Vote to change our VOW

[kensmith]

I guess it makes sense if someone was to print it, just don't see why someone would. I have used websites to search for homes and never thought to print the listings myself.

Also I show up to all appointments with a copy of every listing we are going to see, maybe one in every 100 showings does the person have a copy of the listing that they had printed. That says to me that most people don't print them, but still it isn't something that I have given much thought. Maybe I should start asking customers if they would use online brochures.

[MattL]

Speaking as a somewhat web-savvy () one-time homeshopper, my wife & I surfed and surfed and surfed and narrowed our list of prospective homes to about 20. Of those, we printed out listing sheets (eRealty at the time), circled or highlighted significant attributes, and kept those sheets with us to do our own drive-by tours. We made notes about neighborhoods, roads, outside appearance of the home, etc.

After our tour, we'd probably whittle the list down to 2-4 homes to schedule for showings. Then, during the showing, we'd make notes on the respective sheets, later reconvening at home to go over the results. It was a great way to remember which house was which and keep track of exactly what we liked and what we didn't about each home.

While it may seem antiquated to do all that on paper, I don't think any digital method would've been nearly as convenient.

So, I do really sympathize with all of the people who have asked for the feature -- if I were homeshopping again, I'd definitely want those sheets again. They made an otherwise overwhelmingly subjective process easier to quantify in the end.

-Matt

[ChicagoDrew]

Advanced Email I like that but I see the point of the black list. Although you would think that isp would start to learn to adjust their filters and except that more communication is being sent through email.

Mapping:Probably has more impact with customer/clients that what is being shown. Most people want maps and they want them to show the schools, police, gas station, grocery, shopping, parks. More and more people are getting GPS and buying cars with that built in, so it would be great to have maps that they could transfer into to the gps. I know that is a stretch for now, but it will be the way things will be. But maps are huge with my clients at least.

Lead Distribution:isn't that important to me right now , but I like Ken's thoughts on it.

PPC- FriendlinessBasically I was just looking for something so that if I'm out and I get a call or email and need to immediately do something I could. I just actually got the PPC phone so I will play more with it to find it's capabilities. But I do have clients now that have emails and do some of there searching through their Blackberries. So I'm guessing more and more clients will be utilizing their cell phone that has web and email capabilities more and more when they are actually out and looking and on the go.
As for tiny browser my phone is the 3 in screen so on the big side for phones. But like you said the more smart automated the system becomes the better. I would think that Microsoft would allow or come up with something for Ajax site to be seen on the PPC.

[kensmith]

Matt you are not the average customer by any means. I have to really try to get my buyers to go drive by the homes first. Most just want to get inside and look at homes. I guess that there just needs to be more than one upgrade, add the brochures and mapping for customers and give us better lead management for the agents. Might be time to hire another programer . But seriously I think that all three of those items would be worth working on.

As for the email, would it make sense to break up the customer base so emails are sent from different IP addresses? This might reduce the risk a little, but not sure what that would mean on the programming end.

[MattL]

If I am that atypical, then I don't know why everyone wants them, either.

PPC - I still don't think there would be an "urgent" cause to go into the backoffice. PocketRealEstate should be able to serve up whatever listing info you need.

Mapping - I got a demo from and spoke to one of those "neighborhood" listing map providers that give POI in a brochure-style PDF map, but the quality of the map results was a serious issue and the cost of licensing our volume is well into six-figures. I'm in a holding pattern on this front until next Fall.

SPAM - I really wish there were a simple answer. We currently use 6 IPs from 3 separate servers to reduce our points of failure, but it's still a major uphill battle. I have had to sign contracts, agreements, go through phone interviews, and pay for "memberships" to prevent our servers from being blacklisted as much as possible. Still, every once in a while we get flagged somewhere and it's a 2-3 day process to get the domain/IP/user unblocked. My fear is that increasing our volume from 150,000 emails per week to 300,000+ emails per week crosses into a whole new level of blacklist babysitting. e-mail sucks.

-Matt

[kensmith]

Have you thought about using RSS feeds for those that understand it to show new listings? With the number of people that use services like Yahoo that can add a feed so easily and with Vista this might be a way to lower your email count.

[MattL]

RSS -- unfortunately, we can't do it: we aren't allowed to make a public source of properties not directly listed by our customers.

-Matt

[kensmith]

That sucks. There isn't a way to set up an RSS feed that is subscription based? Don't know enough about RSS feeds to be helpful here, but trying to help anyways.

[MattL]

Originally Posted by kensmith That sucks. There isn't a way to set up an RSS feed that is subscription based? Don't know enough about RSS feeds to be helpful here, but trying to help anyways.

Unfortunately, I sorta can. The problem is an ambiguous measure of how far afoul I'd run of the VOW policies.

For what it's worth, there really aren't too many Laws imposed by MLSNI when it comes to VOW providers. In summation:

1. Thou shalt not mix listing sources.
2. Thou shalt not give listings to strangers.
3. Thou shall only turn strangers into friends with a password.
4. Thou must protect both listings and friends.

So, within the context of those four, we can do just about everything. The problem with RSS is that there's no standardized, encrypted authentication method. There are effectively two choices:

1. Network-based authentication: Those grey popup boxes requesting a username & password. You rarely see these in big systems because it means managing usernames & passwords in an OS-friendly format (or .htaccess for Apache). I can assure you that I will neither A) create a Windows account for every VOW visitor, nor B) manage per-site text files that include every username & password.
2. URL-encapsulated authentication: Putting a fancy token in the address that kinda-sorta uniquely identifies the requester (like we offer with Featured Properties URLs). The problem, here, is that that URL can be cut'n'pasted anywhere and used by anyone. So, in theory, someone could set up a few clever searches and cover a good chunk of the MLS, then feed a "new properties" site completely without our knowledge. As far as the server is concerned, you can't identify the requester source, and you can't really codify any usage pattern as being determinedly inhuman.

Unlike email, we can't control the flow of RSS, so we also can't control (or observe) the use of the data. And that's where everything gets really fuzzy... one could argue that we were adhering to the laws, while another could see the myriad ways our adherence could be skirted.

For safety's sake, I prefer to stay on the predictable side of the policy. Unlike certain providers in our area, we take what rules there are very seriously, and protect the listings & visitors' data as vigilantly as possible.

-Matt

[kensmith]

To bad it can't work. But would rather you be safe then end up with our listings on some lead generator site.

What about using the log in system like Connect does? I would think that the file size of sending full listings also creates some issues for you.