Condo Blog – A Non-Corporate Blog From CondoDomain HQ

Inman News by way of The Real Deal in New York  published an interesting article regarding the all new MLS in New York City.  As you may  know, New York City has long operated without an official MLS system.  Power brokerages like Corcoran, Prudential Douglass Elliman, Halstead and Brown Harris Stevens have continued to grab massive marketshare and provide “mini MLS’s” via their own personal websites including ONLY their own firms real estate listings.

New companies have popped up in recent years and have made decent attempts to aggregate all New York real estate listings including our favorite StreetEasy, Trulia and even REBNY’s very own ResidentialNYC powered by Pete Flints west coast startup Trulia.

Most recently a joint venture between CBS (Channel 2) and LMG Media launched Manhattans very first VOW (Virtual Office Website) aggregating REBNY’s MLS feed and publicly displaying these listings to the public on their new website – CBS2REM.com

CBS2REM (the joint venture) is backed by New York real estate brokerage – Property Strategies Group – who is listed as the broker entitling the new firm and JV to gain access to REBNY’s MLS feed.  We recently met with Simon Mills, CEO of LMG Media and owner of the JV between CBS2REM and Property Strategies group and he openly told us the pains of accessing the REBNY data and extensive compliance checking.

After just a few short months of operating Simon’s firm is generating great leads and looking to close on their first transactions shortly.   Property Stratgies Group is a full service New York Real Estate Broker … but the real question is – will access to this data open up a new market in Manhattan for discount real estate brokers to come in???

“A new breed of online brokerage is springing up in New York, altering the landscape of real estate sales in Manhattan and worrying traditional firms, who fear the changes may hurt their business.

In the past, New York firms have contended with Web aggregators like StreetEasy and Trulia, which gather and post information on local brokerage listings.

But thanks to a recent settlement between the federal Department of Justice and the National Association of Realtors, the Real Estate Board of New York is now sharing all of its members’ listings directly with online brokerages, known as “Virtual Office Web sites.”

These VOWs, as they are called, allow consumers to view those listings — including those from other firms — online.

Experts say the change will have far-reaching consequences for the industry in the coming year and beyond. Some believe VOWs could also pave the way for a comprehensive Multiple Listing Service, which has long been resisted here.

Eric Gordon, the managing director at Realplus Online Listing Exchange, a shared listing database that’s the closest thing New York has to an MLS, called the emergence of VOWs in Manhattan “huge.”

“In a lot of ways, it levels the playing field between the small and large firms,” he said.

The change stems from a lawsuit filed by the Department of Justice against NAR in 2005. The suit alleged that NAR’s policy of allowing brokers to withhold listings from VOWs violated antitrust law because it stymied competition.”

We have seen companies like Foxtons fail in Manhattan…but was it the market or was it just bad timing???

Experts say the change could open the door for a true MLS in Manhattan. While the Manhattan Association of Realtors currently maintains an MLS, it has only a small number of the city’s listings. Many Manhattan agents have long opposed an MLS because they believe sharing listing information would mean losing business to competitors.

“MLS — agents in Manhattan are scared of that name,” said Derrick Gross, a business analyst at StreetEasy. But Gordon said the increasing transparency provided by VOWs could lay the groundwork for a shared listing database.

Now that VOWs are on the scene, he said, many New York firms have been asking him for software for an IDX, a feature traditionally offered by MLS databases that allows brokerages to voluntarily post listings on other firms’ sites. Unlike with VOWs, visitors don’t have to sign in to see IDX listings.

The IDX concept “is going to grow in popularity now that the concept of one firm being able to market another firm’s exclusives is something people are willing to accept here,” he said.

Small firms say becoming a VOW will help them by allowing customers on their Web site to view all of the industry’s listings, not just their own.

“It’s great,” said Leigh Zaph, president of three-agent firm Manhattan Homes, which is planning to become a VOW. “It allows every broker to be able to present their customers the full database to search.”

Full article Here

Interested in your thoughts on what REBNY’s all new MLS will do to the Manhattan real estate brokerage landscape???  Discount commissions?  More small firms?  Local “hits” on innovators?  Will we see Redfin & ZipRealty enter the New York City market?  Should CondoDomain open the market?  How about other innovative real estate information sites like Curbed & NYCondoBlog – will they get an MLS data feed too?

So…

After more than 18 months and 100 transactions in the brokerage business we have finally collected enough data and consumer feedback to make the next adjustment to our ‘non-traditional’ business model.

As many of you know, our company has had an extremely strong opinion and very public voice regarding real estate commissions in this new online real estate economy.  Our belief structure and core principles are still the same, and we believe with the availability of public accessible real estate information, including easier access to MLS systems and public record information, has made the sales process more efficient for consumers engaged and interested in performing search, compare and valuation analysis online.

So where have we changed?

Two crucial data sets have led us to alter our buyers’ brokerage business model.

1.    Top priorities for buyers during the purchase process:
After multiple online and offline surveys performed by our company, the single most important aspect to our clients was NOT our highly promoted “Cash Back” commission refund business model.

The #1 priority to our clients was agent expertise.
The #2 priority was our website.
The #3 priority was our transparent and our professional approach to real estate.

2.    Time:
The second most important aspect that has led us to alter our business model is time.  Whether it just be current market conditions or realities of this new real estate economy, the amount of time spent with our clients touring properties was nearly double than what was anticipated from our original business plan.

Our original plan had estimated that we would tour 4-8 properties on average before a client submitted an offer to purchase.  Even though we have had both of the extremes from two clients whom we toured the property zero (0) times making the transaction extremely profitable for us, however, we have also had the opposite with touring more than 25 properties before submitting an offer.  Currently we are averaging 14 property tours per client.

So what is the new business model?

Here at CondoDomain we are announcing a hybrid-model that some may call ‘a la carte’.  We will now be offering two service levels, best described by our (1) Pizza or (2) Sushi comparison.

1.     Full Service Buyers Brokerage (Pizza)
Those going for the Carb-load, this option is for you.  Our full service buyers brokerage will be like it has always been.  Personal service, unlimited property tours and every other goodie that our agents or the CondoDomain team & website delivers.

This option will include 20% commission refund for all buyers who purchase with us.  On average, our $500,000 buyers will receive a cash refund at closing of $3,000.  For most this will cover all of your closings costs of your new home!!!  Through some analysis, we have come to the conclusion that today’s real estate purchase process is approximately 20% easier for real estate agents because of technology and publicly accessible information, therefore a 20% commission refund would make sense and allow us to compete on a very high level attracting the best real estate agents in the business which would allow us to accomplish our #1 goal of having top agent expertise.  More details here.

2.      Flat Fee Buyers Brokerage:  (Sushi)
We are launching this service for our “true” do-it-yourselfers.   For all of our viewers and clients who have a top priority of staying “lean” and saving money – the Flat Fee model is the way to go.

In every city we will offer to help broker a real estate transaction for a flat fee of $5,000 – no matter what the purchase price of the property is.  We will engage you as a full service client without limitations EXCEPT with property tours (therefore reducing our Time/Cost differential).  With this service, we will go on a maximum of 3 property tours with you.  After the third property tour our relationship is automatically flipped into our full service program which will still net you a large cash back commission refund of 20%.

Why Flat Fee:  Since our inception as a true buyers broker in January 2008, we have always promoted the flat fee buyers brokerage business model.  We truly believe in it and think it makes sense for efficient and precise real state transactions.  For consumer who are truly leveraging new technology and are heavily self-motivated and engaged in the real estate search and compare process, the flat fee model is ideal.  It allows the client to engage an experienced professional to assist in the home-buying process while providing maximum savings to the consumer.

While both our full service buyers brokerage and flat fee business model saves clients thousands of dollars, the flat fee model starts to net significantly larger savings on purchases over $500,000.  More details here.

What do we hope to accomplish:
As a company, we believe this structure is ideal for the consumer base that we engage.  Providing a 20% cash back commission refund is a significant amount of money at any price point, therefore enticing a highly competitive advantage in the marketplace.  This balance also allows us to attract top real estate professionals to provide our clients 3 top priorities:  agent expertise, technology/better website and allow us to publish more transparent information on the marketplace.

CondoDomain aims to continue to be a leader in the urban real estate marketplace specializing in working with buyers, elevating the brokerage profession by providing excellent customer service and a go-to media site highlighting the latest and greatest in residential property downtown.

Related Posts: CondoDomain Year 1 Results:  Whitepaper,  Customers want transparency (Redfin), Other CondoDomain posts regarding the real estate commission stucture

Call us crazy, call us idiots, but yes, we are continuing to grow, let alone in this economy but in the real estate vertical!!!

The entrepreneurial passion and young energy we have in our company is truly amazing and so far “recession-proof”.   So far this year we have expanded our web-based real estate brokerage from one city (Boston) to EIGHTEEN.  Thank you CondoDomain team – lets keep-a-rockin!

Our soft launch today includes our 6 newest cities:

Los Angeles, CA
Austin, TX
Las Vegas, NV
Orlando, FL
Chicago, IL
Seattle, WA

Why are we growing so fast?

First off, we are seeing the demand for our product and service.   We are finally getting close to putting analytical statements together regarding consumers wants and needs in the “innovative real estate brokerage space” (we don’t use the word discount, if that is what you were thinking…).  Consumers are far more savvy, more educated and finally know there are options out there, HOWEVER, most of these options do not exist within major urban metros.    Just like Redfin and Zip Realty has given choice to our suburban dwellers, we hope that CondoDomain can be that option for urban city dwellers.

Also, I believe this is a great time to grow.  A tad risky, but kinda fun .  Hey, we are busy, but we are not slammed,  why not use our time to grow this thing with the extra time we have on our hands?  Good idea right?  That’s exactly what we are doing but we are not doing it alone.

Our broker partners in each city are truly amazing.    We know we partnered with truly great people, but we also believe we have partnered with some of the very best condominium real estate brokers.  They understand the market, they understand the industry, the product, but most of all, they understand our clients.

What else is new?
ReatlyTrac is!  We officially formed our partnership with RealtyTrac to pump in Foreclosure listings to our website on a national basis.  We understand its a big part of the market and we have jumped in to help this horrible problem.  So if you are looking to buy a foreclosure, let us know, all of our broker partners are working with buyers right now acquring foreclosures.

Last but not least – new website design to come by months end.  We put up a teaser for you today so you can get a feel for whats to come – check out our new global home page.

“The lawsuit brought by Kevin Ahearn and Wayne Lopez against CondoDomain LLC and Anthony Longo Jr. has been resolved in a manner that is satisfactory to all parties;”

We are pleased to announce that last week the lawsuit was resolved and that we are fully back in high spirits operating our web-based buyers brokerage. In celebration of this suit being over, we plan to offer a new and extremely exciting product.   Sellers — are you ready?

More to come soon…

*** PRESS INQUIRY’S:  Please note we cannot and will not be taking any questions regarding the outcome of the suit.  We have put it all behind us now and look forward to moving forward in a positive and productive direction.  Thank you for your understanding.

Putting this Whitepaper together was almost as exciting as engaging in the real estate brokerage community this year.  For all of you who have followed us through social media and our blogging efforts… and for all of you who have met us or become a client of ours: you all know we like to have fun along the way!

Well, while all of that fun that is publicly displayed, there is actually quite a bit of work that went on behind the scenes.  I believe that this CondoDomain Year 1 Review reveals our true colors.

What will you find in this report?

i. Transactional Data / Commission Refunds
ii. Negotiation Advantage
iii. Demographics
iv. Customer Satisfaction
v. Why CondoDomain
vi. 2009 Corporate Forecast

Heck, its short enough….check it out.

Like Redfin’s similar real estate annual reviews, Ill let the statistics do the talking.

Congratulations to all of our team members here at CondoDomain for an outstanding 2008 and congratulations to all of our new clients and friends of the firm.

2009 is set to be an even bigger year.

DOWNLOAD THE 2008 ANNUAL REPORT

Question - If you could buy your next condo for $5,000 less, would you care that it didn’t have supermodels and full page NYTimes advertisements to “Brand” the property?

Condo Project Marketing Exposed by Redfin Marketing Manager, Matt Goyer.  Being involved mainly in the new construction world, Goyer took many words right out of my mouth and charted them in a very organized and well thoughtout blog post on how developers and on-site sales & marketing firms should be marketing their new condo development this year.

Some soundbites that hit home with me:

“Whose money do you spend when you market a project? You spend your future buyers money and you can bet they’d rather pay less for that condo than more.”

“It baffles those of us who work in high tech that folks continue to invest in advertising on the sides of buses, in the paper or in the glossy Seattle magazines. Please show me the evidence that the outrageous spend for that is justified while you completely ignore investing in online advertising which is more cost effective and which you can measure its effectiveness and tweak your message on a daily basis enabling you to iterate towards higher conversion numbers. (How do you A/B test a bus ad??)”

“Buyers don’t think of themselves as leads or referrals or even buyers. They think of themselves as people. And they don’t think of buying a unit which is part of some amount of inventory that your project needs to sell in order to repay your loans. They think of buying a home. That home when in a condo is part of community.”

Developers, Sales & Marketing Personnel – take some time and read this post – its not made up stuff, between Redfin & CondoDomain we have spent plenty of time, money and research into this space.

It will save you a ton of dough and make your clients happier too!

Click here for the full post

Whoa! What is going on out there in this real estate world this month?  Hot off the press today some major movement in the discount real estate brokerage business, & mainstream real estate media verticals.

Redfin – which announced a few weeks ago to layoff a big % of their staff has rolled out another adjustment to their offering plan for buyers and sellers in the 8 markets that they serve.  Today they announce: Redfin Upgrades Online Brokerage Service on their very nicely new fresh designed website.  Great work guys.  Looking sharp!

Zillow – (via the Sellius Blog and Inman News ) announced that the real estate media company Zillow has chosen to give up all but two of its state real estate broker licenses as a cost cutting measure. (It kept Washington and Texas). On October 17, 2008, Zillow CEO Rich Barton publicly announced the layoff of 25% of its workforce.)

Zip Realty - Zip Realty adds 551 real estate agents in an aggressive recruting effort and boosts sales.  ZipRealty Inc. managed to trim third-quarter losses to $1.7 million as the company added 551 agents and took advantage of continued turnover of foreclosed properties to achieve double-digit growth in sales and revenue from a year ago.

From the street level it looks like all these major movements to innovate this stale traditional industry is taking a beating because of nationwide market declines.  In short, Redfin tacks on is giving less commission rebates back but offering up more services and dedicated time to their clients.  Zip is taking the old old OLD tactic of add more agents and get more deals – yikes.   And Zillow who really stands separate from the pack as an ad based business is a clear impression that there is less $$$ being spent in the industry at this current time.  Will all these companies survive … absolutely, and we are a big fan of all of them.

CondoDomain.com - (A little “self love”) -  Little’ole CondoDomain.com still sits quiet in the pack (even though we are yelling as loud as we can)  on the sidelines.  Bootstrapped to the max, operating in 4 markets (soon to be 6 this week), our mini-Redfin web-based buyers brokerage business model is trending in the opposite direction.  Possiblly hte markets we are in?  Maybe our cheap flimzy business cards and marketing material?  Who knows, but we are excited to be growing in a time like this.  A little birdie told me that San Diego & Washington DC will have a CondoDomain website & buyers brokerage business model there veryyyyyy soon.

(Photo above:  Museum Tower, Dallas TX)

Calling all Real Estate Developers and Sales & Marketing firms:  Spruce up your new condo development on the leading condominium website – CondoDomain.com.

We have done our very best job to keep our website up-to-date with the most current information and multi-media, but we can never do the job of your marketing team.

The marketing team just updated their project – Museum Tower – in Dallas, TX and it looks so much better than the job we did.  Check out the new gorgeous renderings and updated photos, and we are posting their video soon too!

Developers/Marketing Firms: Remember posting your condominium development on our website is 100% free. We take pride in having the most informative urban real estate website out there….so if you are on our site, please contact us to update it.  If you don’t see your new condo development on the site – please go ahead and add it for free!.

Live in 4 cities:  Atlanta Condos | Boston Condos | Charlotte Condos | Dallas Condos

Coming Soon:  Baltimore Condos | DC Condos | Philadelphia Condos | San Diego Condos