Ken’s Sandbox

Saw this post on ActiveRain that asks (and answers) this. Some good comments about what agents are doing that are working.

http://activerain.com/blogsview/1088988/are-realtor-com-enhancements-worth-the-money-

I just ran across a couple of blog posts here and here about a NAR decision that Google is scraping listing data from agent’s idx sites.

According to the post:

“Recently, my website was reported for allowing the MLS data on my website to be indexed, which led the Indianapolis Metropolitan Board of REALTORS®, (MIBOR), to issue a cease and desist letter to my broker for both our sites, or they would cut our feed. Since April 10th, Google can not index the detail pages of the IDX on our websites. Our Title tags can not contain any details about the property …

On April 30th, another demand! The description can not contain ANY MLS data, no address, the MLS number, neighborhood, subdivision, price, bedrooms, baths, property type or public remarks.”

Most listings do not get indexed because they only show up behind a search form. However, your RealWorld listings are not siubject to this and it does reinforce some ideas I have about creating static blog type pages for all new RealWorld listings.

Your thoughts and comments are encouraged.

I had every intention of getting to the office early this morning. Didn’t make it because I discovered this on one of the blogs I read:

Service and Selflessness

What we must learn from the monks is a management philosophy that I call “service and selflessness.” It has seven basic aspects.

The first aspect of service and selflessness is having a high overarching mission worthy of being served.

The second principle is selflessness. At Mepkin the mission is so noble, well articulated and continually inculcated that the monks are inspired to focus on it selflessly.

The third element of service and selflessness is a commitment to excellence: At Mepkin Abbey every single egg is packed with a “prayerful attitude.”

The fourth principle is a ruthless dedication to the highest ethical standards.

The fifth secret is faith. Every day, regardless of booms and busts in the larger economy, the monks risk their lives and livelihood faithfully serving their principles while trusting that business will take care of itself

The sixth aspect of service and selflessness is trust. The monks continually amass and replenish their treasury with the most valuable capital that any individual, product or business can possess: trust.

The seventh and perhaps most important secret to service and selflessness is living the life. Service and selflessness are just words on a page without a rigorous methodology for constantly reinforcing these principles, right down to the last egg. And, as luck would have it, the monks have a 1,500-year-old method called the Rule of St. Benedict that supplies just that.

The whole article is 4 parts and fairly long but well worth reading.

http://www.forbes.com/2009/04/14/trappist-business-lessons-leadership-management-mepkin1.html

Read it. There will be a quiz later.

I have added everyone who has requested to be included to the CyberHomes listing feed. I spend some time this morning going through the CyberHomes site looking for RealWorld listings and have only found listings from the first beta test offices. I will be in contact with CyberHomes this week. I’ll post here as I find out more about when they will be showing up.

I had occasion to drive to Portland and back on Monday and Tuesday. Our destination was in the northwest industrial district. My overall impression of the trip was “where is this economic crisis we keep hearing about?”. I read that Oregon’s unemployment rate just hit 10% but you would never know it by the number of trucks on the road. The industrial district was busy. New high rise buildings are being built in downtown Portland. So where is this economic crisis we keep hearing about?

My niece had her car sideswiped by a hit and run driver a few weeks ago. She needs a new car. She is a bartender and can’t verify her tips (or they don’t count or some such) so her credit union won’t lend to her . Gramma cosigns and they still won’t lend to her. So gramma takes the money out of her money market account and finances the car.

Oh, so that must be what they are talking about.

For those of you who knew him, David L. Davis passed away Saturday morning. For those of you who didn’t know him, here is the short version of the impact he has probably had on you.

When my wife Janice and I moved to Bandon in October 1992 we figured “how hard could it be to make a couple thousand dollars a month?” (turned out to be pretty hard). At the time the Chamber of Commerce had a list of people who were interested in helping small businesses get established. Although David was not on the list, when I told someone (don’t remember who) that I was a programmer, they suggested I go see David. This led to my taking over the Bandon CRS (Coastal Realty Service) which served as the local (paper based) MLS. He also purchased a copy of the Coos county assessor tax data, gave it to me and told me to convert it so he could have it on his PC.

The CRS went on line and became the basis of RealWorld in 1994. The Coos county tax data project became FarmTeam and my tax data services which provides tax data to almost every rural real estate agent in Oregon.

So, next time you enter a listing or get a lead from RealWorld or look up a property in either our Assessor Tax Information system or on RMLS, think of David L. and say thanks.

Cyberhomes

I have heard several times that getting your listing to appear as many places as possible is a top priority. Because of a recent request, I have recently added the ability to feed your listings to Cyberhomes. They in turn feed listings to Yahoo Real Estate, AOL Real Estate and Google Base. You can read the Cyberhomes promotional page about this here. If you would like to have your listings added to this feed, please have your office owner or designated broker email me.

Uservoice

Starting sometime on Monday you will notice a “Feedback” tab to the right of the menu when you log in. I have always said that my best ideas come from you. I recently found a service that allows you to post suggestions and comment and vote on others suggestions. I have posted a couple of recent suggestions to start things off.

RMLS IDX and Broker Specific Feeds

I received an email from RMLS Distribution Services on Thursday (Feb 19th) notifying me that their access fees for IDX service providers were going to double beginning in March. If you have IDX with us you will be receiving an email once we figure out how we are going to handle this.

Fortunately, there is also an up side to this. For years, RMLS has had what they called a Broker Specific feed. This is a feed of all your offices active listings. It was not too exciting because they charged a $250 setup fee for the feed. But still, several offices do take advantage of it. With the recent fee changes they have eliminated the setup charge. So, if you are entering all of your listings into RMLS, and would like to save having to reenter them into RealWorld, let me know. No cost, all that is required is a form. If we are going to spend $300 per month to access data from RMLS, I want to get as much bang for the buck as possible.

The phishing emails I get don’t usually apply to the institutions I deal with but since this is a local bank …

This morning I received a phishing email that appeared to be from Security Bank. Anyone receiving an email that appears to be from Security, DO NOT click on the link. It is an attempt to steal your log in information. Always type in the web site address for any financial web sites you visit.

Here is a link with more information about phishing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phishing

I have been talking to Trish Neal and she is working to get the old listings removed from realestateoregon.com and get the bug that caused them fixed. She said it may be a week before it is fixed but it is good to know that action is being taken. We now know who to talk to to get action on any issue. Thanks Trish.

I just had a report of an old listing showing up on realestateoregon.com. I have confirmed that this listing is not in the current feed.

I suspect that their listing agregator at some point failed to delete old listings when importing new data. I would like to see how wide spread this problem is.

Since most of you are feeding your listings from RealWorld to this site, I would appreciate it if you would visit http://www.realestateoregon.com and check to see if any sold or expired listings show up in your listings on their site. I want to continue to feed your listings as many places as possible. I am currently working on expanding the list of sites available to you to send your listings. However, I intend to hold these sites to the same quality standards you expect from RealWorld.