Modelry - A Random Walk through Internet Real Estate

So what is the founder of LinkedIn Reid Hoffman's Action Plan for Networking?  He calls them Reid's Rules.

I read a really truly compelling article on CNN last night, pumping Reid Hoffman's new book The Start-Up of You.  The book seems really good.  Reid Hoffman has had an incredible run starting LinkedIn and then investing in FaceBook and Zynga.  

The interesting thing to me was that he makes conscious "investments" in other people.  For example, he met Mark Pincus at the start of social media.  Reid gave Mark the opportunity to invest in FaceBook.  Mark gave Reid the opportunity to invest Zynga when it was just an idea.

Is it luck or does fortune come to those who have a conscious strategy of investing in and developing other people?  

It's kind of like ActiveRain's core concept of Pay it Forward to the Community:

Here are "Reid's Rules" from "The Real Way to Build A Social Network" 

"In the next day: Look at your calendar for the past six months and identify the five people you spend the most time with -- are you happy with their influence on you?

In the next week: Introduce two people who do not know each other but ought to. Then think about a challenge you face and ask for an introduction to a connection in your network who could help.

Imagine you got laid off from your job today. Who are the 10 people you'd e-mail for advice? Don't wait -- invest in those relationships now.

In the next month: Identify a weaker tie with whom you'd like to build an alliance. Help him by giving him a small gift -- forward an article or job posting.

Create an "interesting people fund" to which you automatically funnel a certain percentage of your paycheck. Use it to pay for coffees and the occasional plane ticket to meet new people and shore up existing relationships."

So:

• Are Reid's Rules applicable to ActiveRain and real estate?
• Are you going to implement any of the ideas above?

Yes, it's that time of year.  Young girls across the country are descending on doorsteps to sell Samoa's, Thin Mints, and Do-Si-Do's.  That's right.  It's GIRL SCOUT COOKIE season.

My daughter just turned six and is a Daisy (Girl Scout in training).  This is her first year as a Daisy.  She was really excited and very motivated to sell cookies.   I am not sure if it was a curse or a boon to be the daughter of the CEO of an Internet sales & marketing company.   I know some of you are rolling your eyes at this, but I truly believe that "selling" is one of the great skills that EVERYONE should know, understand and embrace.  (I believe in life and this economy, you are either creating value by making things like engineers or you know how to sell - products, services, yourself, your company to customers and investors).   We spent the last two weeks learning about creating lists, cold calling (relatives & friends), leaving compelling messages to get call backs, and going door to door (to neighbors accompanied by parents).   She hit her goal.  i am very proud.

These are the key sales lessons I learned from my six year daughter:

1) Have a Very Clear Goal:  She wanted the stuffed animal giraffe at the 155 cookie box level.  She saw that giraffe in the Girl Scout brochure, she didn't really understand what she needed to do to get it, but she knew she wanted it.

2) Be Tenacious & Make Sacrifices: Once she decided she wanted the stuffed giraffe and knew it took selling 155 boxes, she decided she she would do what it took to get it even if it meant sacrificing play time, skiing, and TV time.  Every free moment for the past several weeks was spent selling cookies.

3) Make a Targeted List:  Before she started, she created a list of "targets" of relatives, friends and neighbors.  We started with an initial list of obvious friends and relatives.  We then used online services like FaceBook, LinkedIn and Evite to brainstorm other "friendly" faces and warm, receptive contacts she could contact.

4) Create a Script & Practice:  She developed a really simple call script and practiced with me and my wife.  She then started calling relatives.  She then moved to family friends and neighbors and kept working on her presentation. (She had a 100% close rate if she could get someone on the phone.  People were surprised to get a call from a six year old.)

5) Optimize Your Voice Mail: She tested one or two voicemail scripts and got some reasonable call backs (who wouldn't return a call from that voice).

6) Be Fearless:  This is a funny one.  I think we learn fear and embarrassment as we get older.  She may not know better, but she was fearless in making calls and selling door to door to neighbors.  In fact, she was SO EXCITED by the giraffe that she was dragging my wife or me out to go door to door everyday that the sun was shining.  Weird to be that motivated, but six year olds have energy and are motivated by stuffed animals.

7) Get Referrals from Friends, Family, and Customers:  Sarena hit a roadblock at about 100 boxes.  We didn't think she would get to her goal of 155 boxes.  She ended up getting some really good referrals from family friends who helped put her over the top.  Of course, she wasn't afraid to ask for a referral.  Also, some friends of friends saw her selling cookies and just walked over and purchased as well. 

8) Be Enthusiastic:  When you are excited, your prospects and customers will be excited for you.  Most of us sell the same product or service every day and can lose the nervousness or excitement of that first sale.   Generally if we are tired or bored with our products, services or jobs, it will show in our voice, posture, and presentations.  Stay fresh and excited when you pick up that phone or enter the room.  Being nervous is a good thing as it shows that you care.

Of course, it helps to be six years old and it helps to be selling Girl Scout cookies. 

But be it selling cars, real estate, securities on the stock market, or yourself in job interview, there's a lot you can learn from the fresh eyes of a six year old.     

There have been a number of blogs posted on ActiveRain (on Tammy, Fred and Katerina's blogs to name three) recently talking about the Stop Online Priacy Act (SOPA) and the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA). 

Both are well intentioned, but poorly crafted.  Both proposed acts in Congress would increase the ability for the government to censor free speech.  Both bills give the courts and the government significant power to shut down a web site if trademarked or copyrighted material is found on a web site. 

This would make running a web site like ActiveRain that has user generated content like say blogs nearly impossible.   

Today a large number of websites like Wikipedia and Google are showing their lack of support for SOPA and PIPA by "blacking out" in one way or another.

Learn about SOPA and PIPA on your own and if you decide sign a petition, visit Fight for the Future, and contact your local congressmen.  Each of these web sites will help you find who you should be speaking with.

I blogged several times about two dear friends of mine from business school - Dave Linn and his wife Jen Goodman Linn who blogged at youfearless.com  

Jen was 33 when she was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer called a sarcoma.  You can read my first blog post about Jen Goodman Linn here. 

Jen was fanatic about exercise.  In 2007, she started an organization called Cycle for Survival which is a relay style spinning event at Eqiunox in NYC to raise money for orphan cancer research.  What is an 'orphan cancer'?  An orphan cancer is a cancer which is not one of the most common cancers.  Here is a list of the most common forms of cancer.  Based on my discussions with Jen and Dave, the most common forms of cancer receive the vast majority of government and industry funding, leading to greater strides in research.  Orphan cancers are less prevalent, but still affect thousands of people every year.  Since orphan cancers are less prevalent, there is limited funding and few organized groups organizing action and fund raising.

Cycle for Survival was founded by Jen & Dave in 2007 to raise money for orphan cancer research at New York's Sloan-Kettering Center.  To-date, Cycle for Survival has raised more than $9m for cancer research and 100% of the donations go to funding research.  Sloan-Kettering provides all the administration and overhead.

In March of 2011, Jen turned 40 years old.  Jen's birthday dance is one of my favorite videos on YouTube.

After battling cancer for 7 years, Fearless Jen passed away on July 20th, 2011.  She was an amazing woman.  She was an amazing blogger.  A true inspiration for me.  Take some time to read through her blog on YouFearless.

Cycle for Survival 2012 is being held again on February 4th, 2012 on Long Island, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, February 11th in New York City and Chicago and February 12th in Washington DC.   Dave had a nice write-up in the Huffington Post recently as well.

On February 4th, a group of us from school are converging on San Francisco to celebrate Jen's life, ride and raise money for Cycle for Survival, and have a lot of fun.  Dave Linn is flying out from New York to be with us. 

If you are interested in helping fund orphan cancer research, please consider a donation to Cycle for Survival.  Click here to make a donation to our team.

Watch for Cycle for Survival on the news in San Francisco!

Happy Holidays ActiveRain! 

As ActiveRain is getting ready for the holidays and New Year, I thought it would be useful for me personally to jot down some notes on what we have accomplished at ActiveRain and talk openly about some of our challenges.  Hopefully, we will be able to address many of the challenges in 2011.

As many of you know, 2011 has been an eventful year for me personally and for ActiveRain.  I started in April of 2011 at the same time, ActiveRain was facing significant technology and business challenges.  Prior to April 2011, ActiveRain.com would be down for extended periods of time.  If ActiveRain was not down, there were server issues preventing blogs from saving.  Community-wise, ActiveRain held the "pole position" as the community and source for real estate professional information, thanks to the many contributions and kindness of the thousands of active real estate professionals who are blogging, helping and contributing to the community.   Business-wise, ActiveRain started charging for our RainMaker product in February of 2009.  RainMaker allows for real estate professionals to "publicly" blog on ActiveRain and have those blogs show up in the search engines.  ActiveRain also held in-person RainCamps and sold sponsored post advertising on ActiveRain and in the DailyDrop newsletter.   People-wise here at ActiveRain, a number of employees at ActiveRain left in the May and June time frame, seeking employment at other companies, some in the real estate industry.  Luckily a core team (Bob, Kerrie, Kelly, Kelly, Chris, Lauren, Abe, Anthony, Kristi) dug in and weathered the storm.  We now have a wonderful team that is doing great things every day. 

What Have We Accomplished?

• Technology:  The single biggest challenge facing ActiveRain was downtime and the stability of the technology.   I started in April 2011 and by June 2011, we had a band-aid on the problem so that the site was not going down for hours or days at a time.  We then started digging into the root problems uncovering issues like the needed software and database upgrade and database queries that would slow down the site for hours at a time.  Yesterday, we actually pushed out the Rails 2.3.14 software upgrade which should enable us to start developing on and improving on ActiveRain in 2012.  We also doubled the size of our technology team, while narrowing their focus.  Christy Nicol joined us in November.  Christy and Chris are our Ruby on Rails developers.  Market Leader has been a huge help here.  Since May, Chris Beahm and Patrick Lesher from Market Leader have taken over "systems administration" and network architecture, which is making sure the servers are working properly.  Jerome Farrar from Market Leader has taken over Information Technology / Helpdesk, which involves helping people when their computers have issues.  Finally Justin Christie from Market Leader has been helping with our phone systems and Internet access.  All this help from Market Leader on the "infrastructure" allows Chris and Christy to focus on ActiveRain.com instead of being pulled in 10 directions every day. 
• Training /ActiveRain University:  Education is one of the core values of ActiveRain.  At the same time, learning how to use ActiveRain, SEO, blogging and social media is one of the biggest challenges facing ActiveRain.  Consequently, we added 2-3 webinars per day and encouraged our members to lead educational webinars.  We have had great members like Ben Kinney, Katerina Gasset, Chris Alston, Rich Jacobson, Debe Maxwell, and may others lead webinar training for ActiveRain.  We also moved RainCamp to an online webinar which has appealed to more members in more locations and tag-teamed RainCamp with MeetUps in local areas where we are able to get 300-400 members together.  We also launched ActiveRain University with tutorials, classes, guides and webinars that are accessible 24/7 (which were not available previously).
• Educational Content: In November, we aggregated the results from our surveys and launched our series called "Rich Real Estate Agent, Poor Real Estate Agent" which is geared at helping real estate professional really understand what works when it comes to real estate technology and real estate marketing.   "Rich Real Estate Agent, Poor Real Estate Agent" has 272 comments on ActiveRain, 23,000 mentions in Google, 250 likes on FaceBook and more than 150 tweets on Twitter. 
• Social Integration:  In August, we launched our social integration project which allows ActiveRain members to share their content to FaceBook, Google (via +1), LinkedIn and Twitter.  We now see a tweet about ActiveRain or ActiveRain content every 2-4 minutes, have thousands of likes for ActiveRain content on FaceBook and more than 9,000 "+1's" on Google for ActiveRain content. 
• Team:  We have added a number of great people to the team.  Notably, Kate Yackley started in July as VP of Sales.  Kate is ultimately responsible for Sales and Member Services.  Kelly Pflugrath manages member services directly.  Anthony Van Vactor has taken a leadership role in sales and training. Bob and Kerrie continue to lead all our community activities.
• Revenue: With all these things coming together, we have been able to grow revenue from April to December for ActiveRain.  Majority of the growth has come from our RainMaker premium blogging subscriptions and advertising on ActiveRain.com.  The absolute dollar amount of our growth is not huge, but has enabled us to hire and address technology issues.

 Did It Work?

• Net Promoter: I measure the effectiveness or our success using Net Promoter.  I spoke on Net Promoter at the Dallas RainCamp in May.  Net Promoter is based on the simple premise that the long-term success of a business is based on the likelihood of customers to refer other customers.  To calculate your Net Promoter Score, survey your customers and ask them "Please rate on a scale of 1-10, what is the likelihood of your referring ActiveRain to friend or colleague?"   You then take the percentage of members who rated you as a 9 or 10 (called your promoters or fans) and then subtract the percentage of members who rated you as a 6 or below (called your detractors).   That single number is called your Net Promoter Score which is a single number which you can then use to manage the long-term success of your business.  Here is a link to the Net Promoter Scores for some of the best known companies in the world.   Net Promoter Scores vary dramatically by industry (people generally do not love their credit card or cable company).  Apple has a Net Promoter Score of 72, Amazon - 70, Google - 53, Trader Joe's - 82.
• Listen: The next step is to really understand why your Promoters love you and why your Detractors hate you.  Then you can make a conscious decision to do more of the things for which customers love you and fix the things that people hate.  Or not.  Sometimes, you can never convert a detractor into a promoter.  But at least you have the information.
• ActiveRain: We have run the Net Promoter Survey twice now.  Once in May 2011 and again in November 2011.   We calculate our Net Promoter Scores for all members and then separately for our paying RainMaker members.  You can see that our Net Promoter Scores have increased significantly from May to November based on our focus on technology and education.  As you can see for an Internet web site, our Net Promoter Scores are actually pretty high.

• Promoter Feedback - What is Going Well:  Based on the responses from the Net Promoter, ActiveRain is the best source of real estate information and training on the Internet.  The community is amazing and supportive.  The SEO juice from blogging on ActiveRain pays off big time for those that are willing to work ActiveRain.  Great traffic, referrals and leads from ActiveRain.  For complete transparency, here is a link to all the anonymous ActiveRain promoter feedback for those who are interested in seeing it.     
• Detractor Feedback - What are ActiveRain's Challenges:  Similarly, in the vein of complete transparency, here is a link to all anonymous detractor feedback on ActiveRain.  When I look at the feedback, I see a number of buckets: too much information, intimidating, too hard to learn (ActiveRain, Blogging), too time consuming (blogging, reading), small club of insiders, hard to break into the club, too expensive, not enough value.

 So, in general, ActiveRain is making progress.  Now the next step is to take these learnings from the ActiveRain community and continue to make our members more successful.

A Peek into 2012: Simplification & Community Power

Looking at what we do well at ActiveRain and the challenges posed by the feedback from the detractors, it is clear that we need to:

1. Make ActiveRain easier to use: You will see the start of a re-design of ActiveRain starting in January of 2012.  The first page we will be touching will be MyHome which is the most visited page on ActiveRain.  Right now the majority of MyHome is empty white space.  We will be moving toward an activity feed format.  See below screen shot.  More information to come on this in early January. 
2. Make it easier to find the right or best information on ActiveRain:  Even for us, the ActiveRain Insiders, it is hard to find the best article on FaceBook marketing.  We will look to implement a combination of user content ratings and editorial to aggregate the best information into simple guides for the members.
3. Figure out new and better ways to harness the power of the community to produce the best information and help other real estate professionals make money:  "Rich Real Estate Agent, Poor Real Estate Agent" was a great learning experience for us here at ActiveRain.  In 2012, we will be launching more community based "systems" like surveys and reviews to collect information that is important to real estate professionals.  I know this is a bit vague, but more information to come as we finalize plans.
4. Assess the points system and the feature board (not sure what this means, but I am putting this out there)  The points system needs to be looked at consciously.  There are members who like it as is and others who hate it.  Same with the feature board.   A lot of things on the Feature Board don't necessarily make sense either.  The Feature Board is a combination of professional, consumer, and local blog posts, all of which have different audiences.
5. Make RainMaker better:  As you have seen from our surveys and research, blogging works if you or the real estate professional is willing to put in the time and effort to blog on a regular basis (1-2x per week).  The 2011 NAR Survey of Home Buyers and Sellers says reputation and trust are two of the most important criteria when consumers pick a real estate agent.   Blogging and social media are two of the best ways for a real estate professional to develop their reputation online.  BUT, blogging only appeals to a small percentage of real estate agents.  Why?  It takes work and time to blog.  That is why most real estate agents would prefer to advertise on Zillow or Trulia rather than blog (not mutually exclusive).  We will continue to evolve RainMaker to make it easier to use and appeal to more real estate professionals.  Again vague, but more information to come.

Great accomplishments and great learnings in 2011.  Lots of work to do in 2012.  Our team has worked extremely hard in 2011 and is looking forward to our new initiatives at ActiveRain in 2012.

Happy New Year Everyone!

Niki

Great post from Cheryl Ritchie talking about the benefits of starting your week and morning with ActiveRain.  You can learn something new every day in the Rain!

Take a moment and fill out the ActiveRain 2012 Hot or Not Survey!  The goal is to get as many LOCAL real estate professionals to predict what will happen in your market.  If we can generate enough data in your local market, we can then get really strong interest and media coverage for the results. 

Did I mention you can receive 500 points by participating????

ActiveRain has put together a really phenomenal study of what top producing real estate agents do to maintain an edge in the market.  Check it out.  Not surprisingly, top real estate agents spend 10x more on marketing, 6x more on technology and "broadcast" via social media.

What does broadcast social media mean?  Though everyone is using FaceBook, top real estate agents seem to be comfortable putting themselve out there on social media via Blogging, YouTube and Twitter where others can hear there message without being "a friend" necessarily. 

Check out the study.  Click on the image below to go to the original blog post.

Data provided by ActiveRain.com. Join 215,590 Real Estate Agents on the world's largest Real Estate Social Network.

Watch out for the next Groupon or Living Social Deal.  Merchants are raising their prices without you knowing it.

Don't get me wrong: I love Daily Deals from Groupon's and Living Social.  I would say we probably spend $100 a month on daily deals for various things that we never thought we needed.  

Groupon just went public.  There are a lot of people questioning whether Groupon's are good for merchants.  I question whether Groupons or Daily Deals are good for consumers.  One of the consistent problems with Daily Deals from Groupon, Living Social, Amazon Deals, Google and FaceBook is that the merchant raises its prices first and then offers you a ridiculous discount via Groupon, so in the end, you as the consumer don't save much money at all.    There have been some high profile SNAFU's regarding these pricing strategies where businesses have increased prices for Groupon customers.  The most visibile was the FTD Groupon ahead of Valentine's day 2011.  Harvard Business School published a study on this phenomenon recently.  

My wife and I suffered from the Groupon price increasing phenomenon with a Living Social for Seattle Limo Taxi today. Living Social advertised $25 for $50 for a car service.  Crazy good deal.  We bought three since we travel a lot.   On their web site, they advertise the lowest rates in Seattle and that a car from Bellevue to the airport is $39.50.  Car service from our house generally ranges from $50-60 to the airport.  See below picture.

So we get to the airport, take out the Living Social voucher which says multiple vouchers can be used for multiple trips.  We give the $50 voucher to the driver who then says there is no change.  Based on their web site and having called them prior to booking the Living Social Deal, it should have only been $40 and we should get $10 in change on the voucher for the return trip.  We discuss it for a couple of minutes.  We then call the Seattle Limo Taxi office.  I ask him how much it costs to go from Bellevue to the airport and he says $60.  What?  Now the price went up from $50 to $60 when we were using a Living Social voucher. 

OK, my wife is thoroughly annoyed at this point.  We hand over the $50 voucher and give the driver a $5 tip.  My wife asks, "Should we call up Living Social to cancel the other two vouchers?"  I was in disbelief and said that there must have been some mix up. 

So we decided to call up Seattle Limo Taxi to book another car to see what the price should be:

Me: How much for a car from Bellevue to the airport?
Seattle Limo Taxi: How many people?
Me: 4 - 2 adults, 2 kids
Seattle Limo Taxi: $50
Me: Your web site says $40
Seattle Limo Taxi: That's for three people, you have four.  $10 extra for another person.  Do you want to book it?
Me: No, I am just calling around.
Seattle Taxi Limo: Ok, ok.  I can give it to you for $40 as long as you are NOT using a COUPON.

What???

So here's what I understand of their pricing:

• $40 on their web site, but no one really pays $40
• $50 if you call them
• $60 if you use the Living Social Daily Deal

So should I be upset?  We did get a car ride which is normally $50-60 in price for $25.  Yes, that is a great price.

Regardless, we called Living Social to cancel the other vouchers.  You have 5 days from voucher purchase to cancel a deal and get your money back.  Living Social apologized for the bad experience and  refunded us out money.

But, now that we are Living Social and Seattle Limo Taxi-less, the real question is: can we get a ride from SeaTac airport to Bellevue?  Anyone?  Bueller?

Everyone,

It has been six months since I became CEO of ActiveRain, and as many of you know, it has been an eventful six months.   I started as CEO of ActiveRain on April 11, 2011 with a commitment to invest in the underlying technology of ActiveRain, continue to foster a vibrant ActiveRain community, and make training investments to see greater success with our RainMaker premium blogging subscribers. 

We have made good progress towards those goals.  We have invested significantly in the ActiveRain technology, thanks to our technology lead Chris Paredes, Chris Beahm and Patrick Lesher from Market Leader and a team of consultants from around the country.  The platform is much more stable now.  We are not experiencing the outages that we have seen in the past.  We have developed ActiveRain University with online training, webinars and guides to help both RainMakers and the community as a whole learn about real estate search engine optimization (SEO), blogging, and social media.  Now ActiveRain University conducts 10-15 webinars per week on a wide variety of topics, some associated with ActiveRain and others which are just great training in real estate. 

We also transitioned RainCamp from an in-person event to an online webinar, complemented by local in-person MeetUps.  This was a tough decision, but we were losing money on in-person RainCamps and needed 3-4 people full time to support the activity.  The new RainCamp Online format has appealed to a broader community (rather than just the members living in one area like Dallas or Los Angeles) and the first round of ActiveRain MeetUps were more successful than hoped, with more than 300 people attending 45 MeetUps around the country.  Watch for much more to come around RainCamp Online and MeetUps.

While we have made progress in many areas, we continue to face challenges. 

ActiveRain as a platform is now stable, but we want and need ActiveRain.com to be faster from a page loading perspective and easier to develop upon.  As I have blogged about previously, the ActiveRain software platform (Ruby on Rails) and database (PostgreSQL) have not been updated in 5 years.  Imagine not changing the oil, sparkplugs or filter in your car for five years and then asking it to race the Indianapolis 500.  Because of this, ActiveRain suffers from occasional stability problems, slower page loading speeds, and challenges in developing new technology.    More investment and capital is needed in the technology and in the business overall to take ActiveRain to new heights.

Today, ActiveRain has two large shareholders: Market Leader who owns 51% of the company and the founder Jon Washburn who owns 45% of the company.  Market Leader decided to make an additional investment into ActiveRain and offered Jon Washburn the opportunity to participate equally / pro rata alongside them.  Having started a new company called Daily Ticket, Jon Washburn chose to sell his shares to Market Leader and focus on his new company and other activities, rather than investing additional capital into ActiveRain.  Though I am sure this was a very hard decision for Jon to make, it is the right decision from an entrepreneur’s perspective.  He was a minority shareholder in ActiveRain without day-to-day involvement in the business.  Jon is also a savvy entrepreneur with great ambitions for Daily Ticket, so being asked to put more money into ActiveRain was a challenge.

Market Leader has owned 51% of ActiveRain for more than a year, since September of 2010, when two ActiveRain founders Matt Heaton and James Hillyerd sold their shares in ActiveRain.  Market Leader has invested close to $4M (!) into ActiveRain to-date and believes in the vision of ActiveRain as an independent community of real estate professionals, with an editorial voice.  In the past, Market Leader has been a great partner supporting ActiveRain in visible ways through our technology challenges and sponsoring our new business initiatives.  Market Leader has also been very helpful in ways less visible to the community, but very important to the company like lending ActiveRain their HR department to help with employee benefits and recruiting.

Going forward, Market Leader will own 100% of ActiveRain and will continue to invest to make ActiveRain the leading blogging platform and social network in real estate.  ActiveRain will operate independently from Market Leader just as it has been doing for the past five years, and I will continue as the CEO.  ActiveRain has a separate office in a different location. Market Leader does not plan on integrating ActiveRain into Market Leader, though we at ActiveRain will have more access to assistance from Market Leader (like with technology and HR). 

So, where does ActiveRain go from here?  We continue to focus on building and fostering the ActiveRain community.  We here at ActiveRain are excited by the opportunities to invest in and enhance the community and the website ActiveRain.com  Over the next three months, you will see us improve the technology platform, re-design key pages on the site, and leverage the collective knowledge of the community to assist both real estate professionals and consumers through the home buying and selling process.

Watch for great things. 

As most of you know, I am very available and will answer questions and comments posted as best I can.

Niki