In 2005, at Google, we acquired an analytics company called Urchin. Urchin, now Google Analytics, was integrated into Google Adwords and was meant to allow advertisers to track conversions across all online sources. There were and are some challenges however with the accuracy of some of the reports. Here are a few examples: 

 

• Javascript Code was added incorrectly on advertiser’s site
• Users clear their cookies and can’t be tracked
• Ad filtering programs can block the script
• Script could slow down site causing a higher user abandonment rate

All of these issues could lead to inaccurate reports where the marketer thinks one source or various keywords are performing poorly. Tracking conversion is an essential part of any marketing program within any industry. However, making marketing decisions based on bad data could hurt marketing performance.

 Specifically in the apartment industry, leases, many times are attributed to the wrong source. At a recent NMHC event, the panel warned: 

that properly sourcing leads is a big problem in the industry. One analysis showed that 70% of leases were attributed to the wrong source.

As the apartment industry becomes more sophisticated on what leads are converting into leases by using third party lead-to-lease services, I am seeing many of the same data tracking errors that I saw at Google. Recently, we compared internal lead data to multiple client lease data and found a 10-12X discrepancy in what leads actually turned into leases and what their third-party data was telling them.

Here are a few apartment marketing tracking challenges I see:

• Dead tracking numbers
  • Surprisingly, sometimes marketers forget to change out tracking numbers and potential residents go to a dead number
• Improper parsing of email data
  • In some cases, parsing of name, email, phone-number may not be parsed accurately from the third-party
• Manual over-ride of source data
  • Psychologically, we tend to favor sources that make us look better. One REIT shared with us that walk-ins and “Internet Other” dropped 50% when they started to track via a call center.
• Revenue Attribution
  • Who should receive the lease attribution? The first source, middle source, last source, or all sources?
• The Network Effect
  • More and more leads are coming from the long-tail of sites. “Internet Other” option is becoming a larger portion of lease sources.
• The Human Element
  • Lack of accurate lead collection data at the community level may lead to larger discrepancies.
• Different phone and or email addresses presented when signing the lease
  • Many potential residents search while at work. Did their work email and phone show in the lead reports but their home information show in the guest card / lease software?

As an industry, we are getting closer to accurately quantifying apartment advertising spend but we are a long way to perfection. Would love feedback, thoughts, suggestions on how we as an industry could improve the accuracy of this data.

Have New Yorkers outgrown CraigsList?

by Honeycrisp on April 20, 2010

The 101 on avoiding the traps of using CraigsList in your apartment search

CraigsList used to be the #1 destination for New Yorkers looking for apartment rental deals.  Nowadays, the venue has become a minefield of pitfalls to avoid, sending wannabe tenants to StreetEasy.  Here’s a bit of a breakdown of how this wondrous list of lists works in the world of NYC real estate.

• Traffic galore: So many eyeballs land on CL, that it’s almost impossible to avoid the site from a broker’s standpoint.  The sheer amount of traffic that this community gets from apartment hunters is astonishing, with everyone looking to get a deal and find that hidden gem or diamond in the rough.  It’s no wonder that hundreds of ads are posted on the site daily, with frequent double and triple posts of the very same apartment.
• Ring ring: Brokers clearly try to capitalize on this volume, with their primary goal of making the phone ring. (Note: apartment ads on CL costs the broker $5 – $10, so these are dollars clearly going towards getting business.) Unfortunately, many are trained to do only that: get the phone to ring no matter what.  This means often creating “Frankenstein apartments” for the desperate tenant to drool over: a picture of a bathroom from an UWS 2-bed, the kitchen of a Financial District studio and the roof-deck of a Gramercy condo, slap an attractive price on it and … voila!  The perfect apartment now exists.
• Inflated Expectations: Clearly, brokers know that no one will call on a $5k 1-bed … the lower the price, the more calls they get.  Everyone is incentivized to advertise only their cheapest deals or else make them up. The result is an inflated sense of the number of “bargains” out there, and therefore a very skewed sense of what is realistic to expect.  So what happens when you call? “I’m sorry, this apartment is rented but I have another 1-bed you will just love.”
• For rent by whom?: For those of you looking to go the “for rent by owner” route thinking you can avoid all shadiness, ask the voice on the other end if s/he is a broker.  If the answer is anything but “No”, there’s a significant likelihood that the answer is yes, as 50%+ of owner listings have an agent behind them.

So how do you determine whether an ad is real and an agent worthy?  Here is a question-driven litmus test to guide your way:

Question:  Where is the apartment located?

• Bad Answer: It’s in West Chelsea
• Worse answer: The landlord prohibits me from giving the exact address.
• OK Answer: It’s located at on 5th Avenue, between Y and X.
• Ideal Answer:  It’s at 625 Fifth Ave, Apt. 2C (agents often find it hard to share if it’s not their exclusive listing, though)

Question: Tell me more about the apartment: where is it facing? what is the bathroom like?

• Bad Answer: What are you looking for?
• Good Answer:  It’s facing north; the bathroom was renovated 3 years ago and has a stand-up shower (not tub), etc.

Question: What size bed can I fit in the bedroom?

• Bad Answer: You have to just see the apartment; come to my office to register.
• Good Answer: If you have a queen, that would work well. Frankly, a king just wouldn’t fit unless you eliminated all walking space.

Question: When is it available?

• Bad Answer:  I’m not sure, let me check with the landlord and I’ll get back to you.
• Worse Answer: When are you looking to move?
• Good Answer:  The tenant’s lease expires in the middle of June and the apartment is available for occupancy on July 1.

If you do choose to conduct your own apartment search, do so with your eyes open and your expectations adjusted.  If it sounds too good to be true, chances are that it is.  Otherwise, go the broker route if you want to avoid these hassles altogether.

Have New Yorkers outgrown CraigsList?

Move, Inc. MSN Network is the largest real estate network according to everyone but Zillow

By Benn Rosales on November 8, 2010 | 11 Responses

This Sunday from New Orleans, we broke the story regarding questionable Zillow claims (via collateral produced by Zillow as ComScore data) being passed around the halls of the 2010 National Association of Realtors trade show floor. The claim in question was Zillow and Yahoo! real estate network being the “Largest Real Estate Network in the World” above and beyond Move Inc./MSN real estate network by nearly 6.4 million unique visitors. We’ve never disputed Zillow/Yahoo! traffic claims, only their representation of competitor traffic, and that of being the largest real estate network.

(This is a followup story to “Zillow dupes Realtors, investors and consumers with flawed claims.”)

Immediately, we noted the Zillow claim that the Move Inc. traffic stats included the 6.4 million uniques when according to other sources, it had not. Zillow’s CRO, Greg Schwartz responded that his contact at ComScore had verified the Zillow numbers to be accurate and requested a retraction- we decided to take it a step further and actually just settle the matter once and for all… who is the largest real estate network?

We went directly to ComScore (the source of both networks’ claims), and simply asked for an independent analysis (specifically avoiding any possibility of tricky math) of what is called deduplicated or “unduplicated” traffic (a fancy word for unique visitors) and the following graph is fact, according to Sr. Director, Industry Analysis Andrew Lipsman (well, we made the graph, he gave us the numbers). We also took it beyond that to show not only July, but also September numbers to settle the old versus new data controversy as well, and here is what we found…

What’s most interesting is that Move Inc. is not only larger, but from July to September (60 days) Move Inc. with MSN Real Estate actually grew 1.8 million uniques or 10.7% while Zillow and Yahoo! only inched up around 200k, or 1.3%.

The bottom line is that we want an apples to apples comparison and we’ve delivered one, however, Zillow’s Schwartz is still “reluctant to concede” any problems with their numbers. When we spoke to Schwartz by phone, he insisted that he had verified with ComScore Sr. Sales Manager, Jill Leedom that their numbers were on par and their flyer compared apples to apples, and went as far as emailing AgentGenius the very carefully worded statement from Leedom as follows…

Attached are two reports for September 2010:
1. Audience Duplication Report for Yahoo! Real Estate + Zillow: 14.458 Million UVs
2. Key Measures report for [P] Move Network: 13.398 Million UVs
Per these Media Metrix Reports, the data for Zillow is rock solid and correct. Zillow’s intent was to point out the one included URL”realestate.msn.realtor.com” and not the entire MSN Real Estate Category.
ComScore Sr. Sales Manager, Jill Leedom

You’ll note this email does not address the July numbers that are in dispute, and you will also notice the difference in reports filed. One report is a Duplication report, and the other is a Key measures report where Ledomm clearly states, “Zillow’s intent was to point out the one included URL”realestate.msn.realtor.com” and not the entire MSN Real Estate Category.” (emphasis ours)

Clearly, Zillow is selling its partnership with Yahoo! real estate, and enthusiastically created collateral to sell their new value proposition, but failed to compare apples to apples. We personally don’t believe they had malicious intent, it is our suspicion that apples (Audience Duplication Report showing Zillow/Yahoo! in a flattering light) were compared to oranges (Key Measures reports showing everyone but Zillow/Yahoo! in a less flattering light) which Schwartz will not confirm as a possibility. However, Move, Inc. and it’s MSN partners did compare apples to apples and they can, because they simply are the largest real estate network.

Does this mean it will last forever? This remains to be seen. The fact is that Move, Inc. and its competitors need one another to continue to push the envelope forward in technology. Zillow combined with Trulia and other players in the space have pushed traditional to become untraditional, rethink longterm strategies, build new alliances, and look beyond today in service offerings to Realtors and consumers. After all, 14.3 million uniques is not a number easily dismissed.

By ANTHONY KLAN

With Manhattan's rental-housing market tightening, the danger is growing of apartment hunters falling victim to scams, real-estate agents and white-collar crime experts warn.

The most common scam involves legitimate rental offers, which scam artists are doctoring and posting on listing services such as Craigslist for lower rents, agents say. Eager victims send deposits only to learn that the apartment's actual owner knew nothing of the deal. The deposit, of course, is never seen again.

"We are seeing more and more people looking for rentals," says Jason Boone, a research associate at the National White Collar Crime Center, which fields and collates online-fraud complaints for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. "This gives scammers a lot of incentives to be creative and we're seeing an overall increase in the number of rental scams."

Close to 5,500 rental-scam complaints were received nationwide by the start of October, Mr. Boone says. That puts 2010 on track to possibly eclipse last year's record 7,225 complaints.

Statistics for New York alone aren't available. But Stephen Kotler, executive vice president and director of rentals at Manhattan real-estate agency Prudential Douglas Elliman, says the firm was aware of three cases in the past two months alone where suspicious would-be renters contacted the firm and established that listings had been copied by bogus operators.

"We have definitely seen an increase in this type of fraud recently," he says. "With the Internet it is very easy for people to scrape information from any website and present it as their own."

Gary Malin, president of Manhattan real-estate agency CitiHabitats, says renters needed to be particularly vigilant in the current market. "You should never be in a circumstance where you end up reading something that sounds great and people you have never met are asking you to wire money for a place you haven't even seen," Mr Malin says.

His advice: "The smartest thing for anyone to do is to say 'let's get in touch tomorrow' to give you time to examine the situation."

Craigslist spokeswoman Susan MacTavish Best says the site goes to "great lengths" to prevent scams, employing a wide array of measures such as warning users "at every turn and on every page" how to avoid being taken in by scams and providing detailed information on how to report scams to the authorities.

She says the two key rules for avoiding online scams were to deal locally with people the renter could meet face-to-face and to never wire funds.

It's not just renters being fleeced in the current market, the FBI warns. In a twist to the scamming, landlords occasionally are contacted by potential "renters" who agree on a rental price. The scam renter then sends a check for the deposit on the rental property but shortly afterwards backs out of the rental agreement and asks for a refund.

Sometimes the landlord sends back a refund before realizing that the deposit check is counterfeit and hasn't been cleared by the bank.

Mr. Boone says that while some rogue operators have become increasingly creative in developing new methods of fleecing the public, many of the scams remained very simple. "But at the same time it's often that simplicity that catches people out," he says.

Write to Anthony Klan at anthony.klan@wsj.com

August 15, 2010

The Likelihood That an Agent Will Sell a Listing? Less Than 50%

A couple of weeks ago, Redfin engineers got together for a hackathon to prototype features we’d like to see on the site. One team, featuring Jane Nemenman, Jamie DeMichele, Dane Brandon and Llewellyn Botelho, built a Redfin.com widget for each listing that showed the listing agent’s track record: how many listings he had on the market, what his average discount to list price was, how long it had been since he closed a deal.

It was a great idea. But it didn’t all come from the engineers. The original insight started with our San Francisco agents, who like to size up a seller’s agent before deciding how to represent a buyer in a negotiation, on the theory that negotiating strategy is often influenced as much by the listing agent’s state of mind as by her client’s. Some agents are chronic over-pricers, expecting to give part of that away at the negotiation table. Others stand firm. And still others just need to get a deal done.

Jane, Jamie, Dane and Llewellyn wanted to give everyone this information, so that anyone using Redfin’s site could know what she was up against going into a negotiation. Then we dug into the rules that govern how we use listing data, and decided that using the broker’s database of listings to embarrass brokers publicly wasn’t a fair use of the data.

We’ll still build this into the tools our agents use, so we can help all of our customers know when to hold ‘em and know when to fold ‘em. We’ll also share with everyone the listing stats for our own agents. In the meantime, what I haven’t been able to stop thinking about was how the engineering team reacted as Jane demonstrated the widget, showing the dismal stats for one seller’s agent after another.

Folks were flabbergasted. At first, people thought it was just one agent having a tough year. But after a few minutes of  clicking from one listing agent to the next, everyone began to recognize the truth: that in 2009 it was very hard for any agent to sell a home.

So when we got back to our day jobs, Jamie DeMichele — the man who also created bracket-tracking software for March Madness — looked up the numbers for all the listings put on the market in 2009, to see how many had sold by August 11, 2010. The answer? About half. He emailed me the table below, which summarizes the success rate for broker-listed properties for sale in seven major markets:

County Name	Listings Activated in 2009	# 2009 Listings Sold	% 2009 Listings Sold	# Still Active	% Still Active
Cook County, IL	134,710	44,789	33.3%	7,893	5.9%
Fulton County, GA	27,089	9,941	35.8%	1,329	4.8%
King County, WA	51,252	21,500	42.0%	1,729	3.4%
Los Angeles County, CA	130,326	68,564	52.6%	3,079	2.4%
San Francisco County, CA	9,289	5,259	56.6%	112	1.2%
Maricopa County, AZ	137,647	81,204	59.0%	5,008	3.6%
Suffolk County, MA	15,763	5,682	36.1%	393	2.5%
7-County Average	506,796	236,939	46.8%	19,545	3.9%

We shared the data over the weekend with the Wall Street Journal, which just published its own analysis. As we’ve argued in the past, the basic problem is a stand-off between buyers who expect the world, and sellers who have already taken more losses than they can bear. When no one will compromise, and the banks have been slow to foreclose on overdue mortgages, listings don’t sell.

What does this mean for you if you’re trying to sell a house? Primarily: don’t hire the agent promising the highest price, no matter how flattering that may sound. Hire the agent with the best track record. If 2010 is anything like 2009, odds are that the property won’t sell at all, or at least  not  at the originally promised price.

(Picture of Jamie used with his permission, at his insistence that I use one where he’s wearing cowboy boots)

Posted by Glenn Kelman on August 15, 2010 10:20 PM | del.icio.us | Digg

Posted on Sunday, August 15th, 2010 at 10:20 pm by Glenn Kelman under Redfin in the News, The Science of Real Estate, Uncategorized.

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Social cues, social responses, humans know when a computer is engaging them

Posted on Wednesday, 2010, July 28, 17:18, by Eric Bryn, under social media, social media and direct marketing research.

This research paper from Nokia Research Center, Stanford, and Queens University implies that humans can ascertain with an uncanny degree of certainty when a social message is sent from a computer versus a human. Social responses to communication technologies theory (SRCT)  predicts that humans cannot reliably ascertain such nuances. This research contradicts this premise.

The research team, using prior research in SRCT theories, tested whether humans could discern whether a text message was sent via a human or computer when flattery was an element of the message. They found that humans reliably discern the originator of the message apparently because certain social cues were missing in the computer-generated messages.

Why this is relevant research: SRCT theories could be used by software designers to create computer programs to engage social network users with the goal of getting them to increase self-disclosure under the guise of an interaction seemingly being conducted with a human. With the FTC recently considering allowing people to opt-out of behavioral targeting on the Web, the issue of nudging people towards more self-disclosure is timely given all the issues surrounding privacy and use of PII in social networks, especially if a user discloses such PII under the assumption they’re interacting with a human. This is a very interesting article and quick read (four pages).

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