FBS Blog

Jim Duncan, Greg Swann and Tom Royce have all commented recently on Saul Klein’s writings on an MLS of the future.  As Jim notes, the ideas really aren’t new.  In fact, I’ve been writing about the future of MLS here on the FBS Blog for some time.

Buried in Mr. Klein’s long paper is what I’ve advocated as being the solution to many of the challenges facing MLSs today, namely standards:

Through the use of Open APIs that provide access to listing data, support existing authentication, and facilitate authorization, applications that leverage existing data can be built very cost-effectively leading to a richer ecosystem of features that will benefit real estate professionals.
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It is envisioned that numerous MLS vendors will adapt their products to work directly with MLS 5.0 via these open APIs in order to provide REALTORS® with a full featured and familiar front-end. Imagine being able to choose from a multitude of CMAs, or create your own application specific to your business. All the data can be stored in one database, and based on permissions, accessed and solutions and applications developed. In summary, the future will be a more open environment where brokers and agents can select their “Software of Choice” from numerous providers.

Of note, Mr. Klein doesn’t mention the API that already exists in the MLS world, namely RETS, which has had “software of choice” as a core goal for many years.  The vast majority of MLSs already support RETS and more will do so as the June 2009 NAR MLS policy requiring RETS compliance nears.  Yet, perhaps the reason Mr. Klein doesn’t mention RETS is because the standards have not yet enabled “software of choice” as envisioned.  Examining why may be more fruitful than wistful dreaming about social networking within the MLS.

The core reason RETS hasn’t resulted in a proliferation of new products and software of choice is because the data and business rules among MLSs remain widely disparate.  There is no ability today, with or without RETS, to write one piece of software that will work with many MLSs systems without customization.  The data and the business rules are too different and require too much customization.  Trying to solve this problem was one of the reasons I re-energized myself in the RETS process eighteen months ago at the Austin meeting.  Through the efforts of many others, progress has been made in defining a broad and deep data schema for listings and properties.  All this work, however, will be for naught without adoption, and so the question now becomes whether MLSs will be willing and able to map their systems to the schema.  The regional efforts across the country show that many MLSs are willing and so the real question is whether the RETS community will be able to make schema accessible to MLSs so they can use it effectively.

Greg, Jim and Tom (all linked above) abhor the idea of NAR running a national MLS of any kind and I couldn’t agree more.  However, the development of standards doesn’t require any central authority, only leadership from those who want to participate in the standards process.  MLS software of choice for agents is possible technologically but standards are required, and that is why standards are the future of MLS.

There’s a lot corny about Tom Cruise’s “you complete me” dialog at the end of Jerry Maguire but the part that always sticks with me is where he says something like “we live in a cynical world of tough competitors.”  Implicit is that there’s something more to life and I’ve been fortunate to witness that this week.

It’s been a long week around here working on the ARMLS conversion.  Not much sleep and lots of work.  Fortunately, that hard work is paying off.  We certainly have tuning yet to do on the system but we’ve gotten over the core networking issues that were plaguing us early in the week.  Jaison Freed and Cal Heldenbrand pulled an amazing all-nighter on Wednesday to re-build our firewall configurations from scratch and split our web farms, which were the key networking issues.  Jaison’s effort was especially amazing given that he had pulled an all-nighter Monday night as well.  Another stellar performer, working through illness and little sleep, James Ridley, summed up on Twitter how I feel exactly:

A really tough week, but I saw some great reactions to some really adverse situations. It’s awesome to work with people like that.

I’ve named a few co-workers but the reality is that literally everyone in the company has been nose to grindstone, doing great work.  What an amazing group of people.  Sometimes I found myself wondering if the stress is worth “it” but what I’m realizing is that “it” isn’t a monetary reward or other “win” but the relationships we build through life.  So, yes, it’s worth it. 

The reactions of our employees have been matched equally by the reaction of our long-time customers.  These are people who’ve been there with us through thick and thin, and continued to show their humanity this week.  These are people who are watching our company grow and celebrating with us even though that growth has impacted them negatively this week.  In our cynical world, there aren’t many people who can reach those heights and so we’re very fortunate to have so many of them as clients.  I’ve received many e-mails of support from clients and friends in the industry this week, and to all who’ve written, I want you to know it means so much. 

At the same time, the newarmls.com blog is blazing away with rants and insults from a few drowning out meaningful discussion by others.  I begrudge no one their anger but find it unproductive as well.  Richard Park’s comment (#247) rebuffing the ranters hit home with me: “Do you think that those in charge of the system are sitting in their chairs gloating over your difficulties? Don’t you think they are feeling enough pressure and motivation to get things going without your trying to kick them in the gut while they do it?”  No one here at FBS has shrunk from or denied the problems we had this week, but the cynical nature of some people does amaze me. 

But what it really does is highlight by contrast how amazing the people are who rise above their frustrations and anger and seek out solutions and dialog.  Those are the people I want to do business with.  For them, we’ll walk through crushed glass with bare feet (or at least stay up all night) to help them.  Why?  Because we’re helping another human being.  A person.  That the “it’ in all of this. 

Though all the people I’ve worked with and spoken to this week are the inspiration for this post and my work, the fire that lit my energy again enough to write the post was from an e-mail sent to me by David Newcombe at Russ Lyon | Sotheby’s International Realty.  David was caring enough to solicit positive feedback from some of the others in his office and sent it along to me and the great team at ARMLS with the following note (which I hope he doesn’t mind me sharing because I’m not going to e-mail him to ask at this time of the morning):

” So, for anyone feeling down or pissed off - here are the GOOD NEWS emails. Please pass on as you wish to the incredible teams at ARMLS and Flex, with love from Russ Lyon Sotheby’s International Realty……..”

In this cynical world, this kind of support builds relationships that make the effort worth “it”.  We move beyond objects to people.  Humans.  Amazing and beautiful.  Now, back to work.

P.S.  I’m having to moderate comments because, I believe, some of our firewall changes are preventing Akismet from handling the comment spam.

With ARMLS going live today, we’re experiencing a heavy load and reconfiguring the web farm a bit to adjust to it.  Sorry for the sporadic experience.  We expect to have it smoothed out in the next few hours.

Unofficially (the official word belongs to ARMLS), Russell Shaw had the first new listing entered into the flexmls Web system that went live for ARMLS today.  I was checking out Russell’s listing when I came across this picture and thought it was perfect for so many reasons.

Russell made his mark with the first listing (actually, he had the first six!) and it’s a huge relief to me and everyone here at FBS to finally be going live.  We’ve been working on this for months and, as with any big project, there comes a point where it just has to be finished.  I’m certain we’ll have a flurry of activity on the support lines over the next several weeks as the ARMLS membership becomes accustomed to the new system, but it will be so much better to work with customers on a live system instead of beta.

I changed my mind about Inman.  I was pretty excited to go but there’s just too much going on around here to head out to San Francisco for four days.  I really want to try to attend the meetings of the Minnesota MLSs discussing data sharing this week in St. Cloud and there’s a ton of stuff going on around the office for the final week before the ARMLS go live on July 28.  Generally, I can work from anywhere but I can’t be in two places at once and the more interesting work is here, so that’s where I’ll be this week.

I finally made my flight reservation for Inman.  I decided to go mostly to meet up with some important people and hopefully meet in person some others I’ve gotten to know on-line.  RE Bar Camp and Bloggers Connect should be good for the meet ups, but I suspect the after-parties will be better.  If you’re going to Inman and want to get together, let me know.

Our MLS software currently processes hundreds of thousands of searches every day to send out updates regarding new and changed listings for agents to consumers.   This is an obviously valuable service from the agent and a core tool of the MLS system.  However, we know a large number of these e-mail updates go unopened and are just hanging around consuming resources and sending out unwanted mail (i.e., spam).  To address this, we’ve been thinking about the best way to purge the “dead wood” and so I thought I’d bounce some ideas around here and see what you all think is best.

1.  Simple Expiration — One approach is to simply set an expiration date on every prospecting event and require the agent to renew the event at expiration.   The advantage of this approach is that it’s clear and provides a regular reminder to the agents to review their prospects.  The downside is that the agents may not want to conduct such a regular review and will see it as an unwanted hassle.

2.  No Activity Expiration — We could expire an event if the links being sent haven’t been accessed by the recipient in a certain number of days (e.g., 30-60).

3.  Combination — Another approach would be to combine the two and require an annual review/renewal of all links (whether accessed or not) and a shorter-term renewal (30-60 days) if the link hasn’t been accessed.

Vote for your choice below.

A related question is how much advance notice of the expiration should be given to the agent?  A week?  Two weeks?  More?  Any other considerations I’ve missed?

The FBS Blog is back with comments.  Thanks to Brandon for helping me get it figured out!  If you desperately wanted to comment one of my riveting posts from the past few weeks, please go back and visit them:

No Time to Shower and Internet Leads for Real Estate

Roost: Peeling Back the Onion, A Marketing Platform for Brokers

Leads from Listings and Weeping for Buy-Side Brokers (or not)

You know you’re busy when you don’t have time to shower in the morning.  That’s how it’s been for me lately, which explains why I haven’t been blogging. Anyway, I have been keeping up a bit with my reading and this post from Greg Sterling caught my attention with some interesting data from Yahoo! Real Estate and so I quote it here in full along with Mr. Sterling’s conclusion:

* Consumers spent an average of 12 hours online researching agents and 75% selected an agent within one week of starting their search
* Home buyers and sellers consider approximately two agents before making a final decision
* 74% of people who accessed an agent Web site got there with the help of a search engine
* 45% of respondents used the Internet to learn about agents they didn’t know existed
* 41% discovered special deals and promotions offered from an agent through the Internet

These data offer  more confirmation of the Internet’s influence on consumer decision making. There’s no comparison with word of mouth, which probably accounts for the highest percentage of leads to realtors.

I upgraded WordPress last week and have had all sorts of fun ever since.  New posts are automatically being flagged as not allowing comments, when the settings most definitely are set to allow them.  Bugs. Also, I published the last post too early, just because I wasn’t yet used to the new interface.  Anyway, my apologies to those who may want to comment.  Hopefully I’ll find time to figure it out soon.  In the meantime, if you’re desperate to comment, the posts earlier than the last two still allow comments.