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MLS 5.0 -- A Vision for Tomorrow
Last week, RealTown released the MLS of the Future Vision Article authored by RealTown's Saul Klein. The article release has created an incredible buzz in the Real Estate industry. If you have not read the entire 28-page paper, you can download it by visiting http://MLSofFuture.com. In the meantime, we will be releasing a portion of the paper several times a week to allow you to read the specific sections and make online comments that will fuel additional views and opinions on the subject as we move forward.
What will be required to build on the current solid foundation of today’s MLS? This paper attempts to answer this question and create a basis for an industry discussion. Open and frank discussion is essential to creating the tools and organizations that will position REALTORS® to provide services to meet the expectations of future buyers and sellers. This Paper is a vision and not a roadmap. MLS in the broad, generic sense, needs to be redefined in the age of information proliferation and online participatory environments. MLS is more than an offer of compensation and cooperation, but how much more? That decision is up to you.
Concept
Question - which has been asked many times over the past 10 years, but never really answered:
Answer:
- Parcel Based – Best described as a “Property Wiki”
- Built upon Web 2.0 Concepts – Using technologies to engage:
- The Consumer
- The REALTOR®
- Vendors
- Developers
- Public Side and a Private Side
- Online communities for REALTORS® (public and private)
- Online communities for consumers (public and private)
- Multi lingual
- Employ Agile Software Development Processes; aligning business goals with technology capabilities
- Built with an Eye on Generational differences and expectations
- Agent rating system
- Referral system at no charge to agents
- Extensive agent profiles
- Builds and improves neighborhood information through user input
- Works to create Federations and implements SSO (Single Sign-On)
- Continues to have a governance structure and service centers for real estate professionals
- Enables Innovation
- Is built with a Vision (“If you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there,” to paraphrase Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland)
- Is built with a Specific Mission
-
MLS 5.0 is the authoritative and trusted source for all things related to real estate, for REALTORS® and Consumers.
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Keep the REALTOR® in the Center of the real estate Conversation, realizing that that conversation extends from far in advance of a purchase and continues after a purchase of real property. Real estate is a lifetime conversation.
- The aggregated listing information, which are assets owned by the brokers that created and financed the businesses to contract those listings, and
- Information associated with a property even when that property is not for sale. And allow it to be augmented by images, sound, video, and text and include it in a database of all properties, not just those for sale.
- Sold data accumulated by MLS
- Public data
- Consumer-generated content from online communities, groups, blogs, and other Web 2.0 technologies and applications

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