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. 20, 2009 - RE: Completing RETS: The Survey

Can I echo and add to one point here - RETS needs a roadmap.  It needs a three to five year strategic roadmap, and it needs a 12-month tactical roadmap.  Workgroups need to be re-chartered and realigned to address the goals on the roadmap. 

Without a roadmap, we aren't going anywhere.  To be sure, there's been lots of activity in RETS over the past two years.  However, to quote something I read today: "Do not confuse motion and progress. A rocking horse keeps moving but does not make any progress."

In order to make progress, we need to decide upon a destination and plot our journey.  'Nuff said. :)

Aug. 20, 2009 - RE: Completing RETS: The Survey

Another great post!!!  I have several comments but will try to be brief.

Buy In from MLS Execs - as you know I've been huge in RETS Marketing, Education and Outreach.  Kevin McQueen tried for years & years.  It's so hard to get the MLSs to pay attention to RETS.  And I'm not talking about getting them to meetings, I'm talking about having them attend sessions during other conferences they're already attending.  Big, huge thanks to Clareity for doing a brief RETS update during the MLS Workshop!!!  I've given that presentation and have always gotten comments from the audience - they thought it would be dry, boring, etc. but it wasn't.  We need all of the big conferences to do the same thing.  Way to be a leader, Matt!

Roadmap - I agree we need a roadmap.  We're spinning our wheels, everyone trying to move but not sure of the direction.  RESO is still mostly a volunteer organization.  The only staff person we have is Myron Adams and he works 1/2 time, not full time.  It's a "chicken & egg" issue - NAR has 100% decision making as far as spending, projects, priorities, etc. so the Board of Directors and RESO Staff (Myron) can make recommendations, suggestions, etc. but at the end of the day Daddy gets to decide where he's spending his money...the kids don't make those decisions.  Creating a roadmap, updating documents, etc. takes effort from people familiar with the industry and with RETS and those people have "real" jobs, they simply don't have time to do it all on the side.  CRT has taken a very active role in RETS and we've recently added 2 NAR Employee spots to the RESO BoD.  Mark Lesswing and Chris McKeever now hold seats on the BoD.

I can not speak for the entire BoD or the RETS community but from my perspective it would be great to have input from the stakeholders.  I would welcome it.  We need to move forward and we need direction.

Aug. 20, 2009 - RE: Completing RETS: The Survey

Lots of volunteer time and effort went into an excellent document, ratified in 2007, namely the RESO governance document.  From Kristen's post, and my personal experience, it's pretty clear that document is not being followed today.  Sounds to me as if sections 2.4.1 and 2.4.4, concerning the BOD's powers and responsibilities, are much less in reality that those described in the document.

The governance document, like past roadmaps, has been put in the glove box and is no longer in use.  It is another item RETS needs to begin enforcing in order to move forward as a standards organization.

Aug. 20, 2009 - RE: Completing RETS: The Survey

As MLS Staff, I can say I have great respect for the work being done and I appreciate the time and involvement given to developing this tool.  Many vendors appear to be jumping for RETS without a full understanding of how to implement.  Sometimes the problem is technical, but I am just seeing poor practices put in place.  Many in the industry still see RETS as a real time live link tool to the MLS.  From the MLS perspective, it has made data transfers to third parties much easier and I have found many reporting functions that I use and our agents can benefit from, but poor industry use of RETS access sours me on providing it.  When audits show that every subscriber of a product is logging in, querying, and retrieving records every half an hour since midnight, and each one has to have basically un-restricted database access to utilize the product, this is overuse and poor programming.  Just my thoughts.  Thanks Matt for a great survey!!!

Aug. 20, 2009 - RE: Completing RETS: The Survey

Good, informative summary, Matt.  Thanks!

Aug. 20, 2009 - RE: Completing RETS: The Survey

 Matt,

Excellent post which has educated me on portions of RETS which we, as an IDX vendor, do not see nor deal with in our day-to-day operations.

Some of the issues we see in our work with about 300 MLSs are certainly not of great concern to the individual MLSs we work with - at least if they are taken just at face value.  The RETS org surely should listen to the concerns of the MLSs and their members before the concerns of the vendors and we're well aware of our standing in the mix. However, since most brokers and agents purchase their IDX solutions from third-party vendors, they are at least tangentially related.

My suggestions are based on nearly a decade of working with MLSs to provide IDX services to their members. The issues we come across are not based on how RETS is implemented for any one MLS, but how differently it is done by the MLSs. For instance there are several ways the total number of bathrooms can be done: some use the decimal system, such as 3.5; others use just an integer for number of baths, such as 4. Others use separate fields for 1/4, 1/2, 3/4 and full baths. Some use more than one and yet the addition of the separate fields may not equal the total. You mentioned open houses, David Harris is absolutely right about it, and we have not seen the same implementation done in any two MLSs and a few use some whacky data practices (enough to make some of our DB staff cringe). The only two fields we almost never have to worry about data massaging are listing price and total number of bedrooms.

I don't mention this just to whine nor in hopes of making my DB team's work simpler. To be frank, the difficulties in standardizing the data are a competitive advantage to companies like the one I'm with, to eNeighborhoods and the few other national IDX vendors. It would seem to make sense that eventually the standards in RETS would tighten down well enough, at least on the core, "searchable" data that much of the data import would be plug-and-play after the first MLS import. If it were, certainly there would be many more IDX vendors and that competition would bring in a lot more innovation and lower costs at the same time. It would also be of significant advantage when MLSs move from one system to another.

There are some huge advantages in using RETS (I thank the Lord every time we just need to pull a few photos) and it's an unenviable task to try to get 900+ organizations to all be on the same page, but there are people up to the challenge and it's wonderful to see it is moving in the right direction.

Hate to admit, I've been mostly passive about rocking the boat about some of these issues; like I mentioned, the challenges are somewhat of a competitive advantage for us and we are beholden to the MLSs we service and so are very cautious about pointing out any so-called faults in their data practices. That being said, I am happy to get more involved with the RETS org and point out our experience with both the shining examples of greatness, as well as the less than optimal, from an IDX vendor standpoint. Hopefully getting off the sidelines will be of some help over time.

Aug. 20, 2009 - RE: Completing RETS: The Survey

Where do I start... RETS the data standard has great potential, from an IDX view point it simplifies data access, provides near real time updates, and allows for easier data mapping through the use of the RETS metadata. The problems with RETS is that it is being run by an organization which has not found a way to actually accomplish ANYTHING. The mashup of change proposals that is RETS 1.7.2 does not count, that started off as a “bug only fix”, an excuse used to leave our some breaking changes why other breaking changes were voted in without serious scrutiny.

The BOD seems to blame everything on lack of funding and support from NAR, yet for 2 years the BOD and standards workgroup has unable to even come up with a roadmap. Last time I checked, having a business plan was a requirement for getting funding in almost any adventure, post dot com bust. If that is not a requirement, and anyone has loads of cash laying around I have this great idea for a business please call.

If we really want to air the dirty laundry on the blog, and why not at this point it can't hurt, the problem in RETS is a lack of proper communication channels and documentation. RESO's communication strategy reminds be of being a kid, and having two tin cans tied to a string.. Ya ok it works, that is if you do not mind having a muffled message that is lost every time someone lets up on the string tension for a second. 

Just today, on our compliance call for example, it was asked if CRT or the BOD members on the call could tell the compliance group what the decision if any the BOD made regarding tool support. The answer was something along the lines of "hmm.. well.. it was a confusing call...  we talked... something was maybe decided... " Problem being if a decisions was made, and I am not really sure if one was or not, but that decision or lack there of was not properly documented and send back to the workgroup. This is not an isolated instance but largely and overwhelmingly the norm in the RESO world.

I for one have grown tired of arguing for a roadmap, for board minutes, for clearly defined process. I have frankly given up on RESO's ability to provide a positive movement for the RETS data standard that actually serves the Realtors best interest.

Having one of the few RETS 1.5/RETS 1.7 compliant clients, I have to say that watching a data standard that could serve Realtors so well, be miss managed and dragged down like it has for the last 4 years is a sad thing.

Aug. 20, 2009 - RE: Completing RETS: The Survey

Ryan, I hear your frustration, and that of many other passionate  people working on improving RETS. There are many opportunities for improving both the standard and the standards process. I actually took out a paragraph from my original posting about the funding versus road map issue you brought up -  thinking that we could focus on the scope of RETS, requirements gathering, and the needs of MLSs - rather than the current governance and management of the process.  I am glad you brought it up, but I think that improving those aspects of the process is more of an overdue discussion for NAR and RESO to have - it's not going to get solved here. But I do believe it can be solved.

Standards are  tricky things to get done - I've been involved in them before - before I even  came to this industry - and rarely is everyone happy about standards processes. Even ISO and W3C, which create many fine standards (and some less fine ones), have their extremely vocal critics.

I don't believe the last four years have been wasted - a lot has been accomplished. Four years ago RETS adoption was terrible - now, it's vastly improved. The work on RETS 2.0 - I'm sure it will be leveraged going forward. Did the compliance effort take energy away from other efforts? Yes, but it was probably worth it because the RETS community is that much larger and has that much more visibility. Does the process and standard meet every idealistic idea I might have about how it should be? Not really. Should we keep pushing to improve both the standards process and the standard?  You bet!

Keep the faith Ryan - an awful lot of bright people have their eyes on this blog and concerns such as the ones you bring up are being seriously discussed. It hasn't always been a smooth ride, but we've come a long way in ten years - I'm looking forward to the next ten.

Aug. 21, 2009 - RE: Completing RETS: The Survey

Ryan - board minutes are posted on RETS.org

Support - the Board can't make that call, it's NARs call because it is NARs policy.  Mark offered up help from CRT which means they are supporting it.  As far as micromanaging that support effort, that needs to be left up to Mark, Chris McKeever and CRT.  Paul and I were pretty clear on the phone call yesterday that CRT is supporting it although we are not certain what they are doing.  It's not our place to speak for CRT. 

Roadmap - I agree...we eed to have one.  I can't even come close to answering why there isn't one except to say there *was* one and everyone has focused on this NAR Policy thing for so long now things have gotten muddled.

Sorry if there was confusion!

Aug. 21, 2009 - RE: Completing RETS: The Survey

RESO Board minutes - First year-the minutes were secret. (Worring about competing RE standards I assume.) Second year -  last posting was 5/26/09. They meet monthly right.

Support - Dumping the responsibility back to CRT is political and just weakens RESO in the long run. I am told CRT has said they don't want that responsibility. NAR withholding funding from RESO is the real issue- Now it really is an 'unfunded mandate'.

Roadmap - How much effort is needed? Over 2 years? Is the board actually doing the compliance work? The board needs to focus on moving RETS forward, not RE politics.

While I enjoy doing RE related development and on average it is better than FTP, RETS takes too long to get working right and needs an overhaul. Where did the 2.0 version go?

Scott Campbell

A RETS client-side freelancer

Aug. 21, 2009 - RE: Completing RETS: The Survey

This is my last post...I promise!

Minutes - they were not "secret", they were overlooked.  I'll follow up with the RESO EO about the latest minutes, I wasn't aware they are not posted.

Support - I'm sorry for sounding like we were "dumping" support onto CRT.  CRT, as NAR staff, is much better equipt to handle support.  RESO does not have the staff and a group of volunteers can not do the support.  CRT has resources unavailable elsewhere and has also played an integral part in the creation of the Compliance tool.  Information is currently being created which will be posted to the industry as a whole outlining the exact channels for support.  I did a quick overview of the documents in progress on the Compliance call yesterday but, as this is a working document, did not feel it appropriate to nail CRT down to a specific workflow.  If that overview caused anyone to feel support was not being addressed I'll take responsibility.  My intention was to confirm support was being worked out but there is no final "workflow diagram".  CRT staff was on the call as well and confirmed FAQs, Tutorials, etc. have been a key project and they are about ready to be published.

Roadmap - you're right, the roadmap needs to be reviewed, revised and published.  I'll ask for that to be an agenda item on the next Board call. 

RETS, and now RESO, is hugely based on volunteer efforts, as I stated above.  There are still large amounts of money put toward RETS both from NAR as well as from private companies who invest their employee time, effort and IP.  There's a lot of work to be done, the more feedback and contributions we receive from the community the better off RETS will be.  That said, the RETS coummunity and the industry as a whole can email any issues they have to Myron, they can attend meetings.  I've never not answered an email or phone call about RETS.  If someone wants to talk and ask me to forward concerns to the Board feel free to email me at kcarr at big-llc dot com.

Aug. 21, 2009 - RE: Completing RETS: The Survey

For those playing along at home ... NAR/CRT is supporting the usage of the tool - as in, access to it, configuration/etc.

In the event that a server fails testing, that will trickle itself back up the river to the support staff that develops and/or configures the server - as it is a behavioural or configurational issue of the software.

More info here; http://certification.rets.org/home/tester/help/index.html 

and http://rets.org/developer/compliance

Aug. 23, 2009 - RE: Completing RETS: The Survey

Just wanted to jump back in here and comment on a few points brought up.

1. The BOD minutes from Year 1, were held in secret by the BOD and not released. In fact they were specifically held in secret despite my request that they publish them.

2. Great to see some new documentation going on up the RETS.org site. How does one find out when new information is added to the site? Notces about information, seem to go out to a few select people, who then pass it along by word of mouth to others.. This is not efficient.

There are far to many "water cooler" type conversations that happen in RETS that are the main method for distributing information.  Things to out to one or two individuals, instead of the entire workgroup that is in charge of an issue. I really think in this upcoming meeting, we need to define some clear communication and workflow guidelines for everyone to follow.

3.  "Roadmap - you're right, the roadmap needs to be reviewed, revised and published.  I'll ask for that to be an agenda item on the next Board call. " 

My only comment is great bring it up, however until I see a completed roadmap I am not going to get excited. We have started it multiple times in the last 2 years only to never complete it. I am ready and willing to contribute, and can dig out my previous thoughts and notes on this topic.

4. Assisgning support duty to CRT is fine to do, however that does not mean that RESO should not know the details for the support workflow and that RESO should not get status reports on the support process. This is RESO's data standard not CRTs, if CRT is the organization that RESO puts in charge of supporting a tool, we should control how that support is handled and ensure it is handled to our satisfaction just like any other project that RESO farms out.

The NAR policy is what forces the MLS to test to ensure compliance with the RETS standard. However the RETS standard and any test that ensures compliance is still RESOs responsibility. We as RESO can not define what NAR does if someone fails our test, but we can sure say if they are complaint wiht our defined standard or not.

My issue is we seem to be happy to hand things over without details, and then later we always complain that we did not have control and were not in charge. We can't have it both ways, either RESO is in charge or there really is not point in having a organization, BOD, and all the various workgroups.

Aug. 24, 2009 - RE: Completing RETS: The Survey

Ryan,

There is no question that there are issues to be resolved in the planning, project management and communications areas. However, I don't think bringing these up on RESO board meetings is what's going to get them fixed. Once the board meeting is over, these volunteers go back to doing what they are paid to do - running MLSs, building software, etc. - not primarily executing on discussions of how to guide the standard. 

Other standards are staffed to deal with needs such as architecture, technical writing, gathering requirements and coordinating RFCs (forget the roadmap for now - we've barely scratched the surface of requirements), project management, and communications - 3-6 people depending on the scope of effort and agressiveness of planning. The board has the resources to provide guidance - but not to fill all these roles.

A number of the opportunities for RETS process improvement have spanned more than one RESO board of directors - and have been extant long before RESO even existed. There's no blame to lay at the  foot of any of the volunteers.

How do we move RETS forward from here? The board meets again on September 23rd, and then there's a panel and open discussion - "RETS Issues, Challenges, & Perception Panel". See you in Chicago at the meeting (http://www.rets.org/meeting)!

Sep. 10, 2009 - RE: Completing RETS: The Survey

We’ve connected to many, many more MLS this year and one of the most painful aspects is that nearly every one, even those with the same platform vendor, all enable different fields for their RETS feeds.  I wont begin to speak about the different naming conventions for the fields requiring a ‘treasure hunt’ (entirely separate topic). Is there any initiative to at least standardize a minimum set of fields they will always turn on for a RETS feed?

The biggest issue is incremental pull, which is one key benefit of RETS.  I think this concept is new to many MLS used to the nightly FTP batch downloads.  As such, even with RETS, they are missing the benefit because:

 1) they only allow Actives
 2) not all have enabled the Last Modified timestamp
 3) not all enable member/agent ID, or office ID
 4) some RETS vendors use different methods linking users to property resources
 5) they don’t enable a user type field to distinguish agents/brokers from others

#1 causes a problem because if you pull all records initially, then just pull those who changed in the past day (incremental), you will never be notified when an Active changes status.  Understandably, they may want to restrict access but every feed, to benefit from incremental, should have an alternative method for clearing out non-active listings.  MarketLinx’s response with one client was to query them all once a day and clear them out by matching records.  This works if you have a small MLS, but often the platform limits the results to 5,000 or 10,000 records max per query.  Even if you try a full query with only the MLS#, the results can be more than the max allowed so you then have to write a program to “break up” the queries by some value (usually price ranges), then piece them together, then compare and deactivate old ones – it’s so ugly.

#2 causes a problem for obvious reasons because if they don’t always enabled the Last Modified field, you cannot perform incremental pulls and thus lose a major benefit of RETS in the first place (vs. Old FTP nightly batches).

#3 causes a problem for anyone not producing an MLS-wide search website.  If they want to display only that agent’s listings, they need a way to differentiate them from others.  It’s not sensitive info, just a way to link users to listings, and should be automatic.

#4 if a vendor wants to generate user accounts automatically from the Agent class, since MLS systems allow multiple users to have the same email address the only way to make this possible is to use their login ID.  Unfortunately, the login ID is not available in some vendors’ Properties resources and so you have two separate identifiers per user (one to link to listings and another known by the member to login).  This can be solved by design, but MLX, Rapp, Paragon and others have it in both; others do not so it would be nice to standardize this.

#5 cause a problem related to #4.  If a vendor agrees to provide a product to all active agents of an MLS, the MLS has 10-20% additional users in the Agent class that may not apply.  These can be appraisers, non members, etc.  The user type should always be standard, allowing a vendor to distinguish which users they synch their systems with, and enable access, according to their contracts.

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Has anyone tried to set a minimum standard of available fields for all RETS feeds? 

People are speculating the “death of RETS” and buzz about APIs (onboard), but RETS is fine, well designed, and very efficient – the major issue seems to be not enough education to the MLS administrators who enable the feeds, to understand minimum fields that should always be included. 

Perhaps every feed account created should include some minimum allowed fields (by the platform vendor) and then the MLS can turn on/off others depending on their specific policies.  This could save both MLS staff and vendors tens of thousands of man hours per year if resolved.

If it doesn’t conflict with the MLS/Board rules, I think a worthwhile cause would be to challenge the MLS platform vendors to auto-enable a minimum set of fields when the RETS feed is created for any user, that will minimally deliver the benefits of RETS, namely incremental pull, and solve the training issue with less knowledgeable MLS admin staff.

Anyone agree?  Lost cause?  In the works?

 - Mike Sparr, CEO, Goomzee