fun

A couple of events coming up at the end of July:

We'll be at the Inman Connect conference in San Francisco for the week of July 23-25. I'll be speaking in the blogging session on "Content That Hooks Readers" which, if you read this blog, you'll know I'm woefully under-qualified for. The good news is that the session is hosted by Kris Berg, and includes the inimitable Jeff Corbett, Benn Rosales, Ben Martin, and Sarah Hromack. Heavy hitters all. You're bound to learn something.

We've ponied up for a (gasp) sponsorship this time. Make sure you come by and help us pretend it's worth the investment.

The preceding Tuesday July 22 is the Real Estate BarCamp - conveniently also in San Francisco. Which, when shortened to REBarCamp it sounds like a concrete conference, I know, but I assure you it'll be more compelling. At a BarCamp the attendees get to create the conference on the fly - presenting content that you think others care about and interacting with those who know stuff you want to learn. I've been to a few bar-camps including the proto-FOO Camp last year and they're always a super enjoyable experience.

Scott and I thought we'd bring some Altos Research technology goodies to share with our partners and anyone else who wants to learn how to maximize all the Altos products. So if you're on your way to San Francisco for the Inman conference, stretch a day earlier and come for the BarCamp.

REALTOR Magazine is out with their annual 30 Under 30 issue. I'm always a sucker for these types of articles highlighting the young and uncannily-good-looking - no matter the industry.

So I was browsing through this year's list of the preternaturally successful and - waitaminnit - I KNOW these guys! Check the Friends-of-Altos on the list:

Boston's Condo king Mike Dimella

East Bay AltosCharts hound Tyler Moxley

and the inimitable Jon Washburn of ActiveRain

(Even if I'm, ahem, a bit beyond the bounds for being included in the list, I'm ecstatic to see our friends on it. Look out, though, because next year Altos will be gunning for 25% reach.)

Congratulations on the attention, guys. It's well deserved.

I've surprised myself, but I'm diggin' Twitter. As far as Internet communication goes, I love the blog for it's ability to reach our customers/friends/colleagues; I'm not a big Facebook user (I find FB mostly useful as a repository for friends photos); and I lean to email over IM.

In a fit of myopia, I held out against Twitter for a year, but now I've been tweeting (yes, tweeting) for a couple months. I've come to the realization that Twitter is the social network I've been waiting for. Twitter's focus on pure communication elevates it above the colleague/friend/acquaintance/follower asymmetry problem in the Facebooks of the web. With Twitter I can listen to people who interest me-whether or not they are my "friend". I don't creep them out when I listen. Likewise, my Twitter followers are people who are interested in me and/or Altos whether or not I've ever met them.

I'll often publish market data nuggets on Twitter that are too finite for a blog post. I'll post info on new products to Twitter before it goes anywhere else. Why? It's easy, and the listeners have, by definition, said they want to know.

So in the interest of developing this communication channel, if you are interested in what I/Altos say/do/visit/publish, then follow me on Twitter.

Still asking, WTF is Twitter? See Tara Hunt's explanation

Just spent a couple of fine days in Atlanta with the RE Tech South crew. Brad Nix and Matt "blog from the heart" Fagioli pulled together a great session with just a couple of weeks planning, so kudos to them. All in all a couple hundred people, interactive, interested, motived to improve their internet marketing.

Great conversations on real estate video, blogging, search optimization. I did a panel where we talked about leveraging widgets on your site and in your marketing.

For me the most informative session was on video. I've not previously been a video guy but then I'm not selling houses. But the panel had a chance to dive into some of the great innovations in video that are really exploding the medium for realtors. From cheap easy cameras, to professional videographers, and powerful presentation tools. Rock on.

Rudy proved again why Pete Flint got a steal bringing him on board as Trulia's social media guru. And I always enjoy working with Dustin, Jon, and the maniacs at Domus (who contributed a lot to this day too. golf clap for Pat and Kevin.)

We met some new friends too. Atlanta Real Estate blogger Kathy Drewien is going to be spicing up her market data posts with spiffy AltosCharts. With Michael Fournier, we're growing our reach in the Charlotte market. Michael liked to point out that Charlotte is the only one of the 20 Case Shiller-measured housing markets where median home price is up in the twelve months ending January. Desiree at Bella Web Design sums up the day nicely.

Some Altos links:

Charlotte real estate report

Atlanta real estate report

AltosCharts trend charts widgets

Since we started our company a couple years ago, we've generally frowned on marketing activities that that require cash. Our marketing consists primarily of this blog, personal referrals, and the press generated by the real estate data content that we provide. (No taxi billboards for us.) So it's a big deal for us to announce a sponsorship of Dustin Luther's 4Realz Education seminars!

Despite our, ahem, frugality, the decision to sponsor 4Realz was an easy one for us. Dustin, of Rain City Guide and late of Move.com, has proven himself to be not only one of the most savvy internet marketers in the real estate world, but also a gifted teacher of those lessons.

Further, Dustin's been a fan of our products and technology for a while. He gets our vision. When he was at Move, subscribers would call to tell me that they'd attended a Top Producer seminar and Dustin Luther was on stage recommending the Altos products! Let me tell you, those kind of unsolicited, un-sponsored endorsements mean so much to an entrepreneur. They also speak volumes for Dustin, in that he's an independent voice that will guide his audience to the best options available no matter who's footing the bill.

Conclusion: Dustin will be hosting a valuable day for real estate professionals - the kind of activity that we want to be associated with. See you there!

Details: 4Realz Internet Marketing for Realtors

March 6, 2008

Skirball Center, Los Angeles

I have a new article up at Om Malik's startup-focused news site, Found|Read, today. The Silicon Valley startup geek that I am, I like to publish for Om from time to time. This one's on the financing strategy we've used in building our company and my thoughts for other entrepreneurs.

I generally try not to stray too far from the real estate topic at hand on this blog, but I want to call your attention this morning to an article by Kevin Kelly (founding editor of Wired Magazine among other literary accomplishments). Kelly's the rare "futurist" who deserves the title.

This week he published Better Than Free. The article captures succinctly, why in a world of free and freely copyable information, Altos Research just had another record month in sales.

In fact, Kelly's concepts also capture why our most successful real estate agent clients, in a world of commoditizers and discounters, command a premium, even in this crazy market.

When everything is free on the interwebs, what is it that people really want to pay for? Kelly identifies 8 generatives: uncopyable values generated or cultivated from within. Here's a snippet, do yourself a favor and read the whole article.

Immediacy: Sooner or later you can find a free copy of whatever you want, but getting a copy delivered to your inbox the moment it is released -- or even better, produced -- by its creators is a generative asset.

Personalization: A generic version of a concert recording may be free, but if you want a copy that has been tweaked to sound perfect in your particular living room -- as if it were preformed in your room -- you may be willing to pay a lot.

Interpretation: As the old joke goes: software, free. The manual, $10,000. [The listings? Free. The right neighborhood and home for you? ...]

It turns out while we weren't nearly so articulate about the process, these generatives have been the Altos DNA from day 1. How do we get you great information in real-time, and not just data, but analysis, personalized for you, and leverage-able into your business?

Anyway, to all our clients, readers, subscribers, partners: thanks for being with us. Rock on.

Last month I indulged in some year-end speculation about the state of the RE.net in 2008. One of the things I predicted was that we'd soon see one of the traffic measuring firms show Trulia's web traffic cross over Zillow's. I just didn't expect it this soon.

ht: techcrunch

For the NAR conference this month I was a bit tardy in posting my travel schedule, and I missed some connections there as a result. So here's a heads-up for my conference travel schedule in January and February.

January 8-11 New York: Inman Connect conference. Brad Inman always throws a grand shindig. I make connections, friends, and new clients at every Inman conference. My meeting schedule is filling up fast, but I still have some time on Thursday and Friday. Give me a buzz and we'll get together. Scott will also be in attendance so we should have good coverage meeting old friends and new.

February 5-8 New York: O'Reilly Money:Tech conference. This conference is all about hacking Wall Street with new data and tools. It promises to be one of a kind. Love it. I'll be presenting on real-time real estate market analytics, plus our data that leads the Case Shiller and Radar Logic housing futures markets. We'll be demonstrating some never-before-public data goodies.

Lots of big shots presenting at Money:Tech too. Jim Cramer, Barry Ritholtz, Henry Blodgett, Bill Tancer, and more. Check it out.

As always, these trips are about meeting clients, partners, and readers. email mike at this url.com to get in touch.

Dustin Luther is on a tear. 4Realz.net has instantly become the insider's go-to guide to the real estate technology market. Recently unbound, Dustin is busy breaking news and publishing lucid insights on the market. Today he cites The Motley Fool speculating on a Zillow IPO in 2008.

“Zillow was the brainchild of Expedia’s founder, so it’s really just a matter of time before the company follows suit and goes public. Even with dot-com realty plays like HouseValues and Realtor.com parent Move trading in the mid-single digits, Zillow has enough Teflon to make it as an IPO.

I'll go on a limb and say, Not a chance Zillow IPOs in 2008. Rather, Dustin has motivated me to organize these predictions for Zillow (and the rest of the RE.net) for 2008:

• Barton moves to chairman-only by mid-year. He's got the venture and hedge funds to keep him busy.
• In addition, I'd bet maybe 5 of the current 11(!) VPs rotate out in 2008. Is this a company that can actually keep it's General Counsel busy full time? Doesn't make any sense to me. Clean house, drop the burn rate, focus on the core business.
  

There's no question they're building that company to take it public and have the right product and team foundation, but think about it in context of the Kayak/sidestep news. That's a combined company of 60 people with $85 million in revenue. There's your IPO. Zillow has 165 employees! That's a big burn rate. Plus how many IPO investors are going to be excited about getting into a residential real estate play in 2008? 2010 is my guess for Zillow - after some wrenching changes, and some smart revenue moves. (David G, what say you? Am I full of it?)

In related re.net developments, here's another prediction to think about:

• Redfin.com will introduce premium-level, full-service, full-price product lines.

I've grown less sanguine about the Redfin business model this year. Champion of the discounters, Redfin's gotta scale its revenue. CEO Glenn Kelman posted some of his business metrics on Guy Kawasaki's blog (which took some serious cojones, so kudos to Glenn for stepping up.) In that post, one thing is clear: he needs to marshal Redfin to $100 million in revenue, fast. If you assume that Redfin clears ~$5000 on it's discount home sales transactions, that means they have to scale to 20,000 home sales in the next couple years. In this market.

Glenn also pointed out that they have more people driving around in the field than they originally planned. (i.e. the model scales less efficiently.) But if you introduce premium services and can bring your average-revenue-per-deal closer to $10,000, that's a much more achievable target. Not surprisingly, this was also the path that Zip Realty took several years ago.

One last one:

• Trulia's traffic overtakes Zillow's.

Paul Kedrosky took some flak the other day for citing a single traffic source highlighting declining web traffic for Zillow.com. Web traffic is a black art, so we can divine only a few things for certain: 1. Zillow's new feature introductions are only marginal page-view increases on top of the core value proposition. None of these create the power curve in traffic growth. 2. They started with the biggest bang you can. It's hard to go up from there. Furthermore, when you're in front of the fire hose, it's hard to discerne which site/product tweaks lead to organic growth. So Zillow's current growth was actually retarded by their early success. 3. Trulia's growth is more organic (and more visible in the monitoring services). It's based on start-small, test often, repeat-what-works. So Trulia's growth seems to be oriented on increasing market penetration, search optimization, and product improvement. As a result, in mid 2008, we'll see the first of the compete/quantcast/alexa charts that illustrate Trulia crossing over Zillow. Mind you, I'm not convinced that Trulia has their revenue proposition nailed yet. I'm sure there's a prediction in there somewhere too. Just haven't found it yet.

At the NAR conference in Las Vegas, I did an interview with Joel Burslem from Inman News. The video is up today on InmanTV.

The video uses a sweet player from WellcomeMat.

Our friend Alex at theFrontSteps is hosting his occasional Battle Royale this week. He's comparing the North Beach vs. South Beach neighborhoods in San Francisco. Your job is to pick the winner. Where would you rather live, and why? As Alex points out, this debate really boils down to whether you're old school or new skool San Francisco.

I've never been a North Beach guy. Maybe it's the Italian food thing. On the other hand, when I moved to the city almost 10 years ago, there was essentially no such thing as a "neighborhood" in South Beach. So I lived in Potrero, which shares the 94107 zip code with South Beach. As I zip through the ball park area these days, I'm blown away by the changes. It's all so new that it feels a little soul-less. That's such a surprise in San Francisco. I have a feeling though, maybe if I were migrating today, I'd wind up there. I'm clearly not old-school San Francisco.

Anyway, check out the Battle and let Alex know your thoughts.

Bonus: Altos client Mark Choey blogs all about the new development condos in the South Beach area.

No Dilberts on the walls here at Altos Research world headquarters, but there's nothing like a good cartoon to really capture the zeitgeist. Randall at xkcd.com gives us:

click for full size

(Oh yes, I have indeed uttered the phrase, "I did some analysis with the Census Bureau numbers last weekend...")