WFG News
February 24, 2015

Realogy’s revenue increases on rising home prices

Buoyed by rising home prices, real estate giant Realogy posted $5.3 billion in net revenue in 2014, up 1 percent from a year ago. “Realogy was involved in approximately 27 percent of U.S. existing homesale transaction volume involving a real estate brokerage firm — a full percentage point gain in market…
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WFG News
February 24, 2015

Go figure: all-cash sales and institutional investors, highest median home prices, the average Irish-American and more

Showing the money <a href=’#’><img alt=’Housing Markets in Demand ‘ src=’https://public.tableau.com/static/images/Ca/CashandInstitutionalInvestorHotZipsQ42014/Dashboard1/1_rss.png’ style=’border: none’ /></a>   How many paper pushers are there? Luck of the Irish-American Taking care of business Where the middle is higher   Have data you’d like to see featured here? Email contributors@inman.com. The post Go figure: all-cash…
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WFG News
February 24, 2015

Could a portal merger change the face of real estate? A lesson from PayPal

In October 2002, eBay, the giant online auction site, purchased the fast-growing payments company, PayPal, for $1.5 billion. Founded at the end of 1998, PayPal had become the de facto way to pay for goods on eBay, powering 70 percent of auction payments. The purchase was the exclamation mark on…
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WFG News
February 24, 2015

Stephanie Crawford: ‘My WordPress website accounts for half our business’

Inman is interviewing real estate professionals in every area of the field to talk about technology use. Here’s Stephanie Crawford, a Realtor/broker at Keller Williams Realty. What kind of phone do you use and why? I have an iPhone 5s. I’ve tried Android in the past, but Apple just works better.…
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WFG News
February 24, 2015

Why the best advice on how to choose a real estate agent is all wrong

As an industry, most of the advice we give consumers about how to choose a real estate agent doesn’t make sense. No wonder some clients are unhappy with our services. For example, I recently read that home sellers should choose an agent who has an assistant or maybe several of…
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WFG News
February 24, 2015

New tool measures traffic, leads generated by agent and MLS websites

The big third-party listing portals seem to get the bulk of the attention in the industry, but listing websites are everywhere. Most of them are agent and broker Internet data exchange (IDX) websites, powered by local multiple listing services. Minneapolis-based WolfNet has become the first national IDX website provider to…
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WFG News
February 24, 2015

Opportunity and legal risks come with buying and selling leads

Three years ago, Ben Kinney made a proposal to a local real estate agent: He would pay the agent $18,000 if the agent gave Kinney the contact information of the 18,000 leads the agent had stored in his database. The agent agreed. Kinney and his team at Keller Williams Realty…
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WFG News
February 23, 2015

Trulia’s economist latest to leave company

Trulia’s chief economist is the latest to depart the company in the wake of the portal’s acquisition by Zillow, but says his research team will continue to produce housing reports “that will be different from Zillow’s and sometimes will kick their butts.” Jed Kolko. “From day one, Trulia’s leaders have…
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WFG News
February 23, 2015

Analyst: Trulia could lose 40 percent of listings

Trulia, the nation’s second most popular real estate search portal, could lose 40 percent of its listings if Zillow Group is not able to get a court to step in, according to Deutsche Bank analyst Lloyd Walmsley. Zillow announced Friday that it had filed for a temporary restraining order in…
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WFG News
February 23, 2015

StreetEasy takes page out of Zillow’s marketing playbook

Zillow-owned StreetEasy, a listing portal covering the New York City area, has launched a blog to showcase original research and company news, market data and “stories on the complexities and quirks of living in New York City.” The StreetEasy Blog will “serve as a helpful intersection for all the data…
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