Tech & Web

Chrysler Group LLC — REALTOR Benefits® Program partner offers REALTORS® exclusive discounts on select Chrysler Group vehicles.

Lowe’s Program for REALTORS® — Available exclusively to NAR members through the REALTOR Benefits® Program — provides free customizable marketing tools and coupons, plus discounts on gift cards.

REALTOR® University — Take your professional career to a new level with NAR’s new Master of Real Estate degree program.

A quick visit to a government Web site could make sure you don’t lose your Internet connection in July.

The FBI says that hundreds of thousands of computers are infected with a virus, and those machines will lose Internet access on July 9.

Remember the hubbub a few weeks ago when NAR revised some of its home-sales data? It’s happening again — but this time it’s Zillow on the receiving end.

And people are not happy about the changes.

Quoth the Wall Street Journal story:

On June 14th, Bill Trumbo, a 68-year-old retired financial analyst in Phoenix, Ariz., logged onto his bank’s online personal financial management account and found that his house in Phoenix had lost nearly $100,000 in value overnight.

Oh noes!

Interesting post by Jeff Brown over at Bloodhound Blog on social media and the real estate business. His point: All talk, not a lot of action.

“My years online have shown me widgets and SM [social media] pretty much add sales every now and again,” he says. “Agents don’t need shiny toys and Facebook to do that.”

And: “For years now, agents from coast to coast have paid good money to hear about widgets and SM ‘how to’, only to learn they can’t find one example of anyone who’s added 25 sales a year to their production.

Finally, he offers a challenge to the social media cheerleaders:

I’m not sure what to make of these two stories.

Business Insider: “Zillow And Trulia Face Backlash From Real Estate Agents“

Among their complaints are that the sites allow any agent, for a fee, to have their name and photo appear prominently beside homes listed for sale in a given region, even if they aren’t the agent who represents the seller.

[snip]

Some realtors also claim that many listings on the largest sites are inaccurate. “The wrong photos often appeared with our listings,” says San Diego realtor Jim Abbott, whose firm no longer shares data with the national sites.