Friday Flash: Realogy files, Market Leader bets and Redfin gets specific

Inman reports today that Realogy has filed its long-anticipated S-1. I won’t pretend to understand the epic complexities within the company’s financials, but this offering will be an interesting reading of investor confidence in our fragile housing recovery.

Market Leader released a new “Marketing Center” this week. It’s a refurb of the SharperAgent product the company bought last year.

The headline of the press release positions this as the arrival of  “The Real Estate Industry’s Only Comprehensive Lead-to-Close Platform.” This is not a baseless claim. MarketLeader has done a great job pulling a lot of applications together. But the question, ultimately, is whether “comprehensive” is what today’s mobile, app-happy agent needs or wants.

I don’t know yet. But it would be great to see the company hedge its bet and take things in a true platform direction so other developers could build on their technology.

Specificity is really important in marketing. A broad unsupported claim almost always loses to a small detail that ties directly to a benefit.

Redfin gave us an example this week. The company did something that’s generally a pretty bad idea – featuring your own listings at the top of search results on your website – but did a great job explaining how this benefits their sellers.

Redfin engineers tracked thousands of listings, crunched the numbers and found that putting their sellers’ homes at the top of the heap increased views by 103%.

Not “significantly.” Not “a lot.” 103%.

Consumers’ bullshit detectors are dialed to 11 when it comes to real estate. Being specific is one way to avoid tripping them.

If you’re like me and want to understand the details of listings policy and legal issues surrounding MLS, you really need to follow the writings of Brian Larson.

Here, for example, is his take on IDX versus syndication.  It’s dense, but it’s good. Dude knows his stuff.

An app called WooFound hit the app store this week. It recommends things to do based on your responses to photos. It couldn’t be simpler:

Woofound app

Put a photo of a home in there and you’ve got a nifty little buyer preference discovery app.

For the record, “Marathon” is definitely “Not me.”

Enjoy the weekend!