis headlines, but that didn’t stop news outlets from stoking the “housing crisis” fire this past weekend. Let’s take a step back, break down the numbers, and see if the panic is legitimate.
[Read more…] about Everybody Panic! April Brings Another Exaggerated Reaction to Housing Crisis
Happy April Everyone, so happy to be back on the web! Mercury is out of retro-grade, I’ve launched this new website, and I think I actually saw this sun today! All good things pointing to another productive Spring season in the real estate market, but has that translated to the numbers? Let’s take a look. [Read more…] about Are We Plateauing? Condo Median Price Says “NO!”
During the Black Friday bonanza, both Amazon & Google were discounting their voice assistant speaker systems, prompting many people to take the plunge and begin talking to their devices. Being an Amazon Echo owner for several months myself, I also took that plunge and decided to purchase a Google Home as well to see the differences. This post is some notes from my experience, as well as my thoughts on the whole smart speaker market in general. [Read more…] about Alexa vs. Google: My Experience