"The largest custom real estate platform build in modern history." When you read the statement that kicks off the latest cover story of Real Estate Magazine by RISMedia, it's easy to understand why we are so excited about the upcoming launch of CENTURY 21 Canada's new national technology platform. To say it's highly anticipated would be a massive understatement. An incredible 30,000 development hours at Real Estate Webmasters went into building the platform over the past two years. The result is a sleek platform design with intuitive features, both on the customer-facing frontend and the agent-facing backend. The frontend features an incredible property search experience and beautiful agent subdomains for each of CENTURY 21 Canada's thousands of…

Christmas has come early! We're extremely excited about the upcoming Real Estate Webmasters product release, set to roll out just in time for the holidays. In addition to new lead export functionality in REW CRM, this update comes with several big upgrades to Discover that we know you're going to love. Let's dive right in. What's New with Discover? IDX Snippet Improvements Discover IDX snippets have been updated to provide the capability to build new snippet panels and create more sorting options.  Additional IDX Snippet Panels You can now make IDX snippets on Discover using additional IDX panels. This allows you to make community or property type pages that are as specific as your IDX will let you. For long-time REW customers, this is a known and…

If there is one thing that I have learned in providing professional services these last 20 years, it's that setting expectations is everything.  If you do it right, your customers will hopefully appreciate and respect you. Even if they don’t like what they hear, they tend to appreciate the transparency and honesty.   If you don’t do it, or you get it wrong, your customers will be frustrated and upset.  Today, I’d like to talk about the future of Real Estate Webmasters' Professional Services agency, and make an attempt to set expectations for the coming 2019 calendar year.  My goal is to provide insight into changes and goals for our business, and assist customers in making choices with respect to how they engage with our Professional Services…

It's our favourite time of year here at Real Estate Webmasters. Not only is it the holiday season, it's also a time to reflect on successes of the past year and a time to look forward to the year ahead. At REW, we've successfully grown our business by every conceivable metric every single year since our inception in 2004. But that doesn't mean it's time to take the foot off the gas. Looking ahead to 2019, REW is investing in our technology, people, and marketing more than ever before. Because that's what it takes to be an industry leader. And the same applies to you. Whether you're an agent, team, or broker—it's a great time to ask: "What am I doing to make 2019 that. much. better. than 2018? What am I doing to get ahead or to stay ahead in my…

Real Estate Webmasters is happy to announce our first new platform release of Fall 2018! This update includes several features requested by our incredible clients related to Discover, REW CRM, and the REW IDX mobile app experience. And if you read all the way to the end, you'll see a revolutionary new home search feature that we've added to the REW IDX app. Discover Updates Here's what's new and exciting with Discover: Map Pins Highlight on Hover This suggestion originated from the Discover Facebook group, so keep those suggestions coming! As requested, when site visitors hover their mouse over a property listing card along the side of the Discover's map search, that property's location pin will become highlighted. This will greatly assist in…

The 2018 REAL Trends Real Estate Website Rankings are here. And once again, Real Estate Webmasters clients dominate the list. REW is proud to have more clients featured on the REAL Trends list than any other real estate technology provider. The annual REAL Trends rankings serve as a wonderful showcase of some of the most beautifully designed websites in the industry. Websites are judged in a number of categories including: Best Overall Website Best Community Best Design Best Mobile Best Property Detail Best Video Three of our amazing clients, The Agency, JB Goodwin REALTORS and Matt Curtis Real Estate Inc. all had incredible showings across the board—with each nominated in multiple categories. Congratulations to all three. We are honoured to…

Real Estate Webmasters is pleased to announce our third and final product update release of the Summer. Yes, it's technically two weeks into Fall, but that's because we spent two extra weeks incorporating new client feedback and suggestions into the platform—making this an even bigger and better release. This update focused heavily on Discover—our newest and most innovative website platform yet. This update brings a combination of exciting new features, new color themes, and a handful of fixes that enhance both the frontend and backend experience. Here's what you'll see coming to the Discover platform in the coming days: New Property Details Page Layout While site visitors absolutely love image-heavy listing details pages, they can be a big challenge…

We live in a world that's downright obsessed with smartphones, tablets, and overall screen time. And yet, apps are nearly ignored completely by most real estate businesses. But they're starting to gain popularity with the heavy hitters. Zillow, Realtor.com, and Redfin now have mobile apps. It's time for agents to step up and take advantage of this underutilized marketing channel. Why would an agent need both an app and a website? As a real estate tech provider, we had to ask ourselves this question. When we did, we found overwhelming evidence that we should be building apps too, which is why we created the REW IDX App for iOS and Android. Here's what convinced us: 1. Apps provide a better user experience. Remember the main reason your clients are…

We no longer measure distance in miles or kilometers. We measure distance in time. In this post, we'll explore how this will impact real estate in a big way. Table of Contents: Measuring distance in minutes, not miles Why you should care about drive time What is INRIX Drive Time™? Two driving distance real estate myths How Drive Time makes you a better agent How to add INRIX Drive Time™ to your website We Measure Distance in Minutes, Not Miles Test yourself: If you were driving to work and your boss called you, would you say, "I'm 1 mile away," or "I'm 5 minutes away?" If someone asked "how far is it to the nearest gas station?" Would you say, "5 miles down the road" or "10 minutes down the road?" If someone were looking for a home,…

So this month I decided to join our sales manager in a really fun sales contest against our entire sales team. You can read about the contest at this facebook post (please feel free to share). As I've started to discuss projects (especially large custom projects or upgrades) the subject of the "queue" comes up. IE what is the wait time to get a project started / completed?People are often surprised by the answer (and that is there is a pretty long waiting list) and someone today asked me to explain why. Because part of my contest is social media; in the spirit of transparency and because I feel I will be able to reach the most people by putting in extra effort in more robust content that I can then share for the benefit of all, I've decided to write a…