Jun. 30, 2009 - Valid HTML on your web site: a management issue

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 (http://www.callclareity.com) 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 Clareity Consulting's 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

Download in Adobe Acrobat Format

Clareity Consulting
April 2009

Clareity Consulting has been an advocate for MLS websites that provide real estate listings information to the public since the company was formed in 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.

Clareity 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, Clareity 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 Clareity 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.

Clareity 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, Clareity 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 Clareity Consulting 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 Clareity is aware of that has introduced an agent ranking system where the agent is ranked by the client. This is a controversial feature that Clareity has been advising our 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 Clareity 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. Clareity Consulting guides 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

If your organization has an interest in engaging Clareity Consulting to assist with its listings website or online strategy, please contact: Matt Cohen - Matt.Cohen@CallClareity.com - (612) 331-1788 or Gregg Larson – Gregg.Larson@CallClareity.com - 480-368-8100.

Company Profile

Clareity Consulting was founded in 1996 to provide information technology and management consulting to the real estate industry. Clareity is committed to delighting its consulting clients and provides a wide variety of services to MLS, Associations, brokers, franchises, and software and service companies that serve the residential real estate market. Clareity brings its clients a fresh insights and wide perspective gained by serving clients throughout the industry.

Clareity provides the following services to MLSs and Associations:

• MLS System Selection and Implementation
  • Surveys
  • Review of MLS options
  • MLS Request for Proposal (RFP)
  • MLS demonstration facilitation
  • Contract negotiation
  • MLS project management, communication plan and implementation assistance
• MLS Public Web Site Request for Proposal (RFP)  
• Transaction Management System (TMS) Request for Proposal (RFP) and Selection
• Public Records Request for Proposal (RFP) and Selection
• Regionalization facilitation
• Staff audits and compensation studies
• Strategic planning
• Content/data licensing
• Focus groups
• Information security and business continuity assessments
• Executive and technical recruiting
• Public speaking

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

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

Clareity Consulting hopes 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

Clareity Consulting has an MLS client who wanted to get the 'lay of the land' when it came to MLS public sites. Clareity called over 50 MLSs with public sites and asked a few questions of interest to our 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, Clareity found that 93% displayed street address and 95% of those displaying addresses also displayed a map to the  listing.

 

Mar. 10, 2009 - Wearable Tech - A "Sixth Sense"

WOW! game-changing wearable tech from the Fluid Interface group at the MIT Media Lab - http://tinyurl.com/btmdy6

Mar. 10, 2009 - Virtual Office Websites: Challenges and Opportunities

One of the highest rated sessions at Clareity's MLS Executive Workshop was the "Virtual Office Websites: Challenges and Opportunities" presentation. I've posted the presentation, along with some talking points here: http://www.callclareity.com/VirtualOfficeWebsites-2009.pdf

Mar. 9, 2009 - 8th Annual MLS Customer Satisfaction Survey

I have posted the results of Clareity's 8th Annual MLS Customer Satisfaction Survey on http://www.callclareity.com/ - linked right from the home page. This year, 178 MLSs (14 more than last year) completed the survey, representing 817,140 subscribers. 

Clareity’s Annual MLS Customer Satisfaction Survey is a valuable source of input for MLS executives when evaluating a vendor's service and system capabilities, but I encourage all clients to do their due diligence: there are many factors to consider in evaluating which MLS system is best for your specific organization - this is just one piece of the puzzle.  

Mar. 3, 2009 - Guessing the MLS RFP Outcome

When I help an MLS organization in their system selection process I always try to guess what the final selection outcome will be after I get back the proposals (but before the final demonstrations). Reflecting on the last three RFPs where my guess was incorrect over the past few months, the following were the reasons why:

* In the first RFP, I thought they would value performance and ease of use but they prioritized robust reporting and statistical outputs.

* In the second RFP, I thought they would prioritize price, system customization capability and overall system satisfaction but they made a surprising selection and couldn't really articulate why they went the way they did - but I don't second-guess clients.

* In the third RFP, I thought they would prioritize the 'partner fit' as the two finalists fielded very competitive systems at similar prices but their impression of the system overall was the most dominent factor in their decision.

I always try to make sure clients have the most thorough information at their fingertips to make a good business decision in an MLS system selection process, but how they will weigh that information and make a final decision is always interesting and the unexpected results fascinate me.

Feb. 26, 2009 - Setting standards

Today I received a press release from a real estate software vendor indicating that they continue to "to set the standard in SSO technology". This vendor has a penchant for braggadocio, and this claim is one of many that they have made in the area of standards setting that just irks me.

Let's clarify who actually sets the SSO standard: The SAML standard, used to facilitate SSO (Single Sign-On), is lead by the OASIS standards group (http://www.oasis-open.org/). They have been the ones that set the standard starting in 2001. The real estate software vendor had nothing to do with it.

Later in the press release, the vendor indicated that they have "been leading the charge on this open standard for the real estate industry since early 2007". Since Clareity Consulting initiated the discussion of SSO and SAML in its white paper, "The Convenience and Security of Single Sign-On" (http://www.callclareity.com/SingleSignOn.cfm) in August of 2005, was the company that gathered numerous vendors in meetings in 2005 and 2006 to agree to use the SAML standard for real estate application SSO in the first place, created the reference implementation that most if not all of the vendors are coordinated around, and hosted additional meetings at conventions for vendors to discuss implementation, it might possibly be more accurate to say that Clareity Consulting has been leading the charge on this open standard.

What this vendor has done is to implement the SAML standard. Just like other vendors are doing - quietly.

To sum up: implementing a standard is not the same as setting a standard. One vendor does not set an open standard anyway - it's something that is done cooperatively.

Feb. 25, 2009 - I could write a book about RETS

I think there's a lot more information needed out there for the RETS standard. We need something like an O'Reilly book for all the real estate application developers. I think the biggest problem with RETS education today is when an MLS executive says "Sure, let's go all RETS" and every broker tech, consultant and local vendor throws their hands up in frustration after going to rets.org and finding little to support the steep RETS learning curve.

How do we get this book written? I'm not sure - books take a lot of time and money to write - I don't think I'm up to the task myself.

Feb. 23, 2009 - Consumer search and the MLS

I’ve been looking at some of the “next generation” of consumer real estate search – beyond “natural language” search – this search includes commute time to jobs, cost of living preferences (insurance, entertainment, housing, utilities, etc.), distance to amenities (parks, grocery store, gyms, golf, airport, etc.), school information  and performance, crime/safety information, and other demographics (own/rent, age, occupation type, education, income, family size), neighborhood and property foreclosure information, as well as all the traditionally searchable MLS fields. Consumer sites are also starting to get more sophisticated about suggesting homes that are similar to others the consumer has displayed an interest in and ordering the search results on relevance to all of the aforementioned lifestyle and demographic criteria and weighting as indicated by the consumer.

In contrast, MLS is still mostly focused on searching and displaying the listing characteristics, and prospect searches are often displayed in order of price rather than on the more complicated criteria that consumers use to select neighborhoods and homes. I reflected on this limitation to some degree in my earlier blog post, “ Improving Prospecting Part 2 - Gesture and Intent and Beyond

Now, imagine the consumer goes through the effort of outlining their lifestyle and other non-listing-characteristic criteria on a web site and are presented with the carefully selected listings that match both their property characteristic criteria as well as all those other parameters. When they go to the real estate professional, that professional  has no way of inputting any of that into their MLS for search – let alone having a way (say, via RETS) to have all of that preference information flow automatically into the MLS from the consumer’s search site(s) to generate a search for their new prospect.

MLSs can’t get complacent about new property search capabilities and leave them to consumer oriented websites alone to implement. As I’ve described above, there’s a relationship between consumer search and professional search that will necessitate, at the very least, following in the use of these capabilities and implementing the means for consumer preference data to flow from system to system.  Or even better, real estate professional IT systems can lead those accessed by the consumer, allowing the professional to provide the consumer with additional professional-grade information and interpretation that helps maintain the real estate professional’s  value.

Feb. 16, 2009 - Cost Savings for MLSs (number 19 of 21)

In advance of Clareity Consulting's sold out MLS Executive Workshop I asked MLS executives from around the country how they have either cut costs while maintaining the same level of service or kept costs the same while increasing the level of service they provided.

I received twenty-one great ideas that will be shared during the Workshop, and I'm sure others will come up during the Workshop itself.

One idea that I'm looking forward to discussing is 'unbundling' products and services to reduce costs to those that don't utilize much service.  I can see how this could reduce the cost for some people to belong to their local/regional MLS, especially those who cut back to the absolute basic MLS package. But I believe that the subscribers that would do this are doing wrong by both their industry and consumers by decreasing their own use of the information tools that  enhance their professionalism.  The whole industry can be painted with the broad brush of unprofessionalism based on the actions of these subscribers. Further, this decreases the buying power of the MLS for providing those professional-grade  tools that the subscribers need now more than ever to show value to the consumer.

I can see where unbundling makes sense - it seems logical that people should only pay for those resources they use - but I have those more strategic concerns. I am really looking foward to  the Workshop!  

Feb. 9, 2009 - Facebook: a real estate industry explosion

Lately, it seems like everyone I know has moved to Facebook - especially real estate industry colleagues. I like Facebook very much - it's one of the better social networking sites on the 'net, with all the best parts of Twitter, LiveJournal, Blogger and other social networking sites built into it.

That said, all of the user-built applications that want to access my profile make me a bit nervous. I generally counsel friends not to accept these application requests and ask that they please not send them to me. I also suggest people read the following article:

10 Privacy Settings Every Facebook User Should Know

http://www.allfacebook.com/2009/02/facebook-privacy/

Feb. 2, 2009 - NAR and PCI Compliance

According to a letter sent to MLSs and associations by NAR, "When associations use the Realtor Ecommerce Network, the burden of meeting the PCI security standards falls on NAR, the merchant, rather than the associations." This is incorrect and puts these organizations at risk.

For those not familiar with PCI compliance, If your organization accepts credit cards, there is a set of rules you need to be aware of called “PCI Data Security Standards”. PCI stands for “Payment Card Industry” and includes the five major credit card companies. These companies have all agreed that any company that stores, processes or transmits credit card or debit card data must comply with a rigorous set of information security guidelines.  By the end of 2007, any organization that accepts payment card transactions was supposed to be in compliance with the standards – and if not, the credit card companies (or the bank through which the cards are processed) could assess fines on non-compliant companies and even disallow further credit card transactions until PCI Data Security Standards compliance has been achieved.

To clarify this issue, I quote from the PCI Security Standards Council (https://www.pcisecuritystandards.org/) site: "Does PCI DSS apply to merchants who use payment gateways to process transactions on their behalf, and thus never store, process or transmit cardholder data? PCI DSS requirements are applicable if a Primary Account Number (PAN) is stored, processed, or transmitted."

The key words here are "processed or transmitted". Let's say I had a web site that sold widgets and I linked out to Paypal when people checked out on my site. To be clear, when the user input their credit card information, the URL in their web browser said "http://www.paypal.com" and no portion of the checkout process involving the credit card involved my web site. In that scenario, my web site has nothing to do with the credit card information - the information is never input on my web site, processed or transmitted from my web site - everything happens at Paypal - so they are the only one that needs to be PCI compliant. If, for example, NAR were to fully host and audit the association management systems AND other credit card systems where credit card information is processed and transmitted, then they could be solely responsible for PCI compliance - just like the Paypal example. However, MLSs and Associations take credit cards often on paper or via email (electronic fax), via point of sale devices, and allow for the input/processing and transmission of the credit card information via a system that is located on their local area network. Therefore, it is the responsibility of such MLSs and Associations to attain their own PCI compliance.

PCI compliance is not easy to attain and maintain, but it's just part of doing business within the rules. My company, Clareity Consulting is working with a number of MLSs and Associations to help them attain PCI compliance - and our sister company, Clareity Security is the exclusive real estate industry reseller of McAfee Secure, which provides ongoing vulnerability scans required to fulfill the PCI requirements.

If you have management responsibility for such an organization and don't have your PCI compliance documentation in order, you may wish to consider moving forward on that quickly in 2009.