Austin Smith - Goomzee.com

Missoula MT Sept 8, 2009 - Agreements with Intermountain MLS of Boise and Northwest Montana Association of REALTORs in Kalispell, plus two others, continue to grow Goomzee’s nationwide footprint. Goomzee®, a leading text message marketing and lead generation provider that connects buyers and sellers in real time, announces agreements with four more multiple listings services.

Intermountain MLS of Boise Idaho spans southern Idaho and eastern Oregon and is the largest multiple listing service provider in Idaho. Northwest Montana Association of REALTORs spans Montana’s beautiful Flathead Lake communities and is the largest multiple listing service provider in Montana. Goomzee also has signed agreements with Missoula Organization of REALTORs and Wilmington Regional Association of REALTORs with respective deployments pending.

“It is the Intermountain MLS’s practice to provide our members with the best available information resources and tools, increasing their value to their customers and making them more productive,” said Greg Manship, CEO of the Intermountain MLS of Boise. “Goomzee will be a great asset in helping agents connect with buyers using today’s mobile and web technology.”

Mike Sparr, CEO of Goomzee, celebrated the signings.

“The nation’s leading MLS groups are recognizing Goomzee’s unique value proposition and continue to move forward with implementations. Recently in California, for instance, we’ve been selected as the provider of choice for three additional MLS groups totaling over 51,000 members. The nation’s leaders continue to acknowledge that Goomzee’s service, agility, and dedication to helping their members is unrivaled and for that, I’m thrilled.”

With the addition of Intermountain MLS, Northwest Montana Association of REALTORs (NMAR), Missoula Organization of REALTORs (MOR) and longtime client, Billings Association of REALTORs, Goomzee has further secured its leadership position throughout the Inland Northwest. Additional rollouts in Pennsylvania, and pending rollouts in North Carolina, California and other key markets continue to secure Goomzee’s leadership position nationwide.

Goomzee’s existing partners continue to rave about the power Goomzee’s technology delivers to their agents, and their organization.

“Goomzee has provided a cutting edge product to the membership with very little effort by MLS Staff while having developed many opportunities for rev share or site license to its partner,” states Rosemary Scardina, CEO of The Lehigh Valley Association of REALTORs. “The Lehigh Valley Association of REALTORS MLS couldn't be more pleased to be working with Goomzee. ALL MLS' SHOULD CHECK THEM OUT.”

Goomzee’s text message marketing solution, Realty Connect, compliments any MLS system and not only simplifies text message campaign publishing with their MLS Publishing Wizard, but also delivers valuable real-time market intelligence to the MLS organization on what buyers are looking at, when and where. Before Goomzee, there was no efficient way to gather this information for a 360-degree picture of the market.

About Goomzee
Goomzee® Corporation, based in Missoula, MT, is a mobile and online service that connects buyers and sellers using text messaging technology. Its industry-leading text message marketing platform, Realty Connect, delivers unmatched value and innovation to pacify sellers, buyers and sales professionals by facilitating live interaction while delivering property information and photos to buyer’s cell phones. Goomzee was founded in 2003 and services clients worldwide, including the world’s leading mobile technology and telecommunications firms, real estate brokerages and franchises, multiple listing services and REALTOR associations. Learn more about Goomzee online at http://www.goomzee.com.

Missoula, MT - August 25, 2009 – Goomzee, a leading provider of text-message marketing solutions for real estate professionals, announced today one of its latest innovations for marketing professionals, drag and drop photo organizing. This functionality is available within its web-based campaign management software that its customers use to publish and manage text message marketing campaigns. The new functionality will allow any user to reorganize photos and captions in seconds right from their web browser with a simple drag and drop interface.

Sales professionals realize that photos are essential when marketing any product or service today, and real estate marketing is no exception. Recognizing this need several years ago, Goomzee introduced its patent-pending technology, Mobile Virtual Tours. According to the company, users can upload photos from their computer or from any website, and the system generates a multi-photo slideshow that can be delivered to mobile devices as a single message, saving consumers from expensive messages or annoying ‘blasts’ of multiple messages. When photos are automatically retrieved from MLS data feeds, the need for users to reorder photos, and their captions, was recognized so the company introduced the ability to reorder photos with a simple drag and drop interface.

“We continue to push the envelope when it comes to innovation that improves our customers’ businesses. In the past year we have led the industry with innovations such as our exclusive Auto Responder, interACT lead follow up system, Dashboard with printable reporting and interactive charting, and now with our Drag & Drop photo reordering technology,” claims Mike Sparr, Goomzee’s founder and CEO. “REALTOR associations, MLS’s, and enterprise clients continue to choose Goomzee over others, noting that our products and company offer more depth in technology, responsiveness and industry expertise than any they evaluate. We always strive to be the best at what we do and the industry has certainly noticed. I’m grateful for our wonderful clients nationwide who’ve helped us make this possible; rest assured, our commitment to innovation and quality continues.”

Drag and drop interfaces are common with desktop software but they are now becoming more popular within web applications. As web browser technology advances, the line between desktop applications and web-based applications blurs, exposing users to a richer online user experience. Goomzee’s adoption of these emerging web standards is yet another example of what users come to expect from leading web-based technology solutions.

About Goomzee
Founded in 2003, Goomzee Corporation is a leading national real estate marketing and technology solutions provider. The company’s core technology is specifically designed to connect buyers and sellers. Clients look to Goomzee for global expertise in mobile and web-based technology solutions. For more information about Goomzee, visit http://www.goomzee.com .

Contact:

Goomzee Corporation
Mike Sparr, CEO
406-542-9955
mike@goomzee.com
http://www.goomzee.com

As you may know, the holdings of Fidelity National Real Estate Solutions have recently been re-branded as LPS Real Estate Group. Some individuals in the industry instantly labeled the move as a “Fire Sale”, but in reality the situation is really nothing more than a simple name change. Well, maybe I shouldn’t have spoken so quickly. “Simple” is misleading, as the advent of LPS has caused a bit of confusion among Real Estate agents and RE tech vendors alike, many of which work with FNRES-now-LPS on a daily basis.

With this confusion in mind, I set out to decipher the Rubix cube that is LPS’ corporate history. Thankfully, several timelines made my job quite easy; here are my findings:

It all started when Fidelity National Financial (FNF) acquired Chicago Title and Trust Co. in 2000. Finalized on March 20^th, the acquisition set FNF up to host a “leading market share in excess of 30%”. A worthy feat, no doubt, but Fidelity neglected to rest on its laurels. In 2001, a merger with VISTAinfo spawned Fidelity’s Mortgage Information Services (MIS) branch. MIS promptly announced joint ownership of a leading national real estate database with LexisNexis (a global business information provider), and followed up with what FNF deemed the “best in industry” MLS system and IDX framing solution. MIS rounded off the year with an acquisition of HomeSeekers’ XMLSweb™ division, a move which carried over into 2002 with MIS’s follow-up acquisition of ISDI and FNF’s acquisition of Eastern Software’s Empower.

Unbeknownst to many, Fidelity National Financial had big, big plans for 2003. While all of the action listed above was going on, ALLTEL Information Systems had been quietly chugging along, processing roughly 20 million loans in the late ‘90s and slowly but surely acquiring underwriters, data systems, and mortgage software. 2003 broke the seal on a new era for the loan community as FNF acquired ALLTEL’s financial services division and renamed it Fidelity Information Services. With their loan processing powerhouse in place, FIS was now in a position to make a series of corporate acquisitions that stretched for the next three years. The list includes such software companies as Hamilton & Sullivan Ltd., Kordoba GmbH & Co., Aurum Technology, Certegy, and Sanchez Computer Associates.

By the end of 2006, Fidelity’s MSP mortgage platform was processing over 28 million loans, had become a publicly traded company, had been named the #1 bank technology firm in America, and had also been named to the S&P 500 index. FNRES was fast becoming the “go-to” name for loans, financial technology, and MLS software. FIS launched their Loan Portfolio Solutions division in 2007, and a year later went live with Lender Processing Services as a publicly traded company. LPS then formed the LPS Real Estate Group to monitor FNRES’ real estate related holdings. This is how the company stands today, a thriving, complex financial powerhouse.

I hope this synopsis clears up confusion for some of you. Like many in the industry, we here at Goomzee were thrown for quite a loop when we began hearing buzz about LPS. Now that we have the names straight, we look forward to working with the LPS Real Estate Group.

Everyone knows the importance of having ‘hyperlocal’ content on your blog, but how many people, I wonder, recognize the importance of being ‘hyperpersonal’? Last week I was tasked to uncover some hyperlocal blogs in our current clients’ markets. Most ‘experts’ will say the best way to get on another blogger’s radar would be to lurk around the site until you find a post you feel comfortable commenting on. But I must say that I am not a fan of waiting, plain and simple. I found several blogs across the States worth following and here is how I went about garnishing the authors’ interest via ‘hyperpersonal’ means:

There is a real person behind every blog. This person has a unique childhood, a high school they graduated from and will remember forever. These people have first loves, firstborn children, and first houses just like the rest of us. ‘Hyperpersonal’ speaks to the idea of meeting the person behind the brand name, the history and memories behind the face. The most tactful way I found to do this when sifting through new blogs is to send a simple email to the main author. Some blogs are managed by groups of contributors, so maybe pick your favorite one or the overall admin contributor.

So what do you email them once you’ve found an author? I took the time to read through their latest page of posts, trying to find at least one positive remark I could make about their blog. Examples range from:

“That front view shot is perfectly framed with those tree branches. Nice shot! This house looks great; hopefully won’t take too long to sell.”

…to:

“You guys have some great hyperlocal links and content on your blog, such as local school district info and community events.”

After finding something I liked about their work, I also took the time to seek out their real name. One of Boise, ID’s fine REALTORs responded favorably to this email. She said her team “really appreciate[s] it when people take the time to learn our names.” She also asked for a little more information about Goomzee and Realty Connect.

As you can see, my initial, personalized message opened the door to an explanation of my company’s product. I didn’t have to include my value statement in the initial message because my ‘hyperpersonalization’ spoke for itself. I received many such replies from America’s agents, and have since come to realize that while real estate marketing needs to be ‘hyperlocal’ to be effective, online marketing needs to be ‘hyperpersonal’, or it will be dismissed as nothing more than SPAM or solicitation.

Jeff Turner of Realestateshows.com said this on the subject: “There’s always going to be need for face-to-face communication in real estate. Find a way to marry the two worlds.”

Last week’s team meeting produced an interesting tale of ‘overpricing woe’. The parents of one of my associates listed their house in mid-2006 at $590,000. The inaccurate list price was determined by their real estate agent, and the property sat on market for nearly 2 years, suffering a price drop of almost $200K. By the time my co-worker’s family unloaded the property, they had to settle for only $400,000; this unpleasant situation could’ve been avoided if only it had initially hit the market in the correct price range.

Overpriced listings are, unfortunately, a common practice in real estate. Some agents overprice their listings thinking they have provided themselves with “wiggle room” when it comes time to negotiate. Other agents price too high because they are either in agreement with the seller’s over-inflated valuation, or they are “buying the listing”: an unethical practice I will expound on later in this post.

Overpricing a listing for the sake of “wiggle room” may seem like a good idea, but in the end it will only serve to hamper your selling efforts. High priced homes do not yield as many inquiries as listings that are priced competitively; the lack of offers usually leads to several price reductions and a lengthier term on market, two factors that serve to erode the integrity of your listing. Savvy buyers will shy away from ‘lemons’ that have sat for months on end, only moving in for the kill when the agent has reduced the price by half of its original value.

Sometimes homes are priced too high for no other reason than the agent-seller team is in agreement. The trick in this situation is being able to look at a property objectively, as a buyer would see it. The seller’s viewpoint is obviously biased, but rightfully so since he/she has large sums of money invested in the property. Oftentimes valuations of a home are inflated due to upgrades the seller has performed. Sadly, buyers tend to not see the value in these upgrades, opting instead to modify the home themselves and therefore considering any upgrades the current owner has performed nothing more than the offering that’s on the table. Overpricing your listing based on current homeowner upgrades has the potential to lead to the unpleasant situation where the homeowner realizes that they spent more money on upgrades than they will ever see at the time of closing.

Unethical agents will sometimes attempt what is called “buying the listing”. This happens when the agent enters into a listing presentation with a purposefully over-inflated CMA. Of course, since homeowners oftentimes (through no fault of their own) have inflated valuations of their property, the ‘shady’ CMA aligns with the seller’s wishes and the agent has effectively bought himself a client by knowingly catering to their unawareness. Sometimes agents enter into these situations with the intention of talking down the seller at a later date; this, also, is not a good idea since your initially over-inflated price will undermine any chance the agent has of cashing in on the “New Listing Hype”.

You will get no argument from me that this is a touchy situation. No agent has ever won a listing by strong-arming their clients and ordering them around like green recruits. But, the question becomes: at what point are you catering too much to the seller that you are, in fact, sabotaging the transaction? It is the responsibility of the agent to draw on their industry expertise to protect their clients from low-ball offers, high-priced listings, and any physical harm incurred at the negotiation table. They are not only investing in your expertise, but ultimately placing their future in your hands. It is the duty of the agent to live up to those expectations.