WFG News
January 28, 2015

Brokers should focus on providing support tools to agents, not leads

NEW YORK — Today’s high-tech brokers often tout their ability to generate leads for real estate agents. But speaking onstage at Real Estate Connect, Robert Reffkin, CEO of New York City-area real estate brokerage Urban Compass, revealed that, rather than scaring up leads for real estate agents, the company’s robust technology…
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WFG News
January 28, 2015

Why Zillow reminds me of my ex-girlfriend

I run a boutique real estate firm called TREO Realtors in Cincinnati, Ohio. I get a call or an email about once a week from Zillow trying to upsell me on services and, ultimately, secure a direct listing feed of my listings to its site. I really like Zillow. For…
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WFG News
January 28, 2015

Zillow’s StreetEasy adding 3-D floor plans to some listings

Marking the latest advance of 3-D into online real estate, StreetEasy, a listing portal owned by Zillow that covers the New York City area, has begun adding interactive 3-D floor plans to some of its listings to help prospective buyers get a better feel for homes from their computers or mobile…
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WFG News
January 28, 2015

Barbara Corcoran backs real estate website provider

Barbara Corcoran, founder of New York City-brokerage The Corcoran Group and current “Shark Tank” investor, has given her seal of approval to real estate website provider Real Estate Webmasters, making an investment in the startup that values the company at $50 million. Real Estate Webmasters offers custom website development, marketing…
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WFG News
January 28, 2015

Co-founder offers Reddit credit in the spirit of his Connect talk

NEW YORK — Alexis Ohanian, co-founder and executive chairman of social media behemoth Reddit, offered a $50 advertising credit to Real Estate Connect attendees in the spirit of the advice he had for them today: make something people want and help them use it. Ohanian told Connect attendees how to…
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WFG News
January 28, 2015

Research engine publishing real estate agent performance statistics

FindTheBest, a data aggregator that helps people research everything from smartphones and cars to colleges and nursing homes, often helps consumers gauge quality by serving up ratings. But the research engine, which recently migrated its real estate search tools off findthebest.com and onto a standalone website, findthehome.com, has decided not…
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WFG News
January 28, 2015

3 ways to prove you’re a local expert

The year is 2015, and many agents are still wondering how to leverage technology to grow their business. Brokerages everywhere are hosting weekend seminars about how to use social media, but I sincerely hope no one thinks that social media requires you to create content. Your business is content. As…
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WFG News
January 28, 2015

Diane Szoke: ‘You need to embrace losing if you want to learn’

Diane Szoke is the CEO of Relocality. Describe what you do in one sentence: As a woman, I’m accustomed to balancing the needs of complex social, professional and personal networks on a daily basis — as an entrepreneur, my passion, vision and “intuitive muscle” serve me well in building startups that innovate,…
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WFG News
January 28, 2015

Turn down the portal-attack noise to hear the truth

Every time I read an article or a comment criticizing one of the evil media portals, I can’t help but think of an age-old issue we have as an industry. All too often we seem to suffer from memory loss about the not-so-long-ago past. I can vividly remember when the…
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WFG News
January 28, 2015

Back office system helps brokers gauge customer satisfaction

Lone Wolf Real Estate Technologies Inc. has completed an integration with agent review platform RealSatisfied, enabling brokers to automatically invite their agents’ clients to fill out a RealSatisfied customer satisfaction survey whenever a transaction closes. The integration with Lone Wolf’s back office broker management system, brokerWOLF, “reduces data entry, saving…
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