Matt Carter writes on Inman about where you can find a good deal on a home as well as what websites you are likely to find misinformation like Trulia and Yahoo! Especially of interest, he points out how in Detroit, the commissions might actually be more than the house for sale. Check out Matt’s story here.

Another great one for us to follow this week is a “Housing Rumble” as Jay Thompson is calling it. Jay has been invited to battle it out at U.S. News and World Reports with Greg Healy, Vice President of www.forsalebyowner.com. This should be something great to watch and Jay, if we see him getting the upper hand - check your email inbox for some unsolicited tips. I’ll definitely be keeping my eye on this one. You can follow the story on Jay’s blog here and here is the U.S. News Post.

Over at the Zillow Blog, the Drew talks about the Carnival of Real Estate(CoRE) getting ready for its 100th event. Good going guys. Consistency and perserverance means alot. Check it out.

Finally, it seems Mary Mcknight has changed positions or is gone over at RSS Pieces. The comments on this post are a bit unflattering. Worth a quick read though if you are interested in their products.

Marnie Blanco

Marnie Blanco joined RE/MAX in July 2003 as Manager of Information Technology Marketing. She was promoted to Senior Manager of eBusiness and IT Marketing in December 2005 and was named Vice President of eBusiness in June 2006.

Eric Blackwell, from Real Estate Industry Watch, interviewed Marnie about how REMAX.com’s network of broker sites and listing aggregation initiative is doing now that it is over two years old.

REIW: Welcome Marnie! We have actually known each other for a few years,
but for those who don’t can you tell us a little about yourself and the
role you play as VP E-commerce at RE/MAX International?

MB:[>>MB] I have been with RE/MAX for 5 years. My background is in IT and Marketing. I actually started out as a developer and realized 2 things. 1) I wasn’t very good at it and 2) I like to talk too much to sit in a cube and program. So, I moved into consulting, training, marketing and sales. My position I have now combines all these worlds into one, so that is great. The eBusiness department at RE/MAX is responsible for all technology that is outward facing to our membership. That includes development, vendor management, product management and strategy, data and content, training, support, communication and marketing. We work with a lot of good people to get this all done.

REIW: When we first met, it was back before REMAX.com included a network
of brokerage sites and included so many listings. How has the rollout gone?

MB:[>>MB] It has been a roller coaster! Very challenging, scary and fun all at the same time. A product that should have taken several years to create was basically done in 9 months. This has it’s advantages and disadvantages. It was great to get to market so quickly, but the product has a lot of growth to be done. We have created a wonderful baby and now it is time for it to grow up!

REIW: How are the statistics now? If you don’t mind sharing, how many
leads are being generated for REMAX associates?

MB:[>>MB] We have brought in over 4.9 million unique leads since its launch in March 2006. That equates to about 175k a month and 5700 a day.

REIW: What do you think are the next steps to improve the process so
that buyers are better served and agents cash more commission checks?

MB:[>>MB] We are in the process of redesigning the remax.com. We took an existing infrastructure and pushed a tremendous amount of functionality and data into it and it has served us very well. However, remax.com has outgrown its skin and needs a better look and feel, easier navigation and even more bells and whistles. This will keep the leads coming and create a trusted and needed relationship with remax.com and the brand of RE/MAX overall.

REIW: What are the coming trends that you see in the internet
marketplace for real estate?

MB:[>>MB] Capitalizing on the market is always important, so being able to offer data and education on Foreclosures at this time is good. Delivering data in a new and fresh format is what is important. To date we are still the only national real estate franchise that has all the listings, but that won’t last forever, so we need to be creative with delivery of data and user experience to keep them coming to remax.com. Things such as open house and driving tours, simplified search, more photos, virtual tours, etc.

REIW: I have always assumed that most of the traffic to REMAX.com comes
from the huge spends that you guys do on national TV and Radio. Is that
the case from your point of view? Are there other sources of traffic to
REMAX.com?

MB:[>>MB] Advertising plays a big role, because it creates the brand awareness. We see that about 60% of traffic comes direct, meaning they type in remax.com or they have it bookmarked or they link to it from another site - and that is driven through brand awareness. 30% comes from natural search engine results on Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL, etc. and 10% comes from paid search results from the big search engines.

REIW: Ok, Marnie. Thanks for the interview…Final shot is yours! What
else haven’t we asked you that we SHOULD have?

MB:[>>MB] We recently were able to capture the #2 spot for 3 months running in terms of most visited real estate websites (realtor.com being #1). This current month we dropped to #4 and it may fluctuate from month to month. It is always our goal to be #1 and we will continue to make tweaks to understand consumer activity, stickiness to the site, and value to our RE/MAX membership and their clients, until we reach that #1 spot. We will get there and that will be a thin slice of heaven!