At the CAR Board of Directors Meeting in January, the CAR BOD tasked the MLS Working Group to create plans which would, if the BOD so decided, be the basis for modification and simplification of MLS in California, and move towards the 6 Guiding Principles previously stated.

The plans created with the help of a consulting team and presented to the CAR Directors on June 8, 2007 in Sacramento contemplate:

1.       Aggregating MLS Data from all the 70 or so MLSs which would give all MLS Participants and Subscribers access to all the MLS data of all the participating MLSs for a single fee, uniform rules, etc or...

2.       Creating a statewide MLS to replace the 70 or so existing MLSs which would result in fulfilling the 6 Guiding principles.

3.       Reducing the cost of MLS to Participants and Subscribers

What the Working Group concluded was that the next step for CAR would be to fund, with up to $500,000, the creation of an “Information Engineering Plan.”  A motion to that effect was sent forward to the BOD and will be reported in a future post. The task  is to create the structure or schema to allow all the data from all the MLSs to be properly categorized. What is considered a full bath in San Diego may not be what is considered a full bath in San Francisco. What in San Diego is considered a “neighborhood” may not be considered a “neighborhood in Berkeley. The fields used in San Diego might omit certain fields used in Contra Costa. In the early days of the REALTORS Information Network (RIN) the same issue existed and the solution proposed was something called DXM (Data Exchange Method). This is a real issue to be solved in order to move ahead with a Statewide MLS or an Aggregation of data on diverse vendor platforms, or even the same vendors multiple platforms.

Complicating the issue is the fact that 3 major population centers in California are already working on 3 different approaches to the above:

1.       Quatro – San Francisco, Bay Area Regional MLS, Sacramento – Data Sharing with Single Sign on and Strong Authentication (Rapatonni the common vendor) and a fourth, “read only” data base

2.       NCRex – San Jose, Silicon Valley, Bay East, et al – Creating one MLS (a “mini” statewide system)

3.       CDU – Los Angeles Area MLS – Alliance of MLSs sharing MLS data where the MLSs have different vendors 

Further complicating the issue is political sentiment that CAR should not get in the way by creating its own solution(s) but seed these ongoing efforts to help discover the best result for all REALTORS in California, and for consumers.  Some local associations, MLSs, and their volunteers fear loss of control, loss of revenue, loss of jobs for key employees at the organizations absorbed in the process.

 CAR’s MLS goals are a worthy destination. The path to arrive there is less clear.

 It is easy to focus on the wrong information and miss the real issues. In my mind, appropriate questions are:

1.       What would be the mission (purpose) and vision of a statewide MLS?

2.       What are the consequences if we do not move in this direction?

3.       What are the consequences if we move in this direction, but slowly?

4.       Is there urgency?

5.       In the technological structure, are we really willing to spend the money to compete in a Web 2.0 environment?

6.       If yes to question 5…why the talk about 6 pictures? Will this be scalable? Will we be able to ad Virtual Tours and video? Not important you reply? That is what the “Outsiders” are doing

7.       What about Web 2.0 Challenge?

8.       What paradigm of MLS are we using as the assumptions to move forward? Are we merely looking at changing the form of MLS and not the substance?

9.       Are we addressing content syndication?

10.    What action was taken by the CAR Board of Directors this week in Sacramento? That will be the subject of the next post.

Saul

Saul Klein
President/CEO, InternetCrusade