Nov. 17, 2009 - Top 10 MLS Features for 2009

This is my top 10 list for MLS Features in 2009. Many of these are not new - but these are the elements of MLS systems that I see people getting excited about in demos:

10. VOWs & enhanced private portals

9. Increased "push" notification options (email reminders, text messaging)

8. Mobile solutions - increasingly sophisticated

7. Expanded use of mapping - better geo-coding, driving directions, map-based statistics...

6. Increased branding and report customization

5. RETS - increased control, MLS "mash ups" using RETS

4. Google-like natural language query in the MLS

3. Share listing to social networking

2. Improving communication between pros, and with consumer (portals, showing feedback, tracking activity)

1. Multi-tasking

I talked about and illustrated these features in some depth last week during and after the free "2009 MLS Landscape" presentation I gave during the NAR meetings in San Diego, where I reviewed the 25 current MLS system offerings.

If you are interested in engaging me to present on MLS trends, the future of MLS, current MLS offerings and these features to your MLS staff, board and/or selection committee, contact me!

Nov. 12, 2009 - Survey: Initial Feedback on HouseLogic and Realtor Property Resource

Clareity Consulting conducted a brief survey to gather some initial feedback from MLS industry leaders regarding NAR's two new initiatives, HouseLogic and Realtor Property Resource (RPR) that were presented Friday November 6th via a national webinar. Since time between the webinar and the NAR annual meeting was short, the response was limited – but with a nice mix of MLS executives responding from various size organizations nationwide, we learned some valuable information about how HouseLogic and RPR were perceived.

HouseLogic

Respondents were somewhat more favorable than not about how valuable the site will be for consumers:

Keep in mind that NAR's stated target audience for the site consists of "Responsible Proactive Homeowners" – it's not clear how big an audience that really is, or if 100% participation from that audience would be enough to meet NAR's goal of having one of the top10 real estate sites. Perhaps the target market for the site will expand overtime and additional valuable content will be created. It's unclear how this site will perform competitively against sites that have both content and listings,in terms of providing value for consumers.

43% of the respondents think that "HouseLogic will improve the Realtor brand strength with consumers":

Respondents were less favorable about how valuable the site will be for agents and brokers – but 78% believe that agents and brokers will find at least some value in the Realtor® Content Resource. Plainly at the local level agents will still need to differentiate from each other with unique content – they can't all use the same content from HouseLogic.

39% of respondents indicated that the site content could  be used to benefit their local site. More than 34% weren't sure – it's probably too early to tell how useful the content will really be just from the initial webinar presentation.

When asked to say what they liked most or least about the HouseLogic site and its strategy, respondents said the following:

• The content is valuable to consumers and it will keep the REALTOR value in the forefront. It will allow REALTORS to stand apart from other practitioners
• The general concept is good, however as with RCSMLS, RIN, DXM,and realtor.com, NAR frequently has execution problems. I am also concerned about the possibility of large brokers and franchises feeling that HouseLogic unfairly competes with their efforts and existing websites- "leveling the playing field".
• If the site gains enough visitors and is easily available through local association and MLS sites, it could help with the "R" image. Least:it does not do much for the individual members. Why not just enhance realtor.com since consumers already come there?
• The connection between agent and Realtor.com and how the consumer is going to find an agent from the HouseLogic site.
• Strengthens the value the Realtor family brings to the buying and selling public...should ultimately re-establish the Realtor as the expert on all information related to real estate
• Least: consumers still can't tell difference between agent &realtor, some parts of site aren't useful such as consumer's tracking their projects.
• Consistent messaging adds value to the trusted brand - REALTOR
• Potential for influence with respect to housing related issues
• I don't believe that homeowners will leave their trusted on-line sources to use a Realtor-branded resource, particularly when they find that they may be asked to assist NAR in their political agenda (i.e. consumer"call to action").
• Seems to put NAR out in front of members
• Real Estate is still local, consumers are still going to get advice from agents personally, sounds like HGTV to me.
• The details on how the site was developed and crafted. I'd like to provide the webinar at our next board meeting. Is this possible?

Answering that last point, the webinar is available online at the following location:
www.realtor.org/about_nar/stinton_webinar_110609

RPR - Realtor's Property Resource

77% of respondents found the presentation "Very informative" and "Informative".

Almost 32% of respondents indicated that they thought the RPR site will be valuable for agents and brokers initially – this doubles to 64% when asked about the value in five years.

The majority of respondents said that LPS/CyberHomes is a better strategic partner for RPR than Move.com – only 14% did not think so (note that this seems to correlate most heavily with tax data quality in each market).  One third of the jury is still out on this question.

Less than 5% of respondents don't think that MLS listing data and cooperation is key to RPR's success.

The respondents were almost evenly split on the idea of using MLS data to develop the RVM (Realtor Valuation Model).

Half of the respondents did not like the idea of the RVM (and possibly other derivative data products) to be a primary source of revenue for RPR.

Over 40% of respondents did not think that the RPR would save their MLS money on public records.

Of those that had assessed the quality of LPS tax records in their market, half  said the quality was "Great"or "Good" and half said it was "Fair" or "Poor". Since the primary value proposition in the proposed trade for MLS data is the tax data, this points to an important RPR opportunity for improvement (the more negatively inclined might say it's a serious flaw in the model).

How soon their contracts for public records expires may be one factor that plays into MLS cooperation with RPR. 36% of respondents' contracts don't expire until 2011 or later.

Respondents were split as to whether RPR poses a significant threat to existing local and regional MLS operators – if you add the "Yes" and "Eventually" answers, 54% see the threat coming down the road.

Regarding sending MLS data to RPR, respondents were again split, with 59% saying they would do so (at least eventually), 27% being unsure, and 13% indicating that they do not intend to do so.

When asked what pre-conditions their MLS might have to cooperate with RPR, answers were as follows:

• We would want license agreements specifying the details of how RPR could utilize the data and which data elements could be used.
• I say eventually because I believe that NAR will put us in the position of having to do this via the "free" approach to members. We'd be looking for proper licensing of the content to RPR for specific uses only;agreement limiting the scope of what RPR will do - no compete as far as services, etc. better outline of the future plans; how the site will be monetized beyond selling the RVP to governmental agencies; some type of alternative to "free public records" which won't be truly free to MLSs.....still too many unanswered questions to be more specific here.
• Ability to enhance RPR data and re-license to produce revenue for MLS company (not in the MLS business any longer)
• Many will hold out for compensation of some sort.
• Any data provided from MLS will have to be exclusive to the Realtor family only. Can't be sold to third parties.
• Possible revenue sharing
• Not sure, perhaps paid for the information just as any third party vendor who wants our MLS, which we no longer entertain, by the way.

Clareity suggests MLSs read this excellent post on the subject of pre-conditions from the FBS blog: wordpress1.flexmls.com/blog/what-are-the-terms-youll-require-for-nars-rpr-to-use-your-mls-data/

The majority of respondents said that RPR would drive some MLS operators and software vendors to innovate and improve their service, and 66% said this competition is good for the industry (6% said "No," and the rest weren't sure).

Finally, Clareity Consulting asked for respondents to tell us what they liked most or least about the RPR presentation and strategy. Responses were as follows:

• Like the aggregation of public records, foreclosure data made readily available to local and regional MLSs. Concerned that local nuances maybe left out. Would like to see revenue sharing ideas on the table.
• REALTORS will continue to have the most current information on homes for sale and those that are pending so our interest in the RPR should help maintain REALTORS as key to real estate transactions as the RPR becomes the most important resource to the industry.
• I am concerned about the concentration of power that this will likely vest in RPR over the entire industry. I am also concerned this may evolve beyond public records and demographics into a true nationwide MLS database, a database that would likely be a very attractive target of interest to the DOJ and FTC.
• Least - only enough info to see how they will sell it to members,not enough info about the full business plan. Liked: great platform - even if it does look like an MLS :-)
• Lack of details - do "we" get to integrate Cyberhomes products FOC into our MLS product/website? A camel is a horse designed by a committee, and I see a lot of "committee" mentality on the RPR BoD.
• The agents will love it! They won't use much of it, but they will love it!
• This tool creates a huge information resource for Realtors and equips the agent with more real estate research data than the consumer could obtain, and better quality data as well once the MLSs cooperate
• I am GREATLY disturbed by the RVM development which will be greatly misunderstood by consumers and purchasers of this developed data. The developed data will very likely be misused and eventually misleading to the consumer. I think that part was a very poorly conceived idea. No input was allowed by professional third party licensed and certified appraisers in its development of the RVM.
• Will potentially streamline and consolidate MLS's in common service areas; it potentially will reduce the cost for MLS's purchasing public records; it will provide quality data for a quality REALTOR to REALTOR platform.
• Very robust...perhaps too much so for the average Member.
• It looks like an MLS to me. The NAR directors could give the OK to offer compensation at any time, and we have an MLS.

Conclusion

At this point, Clareity Consulting is not trying to issue an opinion on either of the NAR initiatives.  This report is intended to provide our industry colleagues and clients objective information to help them understand industry reaction to these two projects, share feedback, and discuss important questions about the many details that are still in the process of being determined.

Nov. 4, 2009 - Measuring the Success of your MLS Public Listings Website

Following is a follow up article to the comprehensive "Study of Multiple Listing Service Public Listings Websites" I performed earlier this year - http://www.realtown.com/mattcohen/blog/2009-mls-web-sites-study

One of the most important elements of an MLS listings web site is to have a feature that reports on the effectiveness of the site back to brokers and agents. HAR.com did a great job of this by implementing STAR (Strategic Traffic Activity Report) and IRES has produced its ColoProperty.com Usage Reports. When planning your future effort or evaluating your current one it is important to consider how you are implementing such reports.

Typically, reports show the following overall site statistics over the preceding month, quarter and year:

• MLS subscriber leads (email, phone, text, etc.)
• Hits
• Page views
• Visitor Sessions
• Unique visitors
• Average minutes spent on site
• Total visitor minutes
• Times listings viewed

Going beyond the site-wide statistics, reports to subscribers - broker and agent levels as applicable in your market - should show their own statistics over the preceding month, quarter and year:

• The number of times their listings were viewed - this could be interactive when viewed online and allow drilldown to a real-time breakdown of traffic by listing by date
• The number of click-throughs to their web site
• The number of times their email was viewed (requires use of click-to-see email addresses)
• The number of times email was sent to them via the web site
• The number of phone calls made to them (requires use of phone redirect)
• The number of text message leads sent to them (requires text message feature)

Ideally, these types of reports should be available via subscriber logins to the web site and also 'pushed' to subscribers who have listings on the site via email on a monthly (or at least a quarterly) basis.

There are many other aspects of the MLS public listings web site value that need to be communicated to subscribers - but ensuring that these type of metrics have visibility is a good starting point.

Oct. 20, 2009 - Your MLS System Contract and RETS

I've been involved in scores of MLS contract negotiations over the past dozen years, working alongside attorneys to make sure business issues are properly addressed - but the environment keeps changing and I must be ever vigilant to make sure new issues are taken into account so that my clients are well protected.  Last year I posted an article on the subject – “Negotiating Win-Win Technology Contracts” (http://www.realtown.com/mattcohen/blog/negotiating-technology-contracts) but it’s time for an update.

RETS (www.rets.org) has been a boon to the real estate industry, but it has added another level of complexity to MLS system contract review.

Consider RETS when defining contractual performance and uptime language.  Back when RETS was less critical, one might define system speed, functionality, and availability as part of a performance and uptime guarantees solely in terms of common “front end” functions: this search would take a maximum of this amount of time; these statistics would take a maximum of that amount of time; these functions work substantially as they were documented this percent of the time. Now that RETS is becoming more important for many MLSs, benchmarks for the speed, functionality and availability of RETS must be included in the contract either explicitly or as part of more general performance-oriented language. Also, a process for setting benchmarks and the follow-up step of measurement against those benchmarks must be set.

It’s also important to make sure the RETS feed is available, tested, and validated as early in the conversion process as possible, and that there is a contractual obligation on the part of the vendor to provide this in a timely fashion – ideally at least two months before system cutover. This is especially important if your MLS has been providing delimited data and photographs via FTP but would no longer plan to do so with the new vendor. You don’t want a lot of last minute calls from brokers, IDX vendors, statistics producers and other companies getting a data feed from the MLS – all complaining that there is not enough time for them to learn RETS and transition to it. Even if you provided RETS to these companies in the past, the new vendor’s RETS server may likely have some idiosyncrasies or differences in RETS metadata that will cause problems if brokers and others to whom data is distributed don’t have a chance to properly test the new RETS feed properly.

Those are just two examples of how a single technology becoming more important requires MLS system contract changes. MLSs should be wary of signing extensions without appropriate review on contracts that no longer have the relevance they did during the original term and should carefully review their new contracts to ensure business issues are addressed. MLS systems are continually changing and interacting with other real estate information systems in new ways (i.e. SSO) and MLS system contracts have to reflect that. 

Sep. 24, 2009 - September 2009 - RETS Meeting Recap

I'm on my way back from the RETS meeting in Chicago so I'm writing up a small recap of what I was privy to during the meeting sessions I attended.

First, a bit of background. Last week the COVE group (several of the largest MLSs) met and determined that the need to complete data standardization (improving on standardization of data fields, including field contents) was urgent. They plan to work on this to and then present the work to RESO – hopefully this will accelerate the current pace of the standardization effort.

During the “RETS Issues, Challenges & Perceptions Panel”  Matt Lavallee (MLS Property Information Network) presented a number of his theories, including an addition of or move to a standard more focused on synchronization than the current transactional approach. In his market he sees few use of ‘ad hoc’ or ‘live’ queries and provides a "live" CSV feed or direct SQL access. Other MLSs, vendors, and client writers explained their differing perspective on the feasibility of this approach. Rob Overman (LPS) in particular described the use of ad hoc queries for mobile PDA and voice-based solutions. Dan Woolley responding via Twitter indicated that one still needs transactional model for small data sets and real-time reports - CMA, buyer tours etc. Ray Ewing (SANDICOR) said that they have many vendors that query just for a few listings.

Matt L. then suggested that there are only a few nationwide vendors needing data standardization – that most vendors (local) don't care. This was not in alignment with others understanding, especially the COVE group as previously mentioned. It also didn’t make sense to me, as the standardization is a key component of making it easy for vendors to get data and provide their product into additional markets. Mike Wurzer (FBS) spoke up on the subject of data standardization to say that “Brokers are sick of the expense of disparate data feeds. Transport is irrelevant. The lack of data standards is the pain point. Data standards are possible - CARETS and others did it. RESO needs the [guts] and resources to drive that down the road.” Kristen Carr (Bridge Interactive Group) responded that data standardization is moving forward. Mary Frances Adams (TREND) indicated that “If we all agree on a data standardization and every MLS maps to that, we can all talk to one another - but we don't have to change input sheets.” This may not exactly be true if data standardization gets down to what enumerated values of any given field might be and there is no way to translate from existing fields to the new values. Matt L. made a great point – “It's not the name changes that are hard. How do you back out 12 years of old data? Condo is not a property type. It is an ownership type. How do you back out 12 years of data where condo has been a property type? To our membership the data has value in the form it is in.” Pat Bybee (Metrolist) warned, “We're not fond of mandates from NAR. When they said they would create green fields it had ripples around the industry.Setting up an aspirational standard would be good. As soon as NAR mandates something forces rally against it.” Matt L. responded, “Standard names have been there a long time but it's voluntary - no one uses them.”

Matt L. then expressed that “RETS keeps little vendors out of markets”.  While there was some agreement that RETS has a learning and support curve, there was not general agreement for the conclusion among MLSs and others present. Jeremy Crawford (SANDICOR) specified that “We've seen vendors from all industries come, in our market and I have vendors that have been successful in minutes. No way I'd open up SQL and try to lock them down.”  Jim Smith (NTREIS) said, “When we used SQL I had 2 DBAs … Now that I have RETS, I get by with a clerk. I got one support call last week for RETS. One.”

Moving on to another subject, I brought up the business concern that the standards effort was not properly resourced to move the standard forward at a good clip – COVE group is just one example of the impatience in the market. I suggested roles for leadership, documentation, project management, and communications. A discussion of how to pay for such resources ensued which I ended by saying, “Every other industry that has standards has figured out how to staff and pay for that effort. We can too.” Pat B. agreed and indicated that the RESO board will be putting a budget into NAR to address these needs. David Harris (eNeighborhoods) agreed that the effort needs resources and suggested that everyone send email to bod@rets.org on the subject to indicate their support.

The second day, the RESO board reported that they are working on a budget - workgroup chairs will submit budgets to the board soon.  They listed 2009 Accomplishments - Server compliance, document managment, improved vendor/MLS communication, and a budget process definition. The board committed to put together a RETS roadmap - purpose, mission, vision, short, medium, long term goals - Kristen Carr, Ryan Bonham, Sergio Del Rio, Steve Clarke leading. At a high level the board has short term goals for improvement - accountability, compliance, standards publication. RETS medium term goals include the strategic plan and roadmap, RETS logo and name usage, and data standardization. Long term goals include  data standardization  for additional schema, review RETS to streamline the standard, additional directions for RESO, and expanding compliance. The RETS roadmap will 'connect the dots' for these goals with timeframes, long overdue!

Hitachi showed the technical structure and features of the compliance tool at great length. They also showed their selected tool for documentation – Confluence wiki. This is exciting, though when I posted to Twitter one friend tweeted back that “Confluence is kind of challenging, actually. My school uses it predominately and, for one, formatting is a real problem. Another friend tweeted, “You'll have to tell me what you like about Confluence. We use it at work and we all hate it.” I’m still excited by this work, because improved documentation management is desperately needed and it looks like Hitachi has done a nice job customizing the tool to the RETS community’s needs.

Both RETS change proposals made by Troy (FBS) passed by wide margins:

• #79 Add Preferred flag to GetObject responses. This proposal recommends adding a flag to GetObject responses that indicates if the given object is the preferred or primary object for the requested record...In some MLS software systems, the ability for photos to be uploaded also allows for a particular photo to be marked as the “preferred” or “primary” photo for that record (without it necessarily being the first photo uploaded or moved as first in the list of photos) which indicates that this photo should be used on reports and other displays when only a single photo is shown.
• #80 Optional Query. This proposal recommends changes to RETS to allow the Search transaction Query and QueryType parameters to be optional. By making the Query and QueryType parameters optional, users only need to provide 2 required parameters (SearchType and Class) and are able to instruct the server to return all records available to their account.

Tomorrow the roadmap will be preliminarily discussed (originally this was a workgroup meeting, so I did not plan to attend) though no decisions will be made at this meeting. For some insight into my own thinking on the roadmap, see my previous posts, Completing RETS (http://www.realtown.com/mattcohen/blog/completing-rets) and Completing RETS: The Survey (http://www.realtown.com/mattcohen/blog/completing-rets-survey). I had a great conversations about the roadmap with Paul Stusiak who will be leading that discussion before heading to the airport.

Sep. 2, 2009 - Reimagining Realtor Secure - It's Happening!

More than five years ago, NAR came out with a program called Realtor Secure oriented toward enhancing information security. The idea and spirit were excellent, the execution - quite problematic. Those issues I described in person and via other communication channels with NAR staff. Thankfully, only a few MLSs and vendors participated in the program, which focused on certifying organizations "secure". Unfortunately, because of the program flaws, most (though not all) of the MLSs and vendors that certified had basic and horrifying security flaws - yet remained certified for five years, proudly displaying their  web site badge.

Information security in our industry is something I've always taken seriously - and I think it would be accurate, and would not be bragging, to say that I'm the industry expert. Most MLSs, associations, brokers, and vendors contact me when they have a security issue or when they want to be proactive by getting an assessment done and put an information security program put in place. Over the last month alone I've performed three vendor assessments, having a positive impact for hundreds of thousands of their customers. I've probably worked with more industry organizations than other companies combined, and understand all the unique challenges our industry has with information security.

Not being able to make an impact with NAR itself, I ranted and railed and made fun of the "Realtor INsecure" program so industry colleagues would understand its many issues. I increased my public speaking - producing a tech workshop in Scottsdale, a full-day info security session at Inman, speaking for the Realty Alliance CTOs as well as presenting at sessions geared for MLS executives at the  MLS Executive Worshop and at a variety of other venues. I wrote many free-to-republish articles designed for Realtors and brokers that were re-published in scores of Association and MLS newsletters (http://www.callclareity.com/security/). Along the way I floated various proposals to NAR for re-branding and improving the program, focusing it on education and away from the flawed certification concept. Five years passed. Eventually, the person responsible for cooking up Realtor Secure even left. That, and additional conversations with NAR have lead to the following blessed event...

Better thinking has prevailed! I've been sitting on this news for weeks, after getting a heads up from CRT - NAR is finally ready to announce: The "REALTOR® Secure program will be focusing more on security education and awareness and will be re-branded as REALTOR® Secure: Understanding and Identifying Your Personal, Corporate and Association Security Liability" (http://blog.realtors.org/crt/2009/09/02/realtor-secure/).

I'm looking forward to working with the good folks at CRT as they move forward now, with a well-focused program, to improve information security practices in our industry.

Aug. 20, 2009 - Completing RETS: The Survey

It's difficult to write about opportunities for the future of the RETS standard without some folks thinking I'm bashing the past. To be clear, I honor and respect the past - but also welcome the future. Discussing the possible future of the RETS standard and engaging stakeholders can only make that future better. So, I put up a short survey for MLS executives to let their voice be heard.

In my previous post, "Completing RETS" (http://www.realtown.com/mattcohen/blog/completing-rets) I pointed out that there are some types of data that it would be ideal to represent using RETS to achieve the business objective of making it easier to move from MLS system to MLS system or to move data from MLS systems to other systems where the data could be used. When asked how important each data type was, here's what the MLS executives said:

Documenting and being able to transfer MLS business rules via RETS was the most strongly desired of the data types I queried on.  Every MLS executive has gone through some pain moving these rules from system to system. As I had previously commented on my blog, how to work with or incorporate some type of business rule markup language is an area ripe for discussion. Being able to move prospects and saved searches from system to system was also strongly desired - end-users not being able to move this data from system to system is a part of what makes MLS system transitions more difficult and time consuming for MLS subscribers. Thinking beyond the MLS, being able to move such data from broker and agent websites into the MLS - or from an MLS public website to a broker/agent website once the consumer has selected a professional to work with - would be wonderfully convenient. Customized search screens in the MLS are not that commonly used, so that didn't rate as highly. David Harris from eNeighborhoods had suggested that Open Houses was an area that needed to be better represented in RETS, and while the MLS executive segment didn't see it as that important, that non-alignment may point to the need for even wider discussion and measurement-taking, involving other stakeholders.

A supermajority of survey respondents wanted to see data types they ranked as 'Very important' or 'Important' to be added to RETS over the next year. I'm not sure that's possible given the current resources of the RETS community. To quote Mike DelGaudio, “Finishing out these remaining schemas …  is can of worms that many implementers won't be prepared to execute quickly, affordably, or safely.”  And, as one respondent said “I rated all the elements as very important and want them all this year. Will that happen? Heck no, and I know it. … RESO has [taken] years to approve what we have now. … After years of trying we don’t have common set of data definitions. If RESO can’t get that done, how on earth do you expect them to tackle some of the "people" fields (to use DelGaudio’s term).”  I agree – this is a challenging endeavor! However, if the interest is there and scope and time are truly fixed then MLS executives could discuss the third part of the project equation, additional resources, with NAR. This is all part of creating a project plan for RETS - a roadmap that we can measure progress against.

That leads to an interesting subject – the RETS roadmap. 26% of the MLS executives surveyed said they were aware of the “long term roadmap for RETS”. That’s really fascinating, because there’s no such thing. There was one back before 2007 but once we left the road heading to RETS 2.0, the roadmap was stuffed into the virtual glove box (just try finding the roadmap on rets.org) and the focus of the effort turned to small-scale changes and, based on the immediate needs caused by the NAR policy, compliance. I confirmed the lack of a long term roadmap with some RESO board members.

On the subject of MLS executive stakeholder involvement in the standard, the majority of MLS executives have not been to a RETS meeting and only 34% of those surveyed said they understand the process for making changes to RETS. The good news – of those five executives that said they had tried to get a change to RETS made, four said that they were successful. The process can work if MLS executives and other stakeholders want to get involved!

While surveying MLS executives on the future of RETS, I did ask some questions about the present that might interest the reader:

58% of respondents said that RETS has made accessing data easier for subscribers and only 16% said it made it more difficult.

• I would say that once they understand the process they like it better, but it is getting them to move to the new process that is more difficult.
• Most Brokerages are required to find vendors who understand RETS. Small vendors, in most cases, don’t have a clue.
• The vendors all seem to have different problems, they blame the MLS programmers. It seems that the different RETS clients cause different problems for the vendor which in turn causes problems for the MLS.
• Too many web masters don’t understand it.
• When we switched from one platform to another (through the same vendor) the agents still had to reenter all their saved contacts, etc. The possibility that this could be different would be a huge improvement.

• More online resources to help third parties get started with RETS.
• MLS administrators need more training as the subscribers seem to be learning RETS as well and a difficult time implementing it.
• Develop a standard RETS Client

As one respondent said, “[RETS is] easier for staff to provide MLS® because they only have to set permissions and criteria once. It’s harder for staff because now have they must liaise with 3rd Party Providers educating them as to the different "flavour" and/or implementation of RETS.”

When asked what RESO could do to make it easier, respondents had a number of comments – but most of them seemed more focused on their technology vendors rather than the standards effort itself:

• Get the vendors to understand that RETS is RETS and the MLS does not have to customize for each vendors RETS client.
• Allow more filters; i.e. a way to "throttle" the data.
• Vendors using RETS need to change their model of operation. Instead of open access for each subscriber, vendor should have an authenticate standard and then all queries are done by the vendors account, instead vendors say turn RETS on for each subscriber creating security issues.

Of those surveyed, a 53% majority still serve data primarily using FTP or some other method – hopefully this will improve over time.

There has been a lot of great discussion lately about charging for RETS, reflecting my 2003 paper on the subject (for which I took so much heat). It’s nice to be validated six years later!

One respondent clarified: “The charge is only for third party vendors who sell product to members. The real issue MLS’s need help with is defining the categories of data subscribers. We don’t charge members for RETS feeds, other than a criteria change fee.”

Let’s end this post on a really positive note. I asked MLSs what benefit they’ve gotten from RETS. There were some negatives to start with, but most of the comments were quite positive.

• I think the true test will be what impact it will have on our servers and bandwidth issues. Also updating to more current versions seems to be an issue.
• At this point none.
• Have not seen any benefits to our MLS. The programmers seem to spend more time on RETS than they do programming the MLS System for the members.
• RETS hasn’t added anything except another way to transfer data. We did fine with and ftp feed and framing. It might have made a difference to some IDX vendors, but was no big deal to MLS.
• If you ask an agent how they get data to their site, they couldn’t tell you. They don’t care as long as it gets there.
• We use ftp to send data to most third-party vendors. For the most part RETS access is used to provide members with another means of data/photo access other than our MLS vendor’s standard front end. One reason we use ftp to service third party vendors is that with RETS my staff frequently has to spend time helping the vendors understand our data structures and resolving issues with their RETS client and query structures/syntax.
• To up a RETS data feed is much, much too confusing. IDX … has an extremely straight forward up process - terminology and the layers to things up in RETS makes no sense to non-programmers

The more positive responses:

• For vendors who are familiar with RETS, they are up & running with their application within days, instead of weeks or months.
• CARETS
• More flexibility with the data, more timely updates and easier marketability for our products.
• Got rid of the ftp servers and closed the security loophole that ftp created.
• Created data standards for accommodating data from different marketplaces; created modules for our MLS application which can be unbundled and plugged into other RETS utilities
• Simplified support to vendors, stability in providing data, not needing to provide various versions as in FTP files, easier for image access (we prefer that vendors pull via http (URL supplied by RETS) versus accessing photo via RETS - saves time, bandwidth etc., able to offer real time data
• Expedited, more secure, and manageable means of data transport.
• Better support and access to real time data
• Better, more accurate and standardized feeds available to our members.
• The move to RETS has made the prospect of data sharing with neighboring systems more straight forward. The neighbor can pull down the data on their own with limited use of our programming staff.
• We have been easily able to partner up with third party aggregators.
• We’ve had a few venders that will only do RETS, so this has opened a door of opportunity for them to present their product to our members.
• List Exporter (self hosted) uses RETS to provide filtered IDX files which requires very little policing of IDX sites.
• Depending on the service - brokers might pay extra.
• For the vendors serving our subscribers it is very valuable.
• Much easier to implement and provide from our side. Non-dues revenue - increased choice for members dealing with 3rd Party Suppliers - better controls for access to MLS® data
• We use it internally to calculate some statistics and to feed a MLS Data Checking tool. It feeds our public website and a good portion of our broker IDX feeds. I agree with the responses to the blog, facilitating the transport of saved searches and such is a very big deal.
• It’s important for the future of real estate to have a standard that is going to put everyone one on the same page. RETS has opened a lot of doors as far as data is concerned for us and all MLS’s that are utilizing it but it’s a standard so I believe it will change as needs and demands evolve!

RETS has come a long way over the past ten years on the backs of hard-working volunteers – but there is room for RETS to mature further. Involving stakeholders and looking at business objectives with fresh eyes will be important as we move forward. Putting more resources behind the effort and continuing to formalize the requirements gathering process, the road map, and the project planning and communications side of the RETS effort will be crucial, if one wants to see more than small incremental changes to the standard made over a long period of time. Working to restructure the effort and providing the resources needed to do so will require resources for RESO that MLS and Association executives will need to advocate for, if they have an interest in RETS moving forward in ways outlined in this article.

The Fall RESO/RETS Conference is September 23rd - 25th, 2009 in Chicago, IL - more information is available here: http://www.rets.org/meeting

Aug. 11, 2009 - Why Do We Need Another RETS Vendor?

The rise of third-party RETS servers and the emergence of a competitive marketplace

Many MLSs are licensing RETS servers in addition to the one provided by their MLS vendor. Why are we seeing this trend? Reasons include the desire for:

• Control over speed and reliability of the RETS server
• More sophisticated controls over the data exposed and formats it is exposed in
• Enhanced monitoring and reporting
• Additional security controls
• Use of RETS beyond the listings – accommodating other data types 
• Customization beyond what the MLS vendors are providing
• Not having to change RETS servers and support data recipients when changing MLS vendors

This is not to imply that the MLS vendor RETS servers are "bad" – they sometimes just serve different needs and have different capabilities than third-party RETS servers that one might have to pay for. To be frank, most MLS organizations are not paying the MLS vendors sufficiently for them to add all of the types of features one sees provided by third parties.

The primary players in this space are Bridge Interactive Group (RETS IQ) and Threewide (ListHub and ListExporter). Recently Northern Ohio Regional MLS (NORMLS) has also entered the market. Following are profiles of each company and their products.

Bridge Interactive Group was established in 2004. Bridge’s core goal is providing RETS management and enhancement tools, customized RETS solutions and facilitating data sharing initiatives.  Bridge employees actively participate in many RETS workgroups and they hold a Chairperson seat as well as a seat on the Board of Directors for the Real Estate Standards Organization. 

The RETS IQ Suite of products is designed to put control of data management into the hands of the customer and includes the following components:

• RETS Contact™ is an MLS level RETS filtering, monitoring and management tool that adds further fine-grained control and usage transparency to your current MLS RETS system.
• RETS IQ Cheque™ is an add-on Contact application built to administer billing and account management services for MLS RETS Data Recipients.
• RETS IQ Accelerator™ is a middleware product intended to add reliability, scalability and performance to RETS servers by providing an elastic cloud network of RETS server caches.
• RETS IQ Pulse™ is a RETS server tool for MLSs and Server Providers to monitor their RETS servers. With Pulse, notifications are immediately sent the minute problems with the RETS server are discovered.
• RETS IQ Compose™ is a rich web application for adding and editing listings via RETS 1.x. Compose is almost completely driven by RETS metadata including field layout and validation.

Bridge Interactive Group provides a lot of services around these products, including hosting, setup, data mapping and support.

Some of the key differentiators of the RETS-IQ suite include the ability to create and use data “views” (I’m not going to get technical in this article – but it’s important), the ease of identifying excessive use and getting paid exactly what one should be for that use, the architecture needed for enhanced speed and reliability, and the tools one needs to monitor and assert control over RETS service levels.

Recently Bridge Interactive Group launched RETS IQ Rosetta - a free cooperative RETS Metadata mapping service that Bridge Interactive Group is offering to the RETS community and in particular to RETS client vendors and developers. Its goal is to lower the technical and domain knowledge entry level for new developers in the RETS world, promoting innovation and development of new RETS applications.

The Bridge Interactive Group’s RETS IQ Suite of products now manages MLS listing content for more than 150,000 real estate professionals nationwide via 11 implementations.

Threewide Corporation was founded in 1999 and their ultimate goal is to make possible a single point of data entry that powers the many diverse software systems used by real estate brokers, agents, and administrators in their daily business.

Threewide's primary product is ListHub, which provides a mechanism for easy listing syndication. A broker/agent interface allows for opt-out from listing syndication to specific sites, which Threewide has arranged with over thirty of the most popular national real estate sites and a number of regional portals. ListHub syndicates not only the listing information, but unlimited photos, open house and virtual tour information. MLSs can select where links from the syndicated listings go – choosing from a default redirection to MLS consumer facing site property pages, ListHub property pages, or other property pages of their choice. ListHub offers advanced reporting on the exposure given to the listings - not on the sites they have syndicated to - but via default landing pages for each listing that ListHub provides, assuming the syndication sites link back to the Threewide site. Threewide also tracks and provides reports on the leads sent from their landing pages. Reports are available at MLS, franchise, brokerage, office and agent levels, as well as a branded report for the consumer for their individual listing.

Threewide’s ListExporter enables the MLS staff to selectively package listing data and images and send them to virtually any location in a variety of custom and industry-standard formats. With ListExporter, an MLS can control where the data is being sent, either on demand or through a set schedule. ListSecure works in tandem with ListExporter to minimize the unauthorized use of listing data and images through industry-proven data tags, image watermarks and secure file pickup. Extensive audit trails show when data and images are retrieved and by whom to easily identify the misuse of data.

Some of the key differentiators of the Threewide products are having the most “out of the box” syndication feeds (31 national, plus 16 regional) and the data tagging or “watermarking”.

Threewide’s ListHub product is in use by 190 MLSs.

NORMLS, Ohio’s largest multiple listing service, formed a strategic partnership with Ronin Technologies (http://www.ronintech.org/) to launch a new product called RETS Genie®. NORMLS serves 750 member real estate companies and their 8000+ agents. Ronin Technologies has been a leading provider of RETS solutions for over ten years, was heavily involved in writing the RETS 2.0 specification, and has chaired the RETS compliance workgroup since its inception in 2003.

RETS Genie® was developed to enable the MLS and its members to create data packages for advertising, applications, and custom requests. RETS Genie®is available in two versions, Standard and Deluxe. The Standard Edition enables MLSs to aggregate, integrate and organize any data and photos available through RETS. An MLS can configure reusable IDX filters and define delimited and ‘zip’ compressed file exports of this data for members. Data exports can be run on demand or scheduled to run, then automatically sent via FTP or HTTP to locations configured by the MLS. Users can choose to send either “full” (all the allowed data) or “incremental” (only new or changed data and images) updates to data recipients.   The Deluxe Edition additionally allows MLSs to configure custom database columns and tables for RETS import. Data can be syndicated to Trulia, Yahoo, Zillow, Google in their preferred format, or to any other site using the RETS Syndication schema. Since most syndicators require a unique URL for listings, syndication support includes a unique landing page for property details. The Deluxe Edition also offers the capability to deliver data via email or to a file system on a network. 

RETS Genie®offers add-ons to the Deluxe Edition. The Data Source Module enables integration of other data sources (i.e. member management systems, public records, or tax data) in addition to RETS. The MultiFormat Module enables exports to Excel, HTML, PDF and RSS formats, as well as custom XML formats. The Rules Module facilitates the creation of business rule filters to support VOWS, reciprocity, and third party agreements.

NORMLS offers hosting for RETS Genie®, and partners with Ronin to provide installation, data mapping, training and support.

Some of the key differentiators of NORMLS’ RETS Genie® product are that it easily  incorporates data from non-RETS sources and supports a wide variety of custom output formats including Excel, PDF, HTML, and HTTP and email delivery options.

I am pleased to see a competitive marketplace emerging for RETS products, and has written this short article to recognize a few of the many creative and talented industry colleagues that are blazing this trail for our industry.

The RETS standard has come a long way over the past ten years, but the promise of RETS will only be realized through product development that leverages the standard. In much the same way that concepts of hypertext first demonstrated in the 1960s did not achieve their fruition until the 1990s when the Mosaic web browser application blazed the trail for the World Wide Web, it will take products – killer apps – to really bring RETS into its own golden age and create opportunities to enhance the industry with new kinds of information-hungry applications that are only now being imagined.

Aug. 7, 2009 - Completing RETS

A standard, like software, is never complete - it just goes on to the next version. But, the RETS standard has been going on for ten years - I think it's time to take stock about how far it has come and talk about where it could or should go.

If you're an MLS executive or an agent, why should YOU care about this RETS stuff moving forward quickly? Doesn't it already facilitate your data feeds, syndications and MLS collaborations? Think about this - recently I was negotiating an MLS contract and wanted to know what data, created by my client and their subscribers could be moved from the old system to the new one:

• Listings? Of course.
• Roster? Of course.
• Contacts? That might be possible with custom work, not using RETS.
• Prospects? No.
• Saved searches? No.
• Custom columnar reports? No.
• Custom search screens? No.

More than half of the items that we wanted to move from system to system using RETS couldn't be done. Each one we couldn't move would mean pain (time/effort) for the MLS subscribers as they had to re-create the data in the new system manually. This isn't just relevant to moving from one system to another - it's relevant to offering a parallel system - or multiple MLS front-ends - or any number of potential MLS add-on products. And I could make similar points about the difficulty of moving between other real estate systems, such as association management and transaction management systems.

This difficulty in moving systems or adding systems (some would call this the "friction  of the transaction") does not encourage the most competitive marketplace for real estate technology - and this is bad for my MLS and Association executive clients and bad for their subscribers and members. Face it - most of the people driving the data standards are more established vendors - and they do not have incentive to improve standards to make it easier to move to another system. So, if you want the standards completed to the point where you can move *all* of your data from system to system, increasing real estate application innovation, increasing competition in the technology marketplace and making transitions between systems easier for your members - YOU have got to work with your peers to drive the standard forward.

If you want to contact the Chair of the RESO Outreach and Education committee, email Kristen Carr (kcarr@big-llc.com).

The Fall RESO/RETS Conference is September 23rd - 25th, 2009 in Chicago, IL - more information is available here: http://www.rets.org/meeting

Jul. 6, 2009 - Search Engines and the MLS Data Scraping Question revisited

This is a continuation of Search Engines and the MLS Data Scraping Question (http://www.realtown.com/mattcohen/blog/scraping-and-search-engines). That blog post started a lot of conversation, and Brian Larson did an excellent job of filling in a lot of the detail on his blog, starting here (http://www.mlstesseract.com/2009/06/search-engines-indexing-idx-sites.html). So far, he and I seem to be substantially in agreement, and after his five part series we are generally to the same point:

Our industry has a long way to go in discussing how it relates to the Internet - and topics such as how data is used by search engines, syndicators and others are ripe, perhaps over-ripe, for discussion. Through that discussion, policy around use of data should be developed. How one broker uses another broker's listings online is especially to be considered. This policy needs to be reflected on web sites in Terms of Use, anti-scraping, and other technical details. That said, we must ensure that policy enacted in our own industry does not disadvantage brokers online, in relation to sites that the policy does not  or cannot affect.

When a search engine blurs the line between their traditional role as a "conduit" site with a role as a "destination" in its own regard, indexing may be more controversial. See how Google is using real estate data in Australia:  http://maps.google.com.au/help/maps/realestate/. Google is now also heading in the same direction in select U.S. cities.

There has been an expectation that, when a search engine crawls your site, its purpose was to allow the public to enter search terms, get back a link with a small amount of text under it, and encourage the public user to click on the link and visit your site. This is referred to as the search engine being a "conduit". When a search engine crawls your site and not only indexes your content, but stores a copy of your data and presents that content - perhaps in conjunction with other content - it can become a "destination" site in its own regard.

Though in the example / URL provided, Google still links out to an original source of the data, getting users to that source may not be the primary focus of the page. What would you think of Google if the focus was on the "More info" link and you only saw a link of traditional destination sites when you clicked on the "Web Pages" tab? How about if the design changed further and there was a LOT more content on Google - public records data, demographics, etc.? Or what if Google added additional functionality - what if users could bookmark their favorite listings and share them with friends? What if they could get email updates or  RSS  updates via Google Reader when new matches to their criteria were found?

Where does a site cross the line from being a search engine and start seeming like any other 'scraper'?

As per my original posting on this subject, I still believe usage is at the heart of the IDX / search engine policy question. Ideally, there should be rigorous strategic discussions of how the listings are used by various parties today - and how they might be used tomorrow.  

Jun. 30, 2009 - Is your web site 'valid'?

In my previous post, ("Web design: size matters" http://www.realtown.com/mattcohen/blog/web-design-size-matters) I explained why poor webdesign in terms of website page size is as much a concern for executives and other business owners as for web designers and (of course) consumers.

Now I want to bring up something that will surprise many people - executives and technical staff alike: Most industry web sites don't use valid HTML. HTML is the primary building block for the web, and it is astonishing that most web sites can't manage to use it correctly.

Why is valid HTML important?

• It helps ensure the site will work as new browsers are released
• It helps ensure a consistent experience cross-browser
• It makes web applications easier and less expensive to maintain
• It facilitates web accessibility (to differently abled individuals)
• It can enhance search engine optimization (SEO) - or at least really badly invalid HTML can have a negative impact.

If you are contracting for - or having your staff build - a web application, valid HTML should be a basic expectation!

But look at the chart  below - comparing 46 industry search sites (as discussed in my previous post) with over 350 MLS public listing sites (as discussed  in "A Study of Multiple Listing Service Public Listings Websites"  http://www.realtown.com/mattcohen/blog/2009-mls-web-sites-study). Only 1% of the MLS public listings sites and 7% of the industry search sites use valid HTML.



Some MLS vendors also talk about how important standards are - but visiting their home pages only a single MLS vendor (Stratus) is HTML standard compliant at the time of this posting.

Ironically, even RealTown (my blog host) has made it impossible for this blog to be HTML compliant - though I've asked them to  correct this and anticipate they will do so at some point. Of course my own professional web site is HTML compliant as one would expect.

Using valid HTML is an important part of building a web application - hopefully this blog post and the one previous to it have illustrated that web application best practices are not exactly universal in our industry and deserve more attention and oversight.

Test your own site here: http://validator.w3.org/

 

Jun. 24, 2009 - Web design: size matters

When developing a property listings website, basic good webmastering skills and attention to detail is important to create a good user experience. Recently a client complained to me that their site seemed slow to them – upon review I found to my horror that the home page was full of bad code and un-optimized images, and that the page topped out at over 800 kilobytes (kb)! Sub-pages weren’t any better. Even on a high-speed connection, downloading close to a megabyte to display a page is going to make a site seem sluggish. Even worse, if the site is at all popular, large page sizes increase bandwidth costs. If you are an executive, you just read the most important sentence in this blog post - there’s money at stake here!

In the example I was discussing earlier, when confronted with the review, the webmaster tried to make excuses – to paraphrase and sum up: “Look, this listings site over here is comparably large”.  Sorry, that doesn’t fly. Using the 1000 Watt Consulting list of Web 2.0 search sites and adding additional relevant sites from the Hitwise Top 20, I looked to see how large the home pages of 46 popular real estate search sites are, in terms of compressed kilobytes. The results:

The chart below shows a visual representation of the research results. Note that the X axis labels have been removed so as not to embarrass the most ridiculously poorly constructed sites.

Page load size is only one aspect of good design. For a good discussion of design, see Rob Hahn’s blog post and discussion - http://www.notorious-rob.com/2009/06/19/dear-brokers-please-spend-money-on-design/. I could go on for hours talking about all the things one should look for in web applications – I’m sure I’ll come back to some of them in future blog posts.

But for now all I’ll say is (insert shameless plug here) please consider getting a second set of eyes on your web application.

Jun. 19, 2009 - Blue Dasher Technologies - Google Street View on Steroids

Three months ago, attendees of  the MLS Executive Workshop got a sneak preview of Blue Dasher's street-level imaging technology. Now that they've officially put out a press release, I can finally talk about the technology more publicly.

Many people might compare Blue Dasher Technology (BDT) to Google Street View - allowing the user to navigate a neighborhood and see the properties in their geographic context as if driving by them. That's about where the similarities end.

While Google has designed its product focused on the general public, Blue Dasher (BDT) designs products focused on specific business needs. The company is about exactness and placing you at the front door of a property once you’ve entered an address or clicked on a map. It also covers every public street in a county - not just 'hot spot' coverage like Google has in various markets. Google street view does not allow you to drive, you must click and wait from one frame to the next, skipping a great deal of information in the process.Google's photo spacing is about 30 to 40 feet average. BDT's is 8 to 10 feet, offering high density photography with more angles for properties and more actual clean Jpeg images of a property the realtor can utilize as part of their service. This equates to about six to 12 images of most homes. BDT offers Virtual Drive By (motion easily controlled by the end user - like in a video game) and "automatic" Virtual Drive By (routes) - Google does not. BDT offers embedded location based advertising (virtual "for sale" signs too) in their images - this can contain listing information, photos of the interior, virtual tours or even video. Finally, Blue Dasher leaves cars behind in major metros to maintain or refresh images - dealing with privacy and quality issues on request - while Google is less responsive.

Okay, okay - one final difference - this technology isn't free. But that's the cost of differentiating, and I think virtual drive-bys, exactness and location based messaging could be pretty darn appealing to consumers - especially if/when gas prices go back up! And the technology, which provides location based and contextual adverting opportunities for local companies, does provide an opportunity to defer the costs or even generate revenue.

Internet property search has already cut down the amount of time in the car for Realtors – this could help the decision-making process become even more efficient and less time-consuming for Realtors and consumers by providing a compelling mechanism to view the neighborhood surrounding the properties being considered. So, I'm bullish on this type of technology.

Here's a demo video: http://www.bluedashertech.com/demo1.php

Their home page is here: http://www.bluedashertech.com/

Jun. 18, 2009 - NAR and PCI Compliance Revisited

NAR sent out another letter recently making it clear that it is still their belief that organizations using their payment gateway do not need to worry about their own PCI compliance. So, I recently validated my position (http://www.realtown.com/mattcohen/blog/nar-and-pci-compliance) that MLSs and Associations that take credit cards MUST have their own security assessment process and PCI compliance - they can NOT depend on NAR to take care of security/PCI for them unless members/subscribers only enter card information directly into the NAR payment gateway. I got a second opinion from one of the most highly certified and respected security professionals in the U.S. - Paul A. Henry MCP+I, MCSE, CCSA, CCSE, CISSP-ISSAP, CISM, CISA, CIFI, CCE. I'm sure we'll be chatting with the folks at NAR soon enough...

So, if you're not on the path toward information security and PCI compliance as needed .... don't wait - contact me!

UPDATE: I now have a call set up with some smart folks at NAR ... hopefully we can get the confusion resolved and end up with a unified message.

May. 20, 2009 - Search Engines and the MLS Data Scraping Question

"Is Google a scraper?" That was the question at the center of news stories surrounding MIBOR's decision to tell a broker not to let Google index their site. The quick answer is "No" - there was no restrictive terms of service or limiting robots.txt file on the site, so technically Google did absolutely nothing wrong. But the question being asked ... that was the wrong question.

Finally, after the hype died down, the 'real' question started to emerge: "Should or could MLSs require that brokers not allow individual listing pages be indexed by search engines".  Since listings are given to brokers for advertisement, unless the seller opts out of online advertisement, since most consumers are searching for property online and search engines are an important part of online marketing, search engines will be an important component of giving listings the proper exposure and should be leveraged as much as possible. Also (and obviously) the MLS could probably make rules pertaining to an IDX feed but realistically not regarding the broker's own listings. But whether search engines should be allowed to index the sites is again the wrong question.

What's the real concern here? We've had IDX for some time - was it really just okay when it was invisible to search engines? Of course not. The real concern about 'data scraping' only comes from when the data is misused - that is, used for a purpose other than that intended by the homeowner when they provided the information to the real estate professional and by that professional when they added their own creative descriptions to the data to create the often copyrighted listing content.

What kind of misuse has there traditionally been? When a site is easy to scrape someone can come along and grab the listings in an automated way for display in an unauthorized location. Data can also be recompiled to create derivative products or to market back to the consumer. If the scraper adds an automated reverse telephone look up to scraped data, someone giving a real estate professional information to market their property one fine morning may find themselves called by moving companies and other service providers that very evening - and it reflects poorly on the real estate professional when that happens. So, the real question we need to ask ourselves is,  "How do we stop the misuse of data while not compromising the ability of the broker to market properties and promote the web sites on which the properties are located?"

Let's look at the type of requests consumers put into search engines. I believe that there has been a lot of hype about needing the whole address in the web page title and that individual addresses need their own website. Do consumers really expect to type in "100 Test Street in Testville, TN" and come back with a website? I don't think so - not at this point. We all know how the traffic comes in via web site search terms: "houses in Testville, TN" ... "Testville Tennessee real estate" ... "homes in Testville" "Subdivision Name in Testville". So, city, state and neighborhood/subdivision are obvious candidates  to allow a search engine to index. Key attributes might also be searched on - "lake view" etc. But the full address? Price? Bedrooms? Bathrooms? Square feet? Lot size?  I say, "ridiculous!" Are they needed for search engine optimization (SEO)? I believe the answer is an emphatic, "No". Since those bits of data don't help in the indexing of the listing by search engines for marketing of the property online BUT they are prone to misuse when programatically gathered (scraped) there is no reason why MLSs should not require that websites put anti-scraping mechanisms in place on those key items, while allowing search engines to programatically gather other information for the purpose of providing free links back to the web site.

But, anti-scraping begins at home. Less than 5% of MLS public sites have any anti-scraping in place to speak of - and good  measures are far more rare. But, I digress - before we launch into a tangent of anti-scraping tactics, we need to agree on a strategy for the level of protection required for the data to balance marketing with information security and privacy, and we must set policy that is reflected in contract terms pertaining not only to industry sites but to syndication endpoints as well.

Note - I've been traveling for more than a week and am writing this at o-dark-thirty in an airport parking lot - it's not my finest piece of writing - sorry! Hopefully I'm getting the ideas across anyway...

May. 16, 2009 - Ch-ch-ch-ch-Choices

This week I'm helping a client with one of my core services - MLS system selection. If you've ever been involved in product selection (or creation), I suggest you check out this video of Malcolm Gladwell talking at the TED Conference. Trust me, it's relevant: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/malcolm_gladwell_on_spaghetti_sauce.html

For extra credit, compare/contrast with The Paradox of Choice: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_choice.html

:-)

Apr. 20, 2009 - A Study of Multiple Listing Service Public Listings Websites

I have been an advocate for MLS websites that provide real estate listings information to the public since 1996. Such websites have always made sense as a hedge against industry outsiders that want to intercept the consumer on their way to the real estate professional, selling expensive advertising, charging referral fees and/or reducing the broker's capability to provide a one-stop-shop for services ancillary to the real estate transaction. MLSs have done much recently to reverse the misconception that a local public MLS site "competes" with brokers' online efforts and establish that these sites complement them – and thankfully, over the past few years, many MLSs have begun to strengthen their online presence, creating or improving on websites that include the listings. Some MLSs have built or licensed very compelling sites and made them the ‘go to' listing site for their geographic area, providing a steady stream of traffic and leads to their subscribers through cost-effective efforts, while others have not done as well in their endeavors. The purpose of this short paper is to review the landscape of the MLS public listings website, provide a baseline for discussion and hopefully spur continued improvement of MLS public listings websites.

I used the directory of sites maintained by Internet Crusade as a starting point for the investigation. When duplicate and non-working sites were removed from the list, there were 335 web sites to visit. 73% of the MLSs licensed their listings search (if not the whole web site) from their MLS system vendor while another 22% have built their own or worked with a local company to do so. The last 5% either licensed a solution from an IDX vendor, a national listings portal or, in a few cases, from their state REALTOR® association.

Interestingly, of the 73% provided by MLS vendors, 52% were provided by Systems Engineering, a provider with small MLS market share (by number of subscribers) but which provides service to many smaller MLS customers. Another 20% were provided by Rapattoni Corporation, followed by single digit representation by MarketLinx, Solid Earth, FBS, Fidelity, EZlist and Technology Concepts. A number of other MLS vendors each have less than 1% share of this segment.

Some Differentiating Features

Other than the raw listing information, these public sites need to be attractive and have an interface that facilitates searching for, browsing and comparing properties, making a list of listings and using that list to facilitate the visitors' property search. During this evaluation, I looked at many differentiating features including, but not limited to, the following:

Many of these features are available on current real estate portals like Trulia, Zillow, Cyberhomes, Realtor.com and so forth – so that's where there bar has been set for MLSs if they want to be competitive and enable the consumer to have a similar experience to the major portals.   Having a robust site increases the possibility of becoming the "favorite" real estate site for consumers in their market and a good site also creates pride within the membership which in turn increases consumer traffic through referrals.

There are many ways to implement the above-listed features – some good and some bad. For example, a map search can be as simple and poor as requiring the visitor start the search by clicking on a large and artificial geographic area on a map, and can be as robust as allowing for a polygon search along with other search criteria to find or narrow down search results – and the polygon search can be easy to use or difficult to use. Also, a site can technically have content such as mapping, neighborhood, point of interest and school information - but many of the sites reviewed were integrated very poorly with that content, making the user click over to other sites in pop-up windows or tabs for each property to view the additional content on a third party web site rather than integrating the information into the listing detail display. It's not just a matter of having a feature that's important, but making it easy to use for the consumer is crucial.

There are many other less common or unique features not listed above, as well as features that consumers won't see that are important for an MLS to implement to create an effective site, such as back-end reporting on web site use, listing views, leads sent, and so forth and while those features weren't included as a part of this review, they are important factors when an MLS is considering what technology to implement.

The Current Landscape

Let's look at some basics: the Privacy Policy, Terms of Use, and Anti-scraping. More and more, consumers are expecting that a complete privacy policy be posted online – but only 10% of the sites reviewed have a full privacy policy posted. A robust Terms of Use (along with anti-scraping techniques) is important to ensure that visitors only use the site and its content as expected – but only 9% have a robust Terms of Service and only 4% have any anti-scraping design or capability to speak of.

There are a lot of aspects of website marketing and search engine optimization, but for this study I examined the sites in terms of Google Pagerank. On a scale of zero to five where five is best, 71% of sites have a zero Google Pagerank while only 3% score a five.

In terms of HTML standards compliance, only 1.2% of sites have no HTML validation errors on their main search page. 15.6% of sites have 25 or fewer errors – leaving over 83% of sites with significant HTML validation issues. MLSs should care about this because invalid HTML can have an adverse affect on search engine optimization, mobile device usability, and web accessibility.

I performed a high-level review (only examining the main search page of each site) for compliance with web accessibility standards (see http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/accessibility.php) and found that all tested MLS public web sites have accessibility errors, and 83% have major accessibility errors.

It's important for an MLS listings site to have no channel conflict with brokers – specifically not having ads for services that may conflict with broker interests. Thankfully, we found that only 7% have advertisements that might concern their brokers.

Looking at the search capability itself, 31% have an Open House Search enabling the consumer to find listings of interest to visit, but only 7% have a Multi-Property Map allowing visitors to see a visualization of the location of prospective properties at a glance and allowing them to plan their open house visits more easily - and only a handful of sites offer driving directions integrated with that display. 16% have a Map Search – though as previously noted the quality of the map search varied greatly. Less than 1% of sites have a Foreclosure Search or Sold Status Listing Search – search types that consumers might find of interest.  However, during previous research, I found the percentage to be higher among larger MLSs. Exploring other criteria that relate to usability, less than 1% of sites have a Single Line Search (Google-like search beyond basic search criteria) and only 3% allow the user to Modify Criteria without Leaving Search Results.

Looking at the search results, while 78% of sites have a Property Map allowing the visitor to see the location of the home on a map and 62% included an Aerial or Birds-eye View of the property, many of these implementations were just link-outs to third party sites and potentially added many clicks to the consumer home search process. This is poor interface design. 2.4% include Point of Interest information, but even of this small number many sites require the user click through to another site to view the information, which is again poor interface. 84% of sites include Full Address Display, though most of those that don't display the address betray the address unintentionally via the links to mapping sites, which include the property address in the web address. In terms of other listing-related content, 94% display Multiple Photos, only 0.9% display Calculated House Values / AVM, 3.6% include Neighborhood / Demographic Information, and 5.4% display School Performance Data. Note that most sites displaying school information are just deep-linking to other sites rather than including the information directly in the listing detail report, which would provide a better consumer experience.

According to the 2000 US Census (http://factfinder.census.gov/), 17.9% of Americans speak a language other than English at home and 8.1% speak English less than "very well", and of course web site visitors may come from other countries where English is not the primary language. While the language barrier seems to be a growing trend, only 0.9% of studied websites provide a Multi-Language option.

In terms of activities the visitors can perform on the site, 4.5% include Showing Scheduling, 62% have a Mortgage Calculator, 55% allow the visitor to Email the Listing (to friend), and 2.1% allow the visitor to Compare Properties (side by side). 86% have a Print Friendly Property Report though what constitutes ‘print friendly' is a subjective thing. 12% of sites allow Registration/Login, 12% allow Saved Searches / Listings, and 9% allow the user to receive Email Updates for Search Matches. There are a few sites that do not require registration for the user to add listings as favorites, which while useful to the casual visitor, some visitors might accidentally close the browser without printing or noting their saved listings somewhere and may be frustrated by the loss of their search results.

Of the 28 criteria that I evaluated these sites on, the average site had 6.5 of the criteria, while the median was 7. Only 9 sites had 15 or more of the criteria. The following chart shows the clustering around those numbers and illustrates how few sites were exceptional.

Kudos

Following are some of the more robust and interesting MLS public listings websites:

Houston Association of REALTORS® - http://www.har.com
This site set the bar for MLS public web sites and HAR continues to innovate. The site provides lots of features for consumers to use, yet it balances that very well with ease of use. Allowing visitors to see the top 100 listings for a search with wide criteria and letting them adjust their criteria without leaving the search results screen if they want to narrow their selection is just wonderful. There are a few other sites that allow consumers to send themselves listing detail via text-message, but this was one of the first. As MLS executives have seen in Bob Hale's presentations around the country, the site also provides great reporting allowing the MLS to demonstrate great value to brokers.  HAR.com had over 1,000,000 unique visitors in March of 2009 and sends over 500,000 leads to its brokers every year at no charge. HAR.com is the first MLS public site I am aware of that has introduced an agent ranking system where the agent is ranked by the client. This is a controversial feature that I have been advising my clients is being offered by industry outsiders whether the agents like it or not, so we're excited to see HAR take control of the situation and offer it in a controlled environment.In the program's first month, over 1000 agents voluntarily enrolled in the "Client Experience Rating" system. HAR staff and volunteers spent time thinking through all the business rules to make this work. They encourage agents to opt into the program to receive the feedback, and allow the agent to decide whether they want their rankings displayed by their listings.  HAR sends the email survey to the consumer and has experienced a 38% response rate thus far. This is clearly a controversial feature on a MLS web site, and we congratulate HAR for innovating and finding a way to make this work well for its members!

MRIS - http://www.homesdatabase.com/
The combination of structured search (beds, baths, etc.) with natural language query for location and amenities is brilliantly done, providing tremendous power and ease of use. This site also displays listings no matter how many are found (nothing is more frustrating on other sites than searching and getting the message "You found 52 listings – go back and refine your search to have less than 50") and allows the user to refine their search without leaving the search results screen. It's so wonderful to see that MRIS looked at and learned from other industries, including a "People Who Viewed this Listing Also Viewed..." link. This site has all the informational resources a consumer might want, including comparable properties courtesy of Cyberhomes. Homesdatabase has been around for many years, but MRIS recently updated the entire site and started to promote it doing targeted online advertising. Their goal is to drive more traffic to the broker and agent sites. In the first 90 days since the re-launch of the new site, Homesdatabase has had 1.5 million visits, almost 20 million page views, and consumers are spending an average of 11:28 minutes on the site. They have also seen that many people are coming back to the site, and in a recent week in April, about 70% of the people were return visitors, and nearly 30% had been there more than 10 times! That's a good indicator that consumers like the site, and when they are ready, will be likely to contact an MRIS broker or agent directly. Like HAR.com, all leads are 100% free from the MLS public site.

The Connecticut Statewide Multiple Listing Service - http://ctreal.com/
This is another highly functionally robust site with a polygon map search and the ability to mark properties and compare the listings side by side. As with previously mentioned sites, this one displays listings no matter how many are found and allows the user to modify the search to limit the results further.

Bay East Association of Realtors® - https://www.bayeast.org/index.php?q=buysell_findahome.html
Providing an attractive interface and a powerful search across a wide array of criteria, this site has some interesting Web 2.0 features, such as allowing registered users to add notes on listings and set up an RSS feed for a listings search. It also allows the consumer to search foreclosures, which seems very responsive to people's interests right now.

Real Estate Board of New York (REBNY) - http://www.residentialnyc.com/
This site is "Powered by Trulia" but is not just a branded version of the original site. With the interface that makes Trulia so popular, keyword search, neighborhood information and statistics, and side-by-side property comparisons, this site is well constructed.

Multiple Listing Service of Hilton Head Island - http://www.hiltonheadmls.com/
This site may not have every feature on which I evaluated MLS websites but the design is quite nice and the interface has some very innovative elements.

FBS (for example: Northwest Montana Association of Realtors® - http://www.nmar.com/)
The dynamic and attractive "count on the fly" feature on the websites FBS provides makes it very easy for the consumer to see when they have narrowed a search too far or when there is an opportunity to narrow their search further using advanced criteria.

Next Steps for Your MLS

If an MLS is considering improving its current public listings web site, it's important to consider not only features, functions and interface – only some elements of which have been noted above – but also requirements such as standards compliance, search engine optimization (SEO), information security, performance and maintainability. I guide clients through this maze by:

• Presenting on the need for, and pre-positioning common objections to, robust MLS public listings websites
• Reviewing existing web applications, creation of or review of functional specifications, and working with developers on an improvement plan for improving functionality and usability
• Developing robust RFPs to solicit competitive proposals from technology providers for new sites or major updates
• Negotiating (or re-negotiating) technology contracts

Apr. 20, 2009 - TMK and National Public Record IDs

Mar. 31, 2009 - The MLS Mission Statement: A Short Presentation

I hope that MLS executives and board members find this presentation about the MLS Mission Statement educational and useful when considering strategic planning activities. 

View the presentation here: http://www.callclareity.com/MLS-mission.cfm

Mar. 17, 2009 - MLS Public Web Sites: 2009 Short Survey Response

I have an MLS client who wanted to get the 'lay of the land' when it came to MLS public sites. I called over 50 MLSs with public sites and asked a few questions of interest to my client - perhaps you will find the answers of interest as well:
 
Do you display sold/off market listings on your public site(s)? 
NO- 29        YES- 10        Considering- 13
 
Do you allow your brokers to display sold/off market listings on their sites?  
NO-17        YES- 21        Considering- 14
 
Do you display property address on your public facing web sites and online partner sites?
NO-4        YES- 36         Opt Out- 14

Visiting 94 public web sites, I found that 93% displayed street address and 95% of those displaying addresses also displayed a map to the  listing.