Real Estate and Technology

Here are some details on using My Showing Log, including some screen shots. I know I’ve done this before, but each time it gets a little better.

We will start at the beginning — What is My Showing Log?

An internet “tool” that automatically requests and collects feedback from other agents who show your listings.

Here is how it works:

1. Real Estate Agent calls to request a showing on one of your listings.

Below is a screen shot of the home page which is your starting point. Whenever you see a screen shot in this post just click on it to see a large, readable version. Use your back button to continue with the article. There are screen shots that show what each step of setting up a showing in My Showing Log looks like further down in this post.

2. Who ever is setting up the showing collects the agent’s contact information and enters it in My Showing Log.
3. The property, date and time of the showing is selected in My Showing Log and marked as approved.

Any of the following can happen automatically if selected:
Showing agent gets email confirmation of showing
Listing agent is copied confirmation via email
Owner is copied confirmation via email

After the showing:

• Showing agent is emailed a simple form requesting feedback on the showing.(which can be forwarded to the owner)
• Listing agent receives feedback via email and it is stored for later reference in My Showing Log.
• My Showing Log functions much like the “Floor Book” maintained by many offices to keep track of showings.
• Records can be shared and updated by groups with adjustable levels of access.
• Any group member can see the status of properties and showings in real time any place there is an internet connection.
• My Showing Log is great for handling after hours showing requests.

Features that make My Showing Log easy to use:

• Once showing agent contact information is entered My Showing Log remembers it for future use.
• The last twenty showing agents are kept in a handy list and can be utilized with one click.
• Each showing request is timestamped and the person entering the request recorded.
• each user can set preferences on how they want confirmation and feedback emails handled.
• Users can enter default confirmation messages as well as editing the message ath the time the showing is set up.
• The user can ad a personal note to the feedback request.
• Feedback gathered by phone or in person can be entered manually to the records.
• The feedback form includes a photo of the house and agent contact information.

For MLS associations, My Showing Log is designed automatically maintain agent contact information through a RETS conection with a local MLS.

If you would like to try My Showing Log, go to www.MyShowingLog.com and click “Get An Account”

Microsoft does have some good stuff. Seems like it used to be when I bought a computer Microsoft Publisher came with it, or maybe it was bundled with that hog called Microsoft Office. The fact is Microsoft Publisher does it’s job pretty darned well. We use it for property brochures. It handles photos and text well, you can move things around and they stay where you put them. Within the last couple of years I’ve gone as far as actually purchasing a copy for the front desk.

You can use Microsoft Word for lots of things, but the truth is you are better off using Word for documents with pretty simple formatting demands. Things like letters.

If I’m doing any kind of document with a photo, graphics, a table, collums or any thing even just a little bit different I use publisher. You can go round and round with Word trying to make it do these things. It is even tempting to use Publisher for simple stuff like letters because it is so much more stable than Word.

The other day I was checking my email using web mail. Somehow I managed to slide the top of the window off the top of my computer Screen. Gone with the top bar of the window were the controlls for resizing and closing the window.

Faced with this sort of thing in the past I’ve resorted to shutting down the entire program to get the misplaced window to go away. Here is another option: Hold down the (ctrl )key along with the (-) key. The contents of the screen will get progressively get smaller and eventually the top of your window with its controls will come into view. Now you can slide the window back to where it belongs or close it.

When you’re done just click (ctrl +) to bring the contents of your screen back to normal size.

These shortcuts also work in pohotoshop to adjust the viewing size of photos. 

I try not to make life more complicated than it needs to be. For this reason I used Internet Explorer for a long time without trying any other browser. At some point I downloaded The Firefox browser and found that I like the way it works a lot better than Internet Explorer.

For a while I’ve had both browsers installed on a couple of my computers. I’ve been sticking with Explorer for one reason. Text just did not look as good in Firefox. There are lots of “less than perfect” things in my life that I get along with, but font rendering, the visual quality of the text you see in the browser, was terrible in FireFox. If you read the news or blogs this is a fatal flaw.

I discovered something today. You can improve the quality of the text in Firefox so it looks as good as Explorer. Funny thing is that it is a Windows setting, not a Firefox setting. I wonder how Microsoft could make such a mistake, causing a competing browser to look crummy with default settings in Windows?

The windows option to turn on is called “ClearType” and here is how you do it(in Windows XP at least). Go to control Panel and choose “Apearance and Themes” then click “Display”. In Display Properties choose the “appearance” tab, then click the button in the lower right called “effects”.

Check the box in front of “use the following method to smooth edges of screen fonts” and then in the selector choose “ClearType”. Here’s a screen shot. Click on it to make it bigger.

You might ask what I like about Firefox.  I just discovered  a good thing just now.  For the last few weeks I’ve been dealing with an annoyance with Wordpress 2.33.  When you insert a photo you can supposedly set padding  and other attributes by clicking the  little tree icon  in the top of the editing window.

Only problem is  that if you do that  with internet explorer the image disappears replaced by two dots.  If you dig around in the code you find out Word Press has made two copies of your photo and reduced them to a size of  1 pixel by 1 pixel.

I had wondered how Wordpress could release something that was so buggy.  It turns out if you use firefox the photo formatting options work just fine.  I suppose the people who design Wordpress use Firefox.

I think its best to have a couple of browsers loaded on your computer. If something doesn’t work in one, try the the other. That way you’re covered

This message is for myself and the support people at visnetic. If you are anyone else you most likely won’t find much interesting in this particular post.

Something to remember, support is pretty good, but make sure you listen to the whole menu or you might wait for 45 minutes only to get someone who can’t help you. It works like this, someone listens to your general problem, makes a ticket and an incident number. Then they give you a phone number to call. When the tech answers you have to give them an incident number in order to get help…

In the middle of last week I upgraded to the most recent version of Visnetic Mail Server. It totally broke our email for a day. The support folks were very helpful, though and helped me migrate data bases and make setting changes to get things up and running. The person who sold me the upgrade said the upgrade would not change would be “transparent” to my users. The change has not been transparent and has caused a huge hassel.

It appears that the way spam is handled has completely changed. Each user used to be able to go into a spam folder to check for mistakenly filtered out messages. Spam folders are gone and there is no method I can find for a user to see what has been blocked.

We used to be able to click a button in web mail to toggle full email headers on and off. No such option now.

There does not appear to be a way to see the version number when you click help in web mail. So I have to go to the server to find out what version I have.

Maybe some of this would be solved by selections in the “options” menu, but the options menu is completely blank.

When I log on to web mail from my home, which is broadband, but satalite, webmail pops up so slowly that I can go get something to eat and return without missing anything. When I try to send a new message, multiple error windows pop up, but if I am willing to wait, I can get a message to go out. Here are links to screen shots of the errors which pop up several times:

The folks at support have been really nice so far. These are probably unique problems I am having. At the moment I’m finding I can’t submit screen shots with my trouble ticket so I’ll post them here and give support a link.

So here are my questions in order of impoortance to me:

1. Where did my spam folders go & can I get them back?
2. How can I make the options menu display so I know what I might be missing?
3. How do I stop the annoying messages when I try to send an email with webmail?

Here’s the answer to question one. Each account has to create a new spam folder*. As administrtor I created a spam folder and the spam for all of my user is going into it. Thats not right and I still have to fix that somehow. In order for the spam folder to work you have to change the message format from POP3 to imap or imap/pop3. When you do this and click save on the changes visnetic mail server does something to all of your existing messages. I’m pretty sure it changes the directory. Only problem is that it doesn’t tell you that its doing anything. It appears that the program has gotten hung up. Eventually I stopped it with the unsettling result of losing all of the messages currently in my in box.

I ended up having to change the mail settings again and reconverting to pop3 and then back again to imap. This time I waited very patiently and eventually the program came back to life.

The last two problems were related. I had already done the database migration thing but for some reason it “unmigrated”. I’m thinking it was because I applied the patch after the migration, but the tech seemed to think it was because I had some “non-standard settings that broke the migration.

At this point the options menu works and I don’t get error messages when I start an new message. I’ve discovered however that my entire address and the address books of all my users are gone. Hopefully they’re hidden in a directory somewhere.

The questions that remain are:

1. Can I adjust the server so everyone gets their own spam messages instead of me getting all of them in my box.
2. Is there a way to restore address books?

Support sent me a handy little(29 pages) document about working with spam filtering. After setting everything to their suggested settings “Spam” folders appeared in everyones accounts and I stopped getting spam that belonged to everyone else.

It takes about fifteen seconds to enter a showing into My Showing Log. When you are done, depending on your choices, you may have sent a showing confirmation via email to the showing agent and copied it to the seller and the listing agent via email. You have scheduled an email feedback request to the showing agent the results of which will automatically be filed in My Showing Log and emailed to the listing agent.

My Showing Log has recorded who is showing the property, who set up and confirmed the showing and when it was done. This is information you can access from any internet connection.

When you first open My Showing Log it may not look like much. Even after you have entered or imported your listings the home page is pretty simple looking. To set up a showing, locate the property to be shown on the list and click the “set up a showing” link. The quickest method of selecting the showing agent is to enter their MLS code. There are other shortcuts for selecting the showing agent as well.

Click the screen shots below to enlarge them, then use the “back” button on your browser to continue.

Once you select the showing agent, select the date and the time of the showing and and click “submit”.

Make sure you complete the status column and submit. If you don’t check everything in the status column the showing remains “pending” and no confirmation or feedback request will be sent out. If you have been unable to reach the seller to confirm a showing, you can leave it pending to be confirmed later by you or someone else in your group.

Clicking submit brings you back to the home page which displays your upcoming showings. You can click the “details” link at any time to review or edit the details of the showing.

I remember a book from a long time ago.  It was called “Future Shock”. The story was about the response of people to the ever increasing amount of change in the technology world. There was so much new stuff being thrown at people that they went into shock and shut down. Now I’ve already said more than I really remember. I suppose, I might be wrong, there’s so much to remember.

As a kid I remember watching Lassie on our black and white TV on Sunday night. I seem to remember they played Greensleeves at the end with credits rolling by. In the background there was a kid running around in the outdoors with his collie Dog doing the kind of things kids did before video games. At one point you can hear the kid calling “Lassie—Lassie” and you see the dog far off responding by coming on the run. Along with the kid’s happy outdoor voice you hear the dog barking.

After Lassie, the wonderfull world of Disney would come on. There would be a flourish of music and the announcer would say something about Disney being in “Living Color” and a peacock would fill the screen with its tail feathers spreading. My mother would say “I bet that would be beautiful in color.

There was no such thing as a remote, you had to stand up and walk over to the tv and turn one of the channel dials. There were two, “UHF” and “VHF”. One of them didn’t seem to do anything, the other made a satisfying chunk, chunk sound as you turned channels. You could fine tune the sharpness of the channel with a ring behind the dial that was like a radio tuner.

I used to like the ciggaret ads. A cowboy riding through the fields with “Virginian” type music playing in the background. The cowboy wheels around on his horse and pulls up in front of the screen. Zoom in, He cups his hands in front of his face and lights a Marobarro and takes a long satisfying drag. Pan back again, nothing but sky and beautiful scenery with the cowboy, his horse and his pack of smokes in the middle of it.

The announcer says “Come to where the Flavor is, come to Marobarro Country”.

There were cigarets for women as well. The Jingle: “You’ve come along way baby to get were you’ve got to today, you’ve got your own cigarette now baby, you’ve come a long long way.”

There was Clancy the cop and Carmen the nurse and there was Casey Jones. Casey Jones started with a shot of a window with a shade and a finger pull ring hanging from the shade. The slow beginning to the William Tell Overture would play and a little worm looking thing would appear over the edge of the window sill, It was obviously someone’s finger with makeup on. The little worm thing would weave around with the calming music working its way to the pull ring on the shade. At the end of the calm part of the William tell overture the worm thing would yank the shade and it would go flinging up as the Lone Ranger part of the William tell overture kicked in and the show would start. That’s what the first generation of blue screen was like.

Today kids sit on the couch and play video games instead of running through the woods and the dogs get fat as their only chance to go out is to poop and pee in the morning and at night. We talk about Nature Deficit Disorder and anyone over thirty has a vague feeling of being left behind. If they don’t, they probably have been left behind.

I’ve kept up pretty well myself, well kind of. We have color tv now. Fact is I’m a bit afraid of it. I’ve made a point of not watching it much. There’s always one of my kids or my wife around who will run the thing. My dogs probably know more about it than I do. Our TV, yes we just have one, is probably 17 years old. We’ve plugged all kinds of things into it. We still have a vcr, we have playstation(my kid won it in an easter egg hunt) and we have a dvd player . We are also plugged into statalite service. Since the tv has only one, maybe two plugs in the back of it, I ran down to radio shack and bought a switch.

I recently discovered I am unable to watch tv without help. I turned it on the other night and there was only fuzz. I went through three different modes on the remote. Still just fuzz. I clicked all of the switches on the radio schack thing and gave up. I went to my computer, which has a bigger screen than our tv, and watched an old science fiction movie on Netflix. Not a single advertisement.

Nobody knows everything about technology. You have to just keep moving and take what you find useful and use it.

A while back our local MLS decreed that we would start using electronic lockboxes. It seemed like a really dumb idea to me. Don’t get me wrong, the Supra lockbox we use is pretty cool. I will even admit I kind of like using the system when its cold.

Here’s what’s weird. No one seems to complain. This is a system that requires every Realtor rent an electronic key that has to be updated every day by communicating with a server. The agent has to pay to use the key and must purchase an expensive lockbox that will die in a few years when the battery in it goes dead and/or the MLS replaces it with the next innovation. The Realtor has to update the key each day and remember a pin code for the key and a shackle code for the box. Just what I need two more passwords and another quarterly bill.

For me it is my income trickling out, for someone else(General Electric?) it is money streaming in. Its also exclusionary. If you don’t belong you don’t have a key.

Seems over-hyped, over priced and way over engineered for what is basically a high tech hide-a-key. The weird part is that Realtors don’t complain about it and they actually kind of like them. I like mine, but I would get rid of it if I didn’t need it to show homes. It’s just added complication and expense.

My Showing Log is web based, there is no computer setup. Everything just works,  as long as you have internet access. All you need to do is go to myshowingLog.com and click “get an account”. This article is focusing on members of  North Star MLS, but anyone can get an account. Members of the North Star MLS will click on the first choice. In order to get your account you will need to know the email address you have registered with the MLS and you will have to be able to open an email sent to that location.

After providing your name , office etc. you will be sent an email with a link to your new account and instructions on how to get started.

Getting your listing information into my showing Log.

The information required by my showing Log is minimal.  You need to enter an address and you should enter a price. Uploading a property photo increases your feedback responses. If you enter an expiration date my showing log will warn you when the property expiration is approaching.

Why is My showing log Free?

There might not be a completely reasonable answer to that. I know that Google started by offering its services for free and still offers many things for free. The approach seems to have worked pretty well for them. Eventually we will charge $10 per month. We have to do this because MLS charges us for the agent Roster, there are development costs, hosting costs and simple maintenance. The advantage to you is that signing up is simple. Try it, see what you think, give us suggestions. We will try to make “free” last as long as possible.

No.

I wrote before about the Multiple Listing Service and how protective they are about listing data. I alluded to the fact they won’t let one byte out into the public until someone else starts to do it. I often find myself thinking of the MLS as the property of Realtors. I think of the data as belonging to me. I am a Realtor, I list houses and I enter the data into MLS. I share My data, I get everyone Else’s data in exchange.

I am not an owner of MLS. The fact is that the MLS owns all of the listing data and you can’t do a thing without paying money and getting approval. If you don’t follow the rules they’ll fine you or shut you off. The MLS is a company that makes money off of Realtors. Each Real Estate office is a profit center for local boards of Realtors and the MLS.

This is not necessarily a bad thing.  It’s an exclusive club which you have to pay for to belong. Having strict rules mean we have good data. It means as long as we pay a middle man, we have access to something others want.

The MLS discussion is not about good or bad, its more of an observation. There is a huge shift going on and its changing the way we Realtors do business. The shift, of course, is the internet. MLS came before the internet and it’s business model with Realtors as a captive audience was as solid as a rock.

The internet allows the free trade of information. Technically speaking, I don’t need the MLS any more to share my listings with other Realtors or the whole world. Now its become almost like the MLS is a system of not sharing information. I’m still a little bit afraid that my value may be diminished if everyone has the same information I have. 

There is an order in the MLS system which still has value to Realtors, but does it match the cost? The one piece of the puzzle MLS still holds is the sharing of commission information and agreements between each other. When I think about it my value isn’t in the information that MLS holds. Its more in my knowledge of an area, my familiarity with the process, my knowledge about homes and negotiating skills. My availability. It is very interesting to watch this unfold.

The folks who run the MLS have a blog and they talk about this all of the time. Here is a related post on their blog.