I’m at the airport headed home from Inman. I had to leave early to make it home in time for a birthday party :).
This was my second Inman Connect and re-affirmed what I felt the first time which was that the conference really is for real estate agents and their vendors. For those of us breaking away from the way things have been done there is little value in attending the sessions as the hard questions are never asked*.
However, there is definite value in the parties; they are a great opportunity to connect with competitors and allies alike to swap gossip and trade secrets. Thanks to both Trulia and Active Rain for hosting great parties (though how much did Active Rain spend on that penthouse monster suite I felt like we were partying like we were at the height of the bubble not the bottom!) …You know you had a busy night when you wake up the next day and remember that you forget to eat dinner the night before.
And thanks to whomever put me on the building a better brokerage website panel! The discussion from that panel can really be summed up as listen to your customer and do what is right by them.
It’s funny, because after the session someone came up and asked me the question that we really should have been discussing given the crowd, which is, as an agent do I really need my own listing site? This particular agent was concerned that he’d never be able to compete against the likes of Redfin, Zillow and Trulia by purchasing a listing site from one of the many vendors out there. And I think he’s likely right. Individual agents shouldn’t be spending the energy on listing sites because they will never build a site better than even the average site. I think agents would be best served spending time on blogging in order to build an online brand and attract people. However, if you want to build a serious real estate company you will need to have a listing site that differentiates and to do so you won’t be able to buy one because whatever you buy will be just like your competitors. What you’ll need to do is build one. And that is going to be a lot of work but teams like Sawbuck and Estately prove it can be done with only a handful of folks if you hire right.
Overall, I’m really glad I came, (though sad I’m missing the last night) but I’m headed home exhausted with a few ideas on what we can do better and determined to stay focused on the customer because it seemed like everyone else is too focused on leads, selling to each other, and competing on the wrong things.
*What are the hard questions? Some of the questions I wanted asked and discussed are:
- Better Home and Gardens launched a national search engine. So what? Everyone has a national real estate search site these days: HGTV, Yahoo, Google, Trulia, Zillow, and on and on. How many do people really need? How are they going to stand out?
- No, really, why do we have so many MLSes? What are we doing to consolidate them?
- Why do MLSes impose so many anti-consumer regulations (no co-mingling, no listings in spreadsheet form, login required to see address.) Who do these regulations benefit? Do brokerages really want them?
- Do brokerages really want to out source their SEO to Trulia? No one was questioning Trulia at all in the listing aggregators vs MLS discussion. Realogy, isn’t it embarrassing that your results don’t show up on Google but your listing on Trulia does? Brokerages are rapidly becoming addicted to Trulia and will start to feel the squeeze soon.
- Do we want all our MLS regulations in light of the regulation free world of listing aggregators?
- How can we improve our MLSes? Some things I’d like to see are short sale flags, expanded photo limits, and making the MLS the source of open house info
- How can we help customers navigate these troubled times?
