Ben Caballero Does It Again: HomesUSA.com Launches New Listing Technology for Home Builders
Ben Caballero is relentless when it comes to creating new technology and achieving major milestones. The founder and CEO of HomesUSA.com, Ben is currently the No. 1 ranked real estate agent by RealTrends and has been every year since 2013. He is clearly the world's most productive agent. Ben is an exclusive listing agent for over 60 home builders. He invented the technology for builders that helped earn him three Guinness World Records for home sales and a slew of accolades, including "Most Innovative Agent" by Inman News and a Pinnacle Award for Entrepreneurship from Keller Williams, presented by Gary Keller himself (Ben has no affiliation with KW). Ben was the first individual agent (he is not part of any team) to exceed $1 billion in total annual home sales, the first to exceed $2 billion, and last year astonishingly, even for Ben, eclipsed $3 billion in annual home sales. Ben has done it again. Today, he and his HomesUSA.com firm launched a new API-driven listings technology for home builders. His single-entry system will be a huge time saver for production builders, considering Ben intakes thousands of listings each year, selling over 6,000 homes last year alone. Ben also is working on several other breakthrough technologies he will release in the coming months. For a former builder who also has been a Realtor for 60 years, he keeps checking new boxes – and the industry is better for it. Here is the news release ­– and, full disclosure, WAV Group works with HomesUSA.com: HomesUSA.com Launches API-Driven Listings Technology to Modernize Data Distribution with Single Entry for Home Builders Dallas, TX – July 18, 2023 – HomesUSA.com, the number one ranked brokerage for new home sales, announced it is launching a groundbreaking API-driven listing distribution technology for production home builders. Its innovative solution provides single-data entry for MLS listings and XML data distribution, ensuring that builders' websites, MLS and real estate portals concurrently display the most accurate and up-to-date information at all times. Production builders have long struggled with pricing discrepancies and other inefficiencies in maintaining their home listing data on multiple platforms. HomesUSA.com's new API-powered technology enables builders to enter property listings just once. The information is instantly distributed to all the builder's desired property marketing channels based on their existing agreements, which can include Zillow, BDX, realtor.com, and more. This modern approach expedites the distribution of new home listings and helps production builders avoid costly pricing errors, which have plagued the industry for years. As reported by Builder magazine, these discrepancies often exceeded $1 million per builder per market. Ben Caballero, founder and CEO of HomesUSA.com and the number one ranked real estate agent by transaction sides and dollar volume since 2013, developed this cutting-edge technology. The three-time Guinness World Record title holder for "Most annual home sale transactions through MLS by an individual sell-side real estate agent – current," exclusively works with over 60 builders in Dallas-Ft. Worth, Houston, Austin, and San Antonio. Caballero's new technology ensures that agents and consumers receive the most accurate MLS-sourced listing information. Additionally, it saves builders time and money by eliminating the need to enter the same new home listing data into multiple platforms. Learn more here. About Ben Caballero and HomesUSA.com® Ben Caballero, founder and CEO of HomesUSA.com, is a three-time Guinness World Record title holder for "Most annual home sale transactions through MLS by an individual sell-side real estate agent – current." Ranked by REAL Trends as America's top real estate agent for home sales since 2013, Ben is the most productive real estate agent in U.S. history. He is the only individual real estate agent to exceed $3 billion in residential sales transactions in a single year (2022); the first agent to exceed $2 billion (2018, 2019, 2020); and the first agent to exceed $1 billion (2015, 2016, 2017). An award-winning innovator and technology pioneer, Ben works with more than 60 home builders in Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, Austin, and San Antonio. His podcast series is available on iTunes and Google Podcasts. Learn more at HomesUSA.com | Twitter: @bcaballero – @HomesUSA | Facebook: /HomesUSAdotcom. To view the original article, visit the WAV Group blog.

California Legislature Approved 4 New Bills to Support Building Millions of Units of Affordable Housing in Commercial Corridors
California, like many states, suffers from a lack of affordable housing. According to the California Department of Finance, the median price of a single-family home in May 2022 in California was $898,980, up a significant 1.6% over the previous month and an increase of nearly 10% over the same time last year. AB 2097 amounts to a statewide boost to residential and commercial development near public transit. The bill prohibits local municipalities from imposing any minimum car parking requirements for projects located within a half mile of metro, bus, or other transportation centers. AB 2221 incentivizes ADU (Accessible Dwelling Unit) construction by clarifying rules around "granny flats." Under existing law, developers are allowed to add the units only to existing multifamily buildings. AB 2221 extends that allowance to proposed projects. It also clarifies local agencies' timelines for approving ADU projects, raises certain height limits, and other changes. Smartly, California is turning to the sometimes underutilized commercial space to convert it into residential living space. The bills are incentivizing affordable housing construction in areas not traditionally thought of as residential living spaces. To qualify, 100% of affordable projects must be located in areas currently primarily used for office, retail and parking, and mixed-income projects must be located in "commercial corridors" – local roads typically used for strip malls and parking lots. With the move to more remote workforces post-Covid, more spaces like this have opened up, providing the potential for more residential inventory. AB 2011 and SB 6 are companion bills that incentivize affordable housing construction in commercial areas. Under the AB 2011 bill, a developer can build housing "by right" — which means skipping lengthy and costly local review processes, including the cumbersome California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA — as long as they pay workers union-level wages and offer health care benefits, among other requirements. The legislation is intended to "expand the potential sites where housing can be developed, while directing development away from existing residential neighborhoods — in particular, existing single-family neighborhoods," according to a bill analysis. These four bills come on the back of California's SB 9 bill, signed on January 1, which permits development of up to four residential units on single-family lots across California. Proponents believe it will allow homeowners to ease the state's housing shortage and protect renters from ever-increasing rents in more expensive areas. They say it creates a path for homeowners to establish multi-generational equity, while creating new housing locations for residents normally priced out of the market. Many cities across California, however, are suing over SB 9, stating that it strips zoning authority from local municipalities where it has traditionally been placed. According to California state housing analysts, California must build 2.5 million homes by 2030 to address the current housing shortage. Of those, nearly half – or at least 1 million, authorities say, need to be affordable to low-income households to maintain the state's economy. Opponents to the bill say while the intent is to reduce a significant housing shortfall, it does not provide funding to address the traffic, health, school, safety, or infrastructure needed when additional housing density is delivered. Opponents also believe SB 9 will raise home and land values in urban areas, making it harder for first-time homebuyers. Most importantly, the SB 9 bill does not require the newly created homes or lots to have any affordability covenants, or to be restricted to moderate- or lower-income households, therefore not accomplishing the most important goal of the legislation. The bills are currently in the hands of Governor Gavin Newsom for signature. Programs similar to these bills are also in place in New York. In his 2022 budget, former Governor Andrew Cuomo included measures for adaptive reuse of commercial and hotel properties to create permanent affordable housing. Proposed measures would relax light and air requirements for Class B and C commercial spaces in Midtown (defined here as the area between Ninth and Park avenues from 14th to 60th streets), and for hotels through most of the city, for conversion to either supportive housing or at least 20% affordable housing over the coming five years. To view the original article, visit the WAV Group blog.

What Does $1 Billion Look Like?
Last year, HomesUSA.com's Ben Caballero—who has been atop the REAL Trends/WSJ "The Thousand" list of real estate agent rankings for both total dollar volume and number of transactions since 2013—became the "World's First Billion Dollar Producer." It's a feat that's hard to get our heads around because we toss around the term "billion" so frequently we forget how truly breathtaking this accomplishment is. From a PR point-of-view, it presented a significant challenge in finding a way to put what Ben had done in the proper perspective. That was the test we faced at WAV Group Communications when Ben became our client. A picture is worth 1,000 words One of my favorite quick reads as a young writer was Harper's Index. It was really the first textual version of the infographic, as it made numbers interesting and put a clever spin on numbers related to obscure and often startling facts and figures. It's also what sparked the idea of a great way to tell Ben's story: make it a visual one and bring those numbers to life. And that's why we turned to creating an infographic that could put in perspective exactly what Ben had accomplished. The goal was to show the awesomeness behind being the first to break the billion-dollar barrier. Think about it: one agent responsible for more than $1 billion in home sales during a single year! We also didn't know if Ben would ever hit that level of volume again. After all, Ben's markets were all Texas-based (Dallas, Houston, Austin and San Antonio) and conventional wisdom at the beginning for 2016 said that most of the Texas markets that were exploding with new home construction would soften. Nearly 100 percent of Ben's business is new home construction listings for builders.

Help Sell Your Land Listings With Vision
Those in the market for a piece of land upon which to build their dream homes often know what kind of house they want, long before they see the land. They love the charm of the Craftsman style; they long for simplicity of a ranch home. Perhaps they have always dreamed of living in a stately Victorian, or they grew up in a classic Cape Cod. Some of these potential home owners, however, may not actually know what makes a house a Craftsman or a Cape Cod—or if they'll even work with the chosen plot of land. There is another group of potential new homeowners, one that is open to other styles of homes but is unclear about the specific style. That is, until they see the perfect piece of land (which, of course, may be totally unsuitable for a home). These homeowners are sometimes harder to please, but with the help of a skilled land broker, they can begin envisioning the house that they will soon call home. How the Land Broker Helps Buying a home can be complicated; building a home can be even more so, especially if the potential home builders aren't experts in land ownership, loans and mortgages, house plans, construction, and design. Land brokers build the foundation of knowledge for new homeowners, helping them further down the line as they begin the journey to homeownership. Regardless of which type of potential land buyer, every new client must learn what the land they buy means for the house they'll own. The Size of the Lot Dictates the Home Style A family looking to upgrade to a stately Georgian manor may have trouble finding a parcel of land that can accommodate it, especially in densely populated urban or suburban areas. The size of a lot can be deceitful; many homeowners don't factor in local setback regulations that may push a house so far back that the house no longer fits. This Georgian style home has over 4500 square feet of living space, but the actual footprint of the home can be much larger. Alternatively, a plot could just be very oddly sized or shaped; a deep but very narrow strip of land severely restricts the style of house that can be placed there, forcing homeowners to opt for a two-story instead of a single-story.

Develop Online Applications with dataFloat
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