Jan. 31, 2012 - MLS Fights Back for Its Brokers
 Some of you have probably read Clareity’s white paper published last year titled: “Syndication to Real Estate Portals: Problems and Solutions”.
In that paper, we took a look at some of the leading national real estate advertising sites and showed how certain publishers had turned the table on Brokers and are now aggressively monetizing listings and leads through techniques that would never have been attempted a few years ago - and are still not acceptable to most brokers today.
I attended the California Association of REALTORS® winter business meetings last week and saw how one MLS is leading the charge to reclaim the intellectual property value for its members and brokers. Sandicor, the large regional MLS serving greater San Diego County, is doing something bold and innovative. The MLS made a rule change and added one field that could make a profound difference for the future of real estate advertising – they simply created a new advertising remarks field.
This advertising field is distinctly separate from the normal remarks field in the MLS. The advertising remarks do NOT display in the MLS system, but only appear in the data syndication feeds from Sandicor. The advertising field allows an agent to input their contact information including name, phone number, web site link, email address, and a broker web site link along with the property description or no contact information at all if they wish. They are also allowed to include open house information in this field. One thing they cannot do in this field is self-promotion. For example they cannot say they’re the #1 Agent in San Diego.
The purpose and benefits of the new field are clear. Sandicor will require any online publisher/advertising sites that display remarks to not edit out the contact information. Sandicor has concluded that the current practice of obscuring the listing agent or broker by selling the ad space that surrounds a listing is misleading to consumers. At a minimum, this will at least establish a fair means for consumers to contact the listing agent directly. If buyers’ agents choose to advertise around these listings, at least it’s an honest representation and the consumer can decide if they want to contact the professional that actually represents the property and its owner, or to contact a random agent that infringes on another agent’s listings by advertising near them.
As you might imagine, most real estate professionals are pleased about this rule change, but there a few people that don’t like it. Those people are primarily the buyers’ agents that feel they somehow have earned the right to mislead consumers by pretending to be an expert on properties they know nothing about, or that may not even be within their geographic area or area of expertise.
To be fair, publishers have been given 60 days to adapt their data feeds to accept the new field and display it. Sandicor intends to work closely with the syndicators to terminate the data feed to web sites that do not comply.
A second move by Sandicor to help its brokers regain control of their data is to limit the photos going to syndicators to only four (4) photos. Member IDX sites and the Sandicor public facing site will display all of the photos and agent remarks in the MLS system. Sandicor’s goal is to make member IDX sites a much better source for the consumer seeking real estate information. This move will eventually train consumers to visit a broker or the MLS site to see all the property data and pictures.
Congratulations to Sandicor for taking steps to control the misuse of listing data and drive traffic back to its members!
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