There has been a few other great post about this written recently check out what Drew Meyers from Zillow wrote on Geek Estate also check out “Walk Score Adds Transit” by Clark Williams-Derry

Through a mesh of ingenuity, and a bit of alchemy, our wizards (legit mad ones) have cooked up some magic for our IDX embedding code that automatically resizes the frame containing your IDX, to prevent the scrollbars from appearing. How cool is that?! And you don’t have to do anything to get this new functionality, it’s already enabled! That’s right, no additional fees, no additional configuration, it’s enabled and it just works.

One note however, you must be using our <script> tag, not a standard <iframe>. If you are using an <iframe> all you need to do is head to the dsSearchAgent Dashboard in your Control Panel and replace that old-and-moldy <iframe> with the nice and shiny <script> located in the “Add IDX To Your Site” section of the Dashboard page.

Let us know what you think!

Here’s an example of the lack of scroll bars in action: http://www.southorangecountyliving.com/Home_Search.htm

We really wanted to do something different, something that would be useful, and something that no one has done.  What we decided to do is an experiment in transparency.  This is something the real estate industry may or may not be ready for, but I’ll bet the consumers are.

Let’s say I’m Joe.  I have a home that I want to sell.  I want top dollar, but I don’t want it to take 6 months to sell. So what do I do?  Do I call the agent that has been sending me those nice pads of paper with her face on it, drive around the neighborhood to see who has the most for sale signs, search Google to see who has the best looking website or who is the best blogger, or do I talk to my friends to see who they used?  All of those ideas sound okay to me, but how do I know any of these agents are good at what they do?  I can interview them, but that won’t give me the complete picture on how good they really are. All that will tell me is how good of a personality they have and how well they can sell me on themselves. At this point, I, Joe, am really wishing that there was a way to easily find and evaluate an agent statistically the way employees or sports stars get evaluated.

This is where our experiment comes in.

Since we work with MLS data day in and day out for our IDX solutions, we that we should lead with our strength and show people an example of what we can do if there were no data use rules. We started with the data from one of the MLSs that we work with in southern California. And yes, we asked permission. We pulled in agent and office information, open houses, all information on the active, pending, withdrawn, canceled, expired, and sold listings over the last 10+ years, and all of the change history for every single one of those listings.

We then analyzed that data to create a number of algorithms that give us ranking statistics that we could use for each agent.  Some of these statistics include the following:

•    Popularity: How many homes have they sold in the last 180 day, 1 year, and 2 year periods?
•    Salesmanship: What was the average number of days on the market
•    Knowledge of market: How many times did they drop the price from the initial listing?
•    Experience: How long have they been a member of the MLS?
•    Ability to negotiate: How close was the last list price to the final sales price?
•    Diligence: On average per listing, how many open houses do they have, how many photos do they load in, and how lengthy are their descriptions?
•    … and more.

Enough of me telling you about it. Let me show you what we did.

Here I can search for agents that have had a transactions in a city or for a specific agent or office. Assuming I don’t know anyone out there, I am going to search for agents in Laguna Beach.

Up come results for the city.  First off all of these agents have had at least one transaction in the city in the last 3 years

I’m sure you noticed the ASR Star Scores next to each agent. We thought it was important that there was an easy way to get an idea of who is statistically a better agent rather than throwing a bunch of number at them right off the bat. So we surveyed about two dozen agents, brokers, and home buyers to determine what the most important statistical factors were. We then weighted those factors appropriately when we assign a score to an agent in each area so that no one single factor can override all of the other factors. Finally, we used those factors to rank the agents and their transactions against each other so that their transactions in other areas or in other price ranges didn’t factor into the star ratings that are shown.

Once you find an agent who you want to know more about, you can simply click on their name and it will take you to their details page. Here you can view the statistics we were able to derive from analyzing their past performance. The details page also includes a list of their sold properties and the details of each.

Something else to keep in mind is that most agents are not good everywhere, so we included the ability to drill down into different cities, areas and tracts to see their specific score for those areas.

As you can see, the possibilities here are endless. This is just what we were able to accomplish is 48 hours. Imagine if we had even longer. We could add the ability for agents to claim their profile and add some additional information about themselves. We could also add the ability to save favorites and print our reports on the agents they like best. Or maybe we incorporate a user rating system too, like what HAR or Redfin has done. We could tailor it for multiple different purposes as well. Who knows, maybe there are some brokers that want to use it to evaluate their agents or MLSs that want to provide it to their membership?

In all reality this idea may or may not ever progress past the stage it’s in now. It all depends on interest of the right people. That’s not what this competition was about though. It was to have a good time, come up with something creative that solves a problem, and to hopefully inspire others to keep our industry moving forward.

Final thought

According to the California Association of REALTORS’ most recent consumer study, some of the consumer’s top complaints are that the agent didn’t negotiate hard enough for them or that their house didn’t sell quick enough. Could providing this type of information to them help them find an agent that is best suited for their needs or possibly reduce their unrealistic expectations?

The scope of the project was admittedly broad, here was our prompt:

• You or your team have 48 hours to create an interesting real estate application (during the first two days of Real Estate Connect)
• You demo your application in front of 1,000 of the most important people in real estate during our Friday general session
• You wow our judges, win our grand prize, and become an instant real estate rock star

We were instructed that we could not write a single line of code, or design any assets, before the start of the 48 hours. However, we were given a few weeks to mull over ideas and sketch basic wire frames. With our thoughts and plans in hand we headed for SFO via SNA at 3:25pm Tuesday August 4th, T-8:35 from competition start.

After having a relaxing meal my two compatriots and I headed to our hotel suite for a quick power-nap before we started our marathon coding session. Before I continue, let me introduce you to the three of us:

• Andrew Mattie – Programmer extraordinaire, wrangled our data, slaving over the facts and figures for a majority of our time.
• Jennifer Orser – Our Designer (of awesomeness!), spent her hours designing the site (in a single proof!) and assets.
• Jonathan Mabe – (me!) I built the UI (html/javascript) and brought what Jennifer and Andrew produced together.

Just after midnight, with our power-nap begrudgingly complete, our illustrious leader Justin kicked down our door to snap us in gear. I have to admit, for the first few hours I didn’t think we’d be able to complete the project enough for the reveal. Staring at mostly stark-white screens without a lick of code or line of pixels is very daunting. Somehow the three of us progressed through the first night, then the next morning, continuing into that afternoon (with a short break to be introduced at Inman), and still into most of Wednesday evening. Until we each, in turn, took roughly three hours of sleep.

With the first 1/2 (24hrs) of the competition under our belt, and a renewed fervor from being introduced on stage, we took some time to discuss the upcoming final 24hr leg. With a little fear, at bit of trepidation, and a lot of resolve, we continued on into the night.

As we had from the beginning of the competition, breaks would commence every 6 to 8 hours, we’d take walks down to Bread and Cocoa, or just around the block. In between our Caffè Americanos (extra shot!) we would fill in the energy gap with a Rockstar or Monster energy drink (sugar free! we can’t forget the Biggest Loser competition back at the office!). This kind of insanely unhealthful activity produced surprisingly stellar results. The three of us would find ourselves in a “zen” like state, for hours on end, with only the music as our muse. Speaking of music, here are a few choice artists that spurred our creativity (streamed mostly via Pandora, our favorite internet radio):

• Led Zeppelin
• Imogen Heap / Frou Frou
• Muse
• The Jackson 5 (used mostly as a deterrent – I’m looking at you Justin!)

As the hours wound down, the determination grew stronger. We would plan on sleeping “for an hour or so” in “a few hours”, but needing to get done more and more to complete the project, sleep was definitely a crutch we weren’t prepared to lean on. I would like to say we finished early, but we did not. I would like to say we did everything we set out to do, we did not. We did work down to the wire fitting in every bug-smash, or feature-implementation we could manage. And we ended up with, in our humble opinion, an awesome prize-winning application, Agent Scouting Report.. the future?

The full reveal of our “Experiment in Transparency” will come soon, here on the Diverse Solutions Blog. Stay tuned!

Overall, we were able to make a number of changes that decreased the initial size of our IDX by nearly 30%!! We made all of our images much, much leaner, we further combined our JavaScript and CSS into fewer files, and we removed some preloading where it just didn’t make sense anymore.

Additionally, we moved nearly all of our JavaScript, CSS, and images / icons to the same global network infrastructure that twitter, SmugMug, WordPress.com, Amazon, and other multi-million/billion dollar companies are using! The advantages we gained by making that move is that the majority of our IDX is now served from 14 locations around the world depending on the visitor’s location instead of just a single location. In other words, a dsSearchAgent visitor located in Boston will no longer have to wait for a myriad of image, JavaScript, and CSS requests to be served up from a data center 2,600 miles away in Los Angeles; instead, that visitor will pull all of that data from a dedicated cache location in Newark, NJ.

Speed matters. Google found that their traffic to Google maps increased by 25% after they shaved 20-30% off the initial size of the Google maps home page.  Amazon found (PowerPoint presentation) that for every 100 millisecond delay that they introduced in testing scenarios, they experienced a 1% drop in revenue. That’s huge!! Now that we’re leaner and closer to our visitors, we’re really excited to see what this does for our own traffic.

Anyway, give it a whirl. Drop us a comment and let us know what you think!

So without further ado, please visit our launch site to learn more and try it out yourself: http://dslistingexpress.diversesolutions.com

We know you’ll like it.

Walk Score helps people find walkable places to live. Walk Score calculates the walkability of an address by locating nearby stores, restaurants, schools, parks, etc. Walk Score measures how easy it is to live a car-lite lifestyle—not how pretty the area is for walking.

As an admiring fan of their Walk Score idea and their motto (“Software for Civic Live”), we knew that it was our responsibility to bring this greatness to our dsSearchAgent product, so that’s what we did. You can see the functionality on our demo IDX site. Starting today, all of our IDX clients can easily flip a switch in their control panel area to enable that great Walk Score functionality. Specifically, we’ve implemented it in the following four places on our IDX:

1. Search by Walk Score. Now this is cool. We love being able to put in an address Walk Score, but it makes it SO much better when you don’t have to constantly look up the Walk Score for each address for each property you’re interested in buying / leasing.
2. Sort by Walk Score. If you can search by Walk Score, you should be able to sort by Walk Score too. Just click in the “sort by” box at the top of the results and choose “Walk Score, Highest First” to order the search results from highest to lowest Walk Score.
3. View the Walk Score in both the search results and property details. Even if our clients choose not to show the “Search by Walk Score” search panel, they can still enable the functionality to allow their visitors to see the Walk Score for each listing in both the search results and property details. Check it out here; just look for the little walking guy icon at the top-right of each search result and in the top-right corner of the property details area.
4. View the Walk Score tile. When you click on the “Walk Score” link at the top-right of the property details area, you’ll see the Walk Score tile that shows all of the amenities that are factored into the score.

In case you missed the link above, check out the demo. We hope you’ll enjoy using it as much as we enjoyed building it into our system. We’re really excited to say that we’re the first national IDX provider that enables this type of functionality. We spent quite some time on the UI for this feature in order to make everyone happy. We also did our homework to make sure that the implementation appeased the compliance departments at the MLS’s who mandate their percentage of employed anal-retentive individuals to be greater than 80%.

Anyway, we’d love to hear what you think!

Update 3/31/09 8:47 AM: Just to be clear, if you have dsSearchAgent and you want the Walk Score functionality for your own IDX, you need to enable this in your control panel. There are two places you can enable the functionality, and they’re both in the “Options” section. First, you can drag over the “Walk Score” panel under the “Search Tab” tab. Second, under the “Result Tab”, you can put a tick in the “Show Walk Score in results” checkbox. The sort-by option for Walk Score will automatically show up as soon as you enable the search functionality.

Mike shares with us an overview of their product and examples of clients who are putting it to use in their markets. He also discusses why they are such huge supporters of the RE Barcamp movement. 

Listen To the .mp3 File Here
Click Here To Subscribe to the DS Radio Podcast, It’s Free (iTunes)
Click Here To Subscribe Via your RSS Reader 

I posed the question in a discussion forum on the Diverse Solutions Facebook page and invited folks to provide us their thoughts on the issue. We received some really great insight and input. 

“Well that is just crazy. The world is too big to play that game. I’m friends with Rudy at Trulia, Sarah and David G from Zillow and I think everything is just fine”. – Derek Overbey Roost.Com

One of the very first social networks to launch on the web was LinkedIn. I remember as it started to grow in popularity, so did the number of detractors that felt as if it were a way to allow your competitors access to see who it is you do business with etc. The issue obviously hasn’t stopped if from becoming almost a business necessity these days.

“Wow! Those who know me, know I rock the transparency all the way, so it boggles my mind not to let anyone into my circle. This doesn’t mean they get to stay there depending on their behavior but very rarely is someone ushered out.” Kye Grace – Realtor

One of the best chapters in the book Reality Check by Guy Kawasaki is a whopping 2 pages in length and it’s entitled “Power 3.0; Kinder, Gentler and Better” I think some of what he has to say is very relevant to this issue. What does power have to do with your social networking endeavor? In my opinion everything. 

“Despite thier location or even their direct competition with me for web traffic, this is a big pool we are all playing in…and there is room for everyone.” Clint Miller – RECR.com

Truth told, all of us our trying to amass the strongest network that we can in the hope that it helps us with that ultimate goal of the pursuit of happiness, whatever it means to you. Kawasaki uses quotes and references from another book entitled “The Power Paradox” by Dacher Keltner to show that there are basic myths to the “game of power” including the Machiavellian way of thinking that says “it’s better to be feared than loved”. Keltner says “Social behaviors are dictated by social expectations” and that “Machiavellians quickly acquire reputations as individuals who act in ways that are inimical to the interests of others”. 

I think the power of an effective social networking effort comes from a desire to hold the interests of others above your own within your sphere. What better way to demonstrate that than to embrace those you may perceive as competitors? I’m not saying to reveal your strategic efforts and plans or to beguile people you wouldn’t otherwise engage. That makes no sense no matter what platform you’re using to be social. If you’re managing your online effort correctly, I doubt you’re saying anything you wouldn’t put in a press release anyhow.  

“….I guess you have to tend your FB garden very well.” Kristal Kraft – Realtor

 There’s on old saying “nice guys finish last”. It’s not always true. I think if you play it smart, the concept of engaging everyone in your sphere in a transparent and genuine fashion will eventually start to reward you in a way you had no idea was in store for you. I remember when I was boy my Dad came home from work with the latest and greatest Hot Wheels set. No birthdays, it wasn’t Christmas. He said he gave it to me and my twin because he thought we deserved it. I couldn’t tell you to this day what one single action we may have taken to make us deserve such a cool gift. Whatever it was, We both did it without expectation of reward. Isn’t it the unexpected gift that always seem to be the best?

So, what do you think of the issue? Join our Facebook page and let me know.