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For the most part, rates are unchanged as of those I posted last Friday. Okay…that was too easy!
Since I have some extra space here…did anyone see the Inman News Special Report (are you ready for this?): Mortgages are not sexy party conversation? Yours truly was interviewed, along with some pretty good company, including Dan Green of The Mortgage Reports. This is a three part series on the real estate blog revolution. I’m pretty honored to have been included in this piece considering my short time in the blogosphere. What on earth did I ever do with my life before blogging….
About Rhonda Porter
RETS has come a long way from the days when we (Clareity) wrote that white paper, though as your own frustration shows, there’s still room for increased adoption and standards improvement. That’s really all the white paper was about – urging people to put resources into RETS so that it would be successful. 2006 saw some wonderful new RETS servers released by MLS vendors – servers that provide a lot of easy to use control over data access authorization and control over which fields and listing statuses get exposed for specific RETS users. Almost all of the major vendors have made RETS servers available to their customers at this point, so I’m hopeful that your situation will improve.
Hey Robbie,
I have to agree with Matt the RETS systems have come along way. The large adoption of RETS has made many things a lot easier for us. You just happen to be in 2 systems that have chosen not to distribute using RETS. Both Rapattoni and Paragon have RETS available but its the MLS that has chosen not to take advantage of it. The NWMLS uses its own proprietary app not the one provided by Rapattoni.
Yeah, since the NWMLS & EBRD have decided not to deploy RETS (and they are the only 2 largish MLSes I’ve been exposed too), I really have no idea how widely deployed RETS is, how stable the standard is, or really how difficult it is to support. Unfortunately, since my local MLS hasn’t deployed it, I don’t really have a server to develop or test an implementation against. I wonder what’s blocking their respective deployments?
I wish there was a scorecard, an MLS conversion guide, better RETS / SDK documentation, perhaps a Clareity blog or something that let me what the state of the industry is w/r/t to standard support. I want to embrace RETS, but due to the luck of the draw, I can’t. A prosepctive IDX customer often has no idea on what the answers to my questions are and as a small IDX vendor, the only real sources of information I feel I have is Google, hanging out in the Real Estate Webmasters forum, or reading white papers from Clareity. Maybe I should have lunch with the engineers at Redfin or RealTech, since they are dealing with the same growing pains that I am. (Calling Mr. Goyer & Mr. Davis)
I know one thing for certain, the next MLS I port my code over, will be RETS compliant, and it will be the last MLS standard I’m going to deal with. Until then, I’m just going to make my code base faster, more feature rich, and more search engine friendly since that work will benefit all my future potential customers (regardless of what MLSes I end up supporting). Hopefully that stance will twist a few more arms in the right direction.
First, a shameless self promotion. Want excel to talk to RETS? Check out the ezRETS ODBC driver. Its also cross-platform with Linux and Windows support with OS X support not far way. (I just need to improve the installers a bit.) ezRETS is built on libRETS, an cross-platform C++ API that aims to let you ignore most of the transport issues and just concentrate on your app. You still need to know about RETS, but we feel it greatly simplifies things. We also currently support bindings for libRETS to the .NET languages, Ruby, and Python, and unlike ez, libRETS fully supports all three platforms I mentioned.
Also, a previous poster already pointed out the fact that Rapp has RETS, your MLS just hasn’t deployed it. Sounds like MLS policy needs to be updated.
As for “major MLS” support of RETS, both MRIS (#1 in size in the ocuntry) and MLSNI (#2) support rets. I forgot the exact figure, and its true, only 35% of the MLS in the country support RETS, but 80% of the listings in the country are available via RETS.
As for RETSLite, that was a discussion I started within the RETS community to explore a REST-like interface for RETS. For various reasons, that discussion has been put on hold. The first being that Jeff Brush was going to introduce a change proposal for RETS2 that would open it up to a REST-like interface as well as the current SOAP interface. Without discussions like these, the standard gets stagnant and doesn’t address needs like the REST interface you were calling for above.
As for RETS moving too fast… Its been my experience that when the RETS commitee slows down people predict that RETS is dying. (Reminds me of an old netcraft joke…) When RETS moves at a good speed, people complain that they are moving way too fast and killing the past.
While I agree that some of the rhetoric around RETS has been “RETS2 is here, only chumps aren’t using RETS1″ the pragmatic truth is that it took 8 years or so for widespread deployment of RETS1. I would think that RETS2 would take at least that long, with overlapping of RETS2 and RETS1 for some time. RETS1 isn’t going away any time soon.
In any case, it sounds like you have more of a MLS policy issue than a technology issue.
I forgot to mention that along with a new rets.org that is launching today, a wiki is being added as well. You can find the new rets wiki at wiki.rets.org.
The goal is for people both as part of the RETS committee and outside it to provide information such as you cited in the first paragraph of comment 3. Eventually, some of that knowledge will be polished and “promoted” to the stable, uneditable, rets.org.
Regarding having a resource for you to find out the extent of standard support, you can read up on what MLS products are certified RETS compliant at http://www.rets.org/server
I agree with Keith that your issue is specific to the policies of the MLSs you are dealing with and suggest that you may want to encourage the MLSs you deal with to deploy RETS through all of the MLS subscribers that you have influence with.
Hi Robbie,
What’s an independent Seattle brokerage to do for a decent interative map based search ? We use currently two systems on two different sites. An interactive map based search from Wolfnet and a Web 1.0 map static map search through Logicaldog.
1. Can’t use both on one website and combine the back office functions.
2. Wolfnet is not really “pretty” and cannot be separated into 2 sites unless you buy two solutions
3. Real Tech are exclusive to John L Scott (which is the best interface out there at the moment ) and Coldwell Banker in WA
3. Graphical Data are exclusive to Windermere in WA
4. DsSearch Agent do not cover the NWMLS
5. The interfaces of the rest are not really good.
6. Your Zsearch is functional but the demo on Ardells site also looks cosmetically “functional”
Surely there is a market developing a cosmetically appealing and functional Microsoft Virtual Earth system for independents that also has a static map based search for the technically challenged. Maybe I am just frustrated.
Matt / Keith,
I’ll have to play with the .net wrapped libRETS one of these days. Thanks for all the updated information. One thing that would be helpful is a list of who doesn’t support RETS or who is in the process of supporting it. Couple of questions…
How is RETS doing in Canada? Judging by the XML returned, the standard supports no-US locales (as it should)…
How are photos, and other attachments handled (say an MP3 file or a MOV file)? The test web client on your site, only displays a single photo per listing, and I’m assuming that’s a limitation of the sample data or the client, and not the standard?
Where RETS hasn’t been deployed yet, what are the leading reasons given my MLSes?
Any advice on effective NWMLS arm twisting tactics?
I think it’s initially hilarious that the MLS’s do not use database’s of which you’re describing like it’s new technology and hasn’t been available for the last 30-40 years. Then ultimately downright depressing that none of them have done any innovation since their inception.
Not only that, but our clients (the agents) seem to want to blame the tech companies for this when in reality it’s the MLS’s and how protected they are. RETs would be a dream come true, but an honest to god XML/RSS feed would be even better. Or make a new standard called MLSRSS. I’ve been toying around with writing a microformat for listings as well. That would provide even more functionality for when Real Estate moves into the 20th century for web based systems.
I work as a 3rd party provider after an IDX to serve websites to agents, and the number of middle men to provide data to the agents who need it is sickening. The cost could be insanely cheaper if we could just get around the MLS’s.
Ian Bell,
We should get together someday. Even if you don’t do business with me, I’d still like to talk with you and find out what features I am missing. I can use your insight when I get around to developing the “next generation” of Zearch.
Have you seen my work on rpaseattle.com? I’d like to think it’s more cosmetically appealing than my work on RCG and it has a few more “back office” kinds of features. I’ll have to respond to all your other points in a separate blog posting…
Robbie,
No problem doing the update.
As for Canada, I know they’ve been investigating RETS, but as my membership is US based, I haven’t personally paid much attention. Paul Stusiak, who’s one of the technical co-chairs of RETS would be a good person to ask on that. He lives in Canada and has a good handle on that market. You’re right, RETS1 didn’t have much in the way of localization. RETS2 had that in mind as it was being developed.
As for binary data, RETS1 or RETS2 can both handle any time pretty easily. RETS1 defined 7 types of objects, but you could pass any mime-type within those 7. And those were “well-known names.” You could add more outside those 7 if needed. RETS1 can pretty much handle any arbitrary binary for any arbitrary number of them. Its all in how the server is setup or whatever. RETS2 is even more flexible in this regard.
As for that client you mention, CRT won’t claim it as “theirs” as its not, but it is on the RETS committee resource box. That client was written by others, but that only 1 image thing is either a limitation of the client or of the demo server its pulling from. Its certainly not indicative of any of limitation of RETS.
Where it hasn’t been deployed why hasn’t it? There’s a number of factors: ignorance of the standards, old wives tales of RETS being insecure, and the biggest one, as you’ve seen, a control issue. Many MLS’s do not trust their own members with the data.
As for arm twisting, a bottom up approach is also useful. Also pointing key board or AE type people at resources like NAR’s CTO, or people on the RETS committee who can explain that RETS isn’t a scary thing, that its good for the industry, and things like that. Protecting and locking up the data and making it more difficult to get access to is a losing battle in the long run, in my opinion.
Especially when its so easy for agents to just post that data on Google, Yahoo, Zillow, and others. The worst thing MLS’s can do to combat those new threats is to tighten up even more. But now I’m editorializing and speaking for myself rather than my employeer.
I’ve been using RETS in San Diego since 2002. Biggest problem I’ve run into is the MLS and the double standards when it comes to who gets access.
As I see it, the problem with RETS is that client developers are under represented. The face-to-face meetings, where things are voted on and decided, are overwelmingly MLSs and MLS vendors. No one speaks up representing the client-side interest.
It is like the MLSs think it isn’t in the MLS’s interest to make data access easy. (Can the DOJ say ‘monopoly’?) It reminds me of corporate DBAs not wanting people to use ‘their’ databases.
BTW – a MLSRSS sounds like a great idea. Of course the data would need to come out of an MLS. ;-(
Robbie, to answer your Canada question, RETS is very much in use in Canada. While not every single Canadian MLS is a client, all of my Canadian MLS clients provide access via RETS, which to Keith’s point about ‘old wives tales’, can be made far more secure than FTP.
Regarding the question of where the listing content should go, the individual listings belong to the brokers, and they are welcome to post them to whatever advertising media they believe is appropriate. The listings are provided to the MLS by brokers and their agents for specific purposes – facilitating cooperation and compensation between real estate professionals. Sometimes the MLS goes beyond immediate mission that in order to meet brokerage and real estate community needs – but it is not for the MLS to send listings willy-nilly all over the Internet.
There’s a balance to be made between making “data access easy” and appropriate protections on data access, as needed to protect the consumer. If consumers had their information put into the MLS and immediately, that every evening, they were deluged with phone calls, emails, and postal mail with offers from moving companies, inspectors, mortgage companies, home decorating and landscaping companies “Improve your curb appeal!!!”, etc. – the days of the MLS as useful tool for cooperation and compensation among real estate professionals would be over. Consumers would request their information *not* be put into the MLS. Perhaps the MLS would even have liability for the problem in some way. That’s when the government would get involved. At any rate, if putting my property listing in the MLS meant there was uncontrolled access to the listing information and I was subsequently harassed by marketeers, I certainly wouldn’t put my information there. Don’t get me wrong – I’m not against syndication of real estate listings for advertisement purposes – it just needs to be done, by those with rights to do it, in a controlled way that balances different legitimate interests.
Scooter, calling the MLSs a “monopoly” and invoking the DOJ is just flame-bait. What you call a “monopoly”, others would call an “efficient marketplace”. The brokers and agents in areas with multiple MLSs – what you might consider healthy competition – are not particularly happy about it. Having multiple MLS systems in a geographic area has proven to be highly inefficient and real estate professionals spend more time and money to accomplish the same thing. There certainly hasn’t been any demonstrated benefit to the consumer of creating the inefficient marketplace.
Comments and opinions are mine alone and may not represent my employer’s position.
By ‘easy data access’ I meant ‘easy to code to’ with common protocols and fields. If there were an easy, uniform way to access multiple MLSs in a region it would be possible for a single agent/broker application to query, or even update!, all the MLSs at once. While this does not directly address membership costs, it might give some leverage during negotiation. A single benevolent MLS is still the most desirable.
The ‘monopoly’ comment was a poor attempt at a joke about the recent DOJ/MLS lawsuits with a very bad delivery. Reading it now, I think I’ll put myself in timeout.
Scooter, I agree with the ‘easy to code’ to part, for sure – its a good goal and one that many of the regionalization efforts are aiming for – when they go beyond ‘data sharing’ and spend the time to establish common business rules and work to move their data definitions and uses as close together as possible – though I fear necessary localizations will always make the technical solution a challenge. Of course, there’s historical data/reporting from funky formats to contend with when trying to conform- I still love that, in some markets, 4.555 bathrooms = four full, 3 half baths. My brain is starting to hurt… and I don’t know what they would do if they ever added 3/4 baths in that market, but that could get really ugly!
As long as you intended a ‘wink’ on the monopoly comment … not everyone would. It’s always hard to tell tone in a blog!