Tag Archives: MLS

RCG’s Zearch is Released!

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Robbie has just released what may be the most addictive home search tool I have every used!

Search Tool Codename: Zearch!

Some obvious highlights include:

  • Dynamic map of color-coed listings
  • Geocoded Rain City Posts

I know the search is addictive because earlier today I showed this to a friend who is in the market to buy a home in Seattle and we couldn’t pull ourselves away from bouncing around the map. To get an idea of what I mean, follow this link to the detail page of this listing in Ballard.

You should see a few things:

  • Photos of the listing
  • Lots of color dots
  • Raindrops

The color dots all represent different homes that are currently on the market in the nearby area. Light blue dots mean the house is far below the average listing price while dark red mean it is far above the average listing for that area. The addicting part is that you can click on any of these dots to bring up the home details (and photos) for that home. With my friend sitting beside me, we kept searching for light blue dots amid lots of red hoping to find a “deal”. Very interesting stuff.

You might also notice on the map that there are some raindrops. These represent Rain City Guide blog posts that have been geocoded. This is subtle, but very powerful, as it essentially represents a mapped-based archive page for Rain City Guide’s posts. The cool part about this is that as you’re searching for background on a home, you can see what RCG posts have said about the neighborhood! And as we continue to add more neighborhood content on Rain City Guide, I’ll continue to geocode the posts, which will automatically add more background data to the home search tool…

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What else has Robbie done?

For starters, he didn’t mess with the stuff that works well. You can still use the site to:

Some other things to notice about the new detail page is that whenever you move around on the map, all the nearby active listings show up. More impressively, you can also toggle on the nearby schools, gas stations, grocery stores, and other points of interest associated with every day living. Again, the color coded pushpins show that homes in Medina are bright hues of red, many homes in Renton are purple, while most of the homes in this area of Tacoma are blue. So much cool stuff, so little time!

On a side note, today was my last day as a transportation engineer! For the next few weeks I’m unemployed! 🙂

NWMLS to take 3 more baby steps into the digital age

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Ok, Robbie and I have both made our gripes known before about how closed the NWMLS technology is — even for agents. Well they are finally taking some steps in the right direction. I don’t have all the details yet so really not sure if they’ve gone far enough.  But I thought the readers of RCG should see it here first. I’ll follow up with details as each is launched.

The three major changes coming up are:

  1. New Vendor Access Agreements for MLS Data. This new agreement allows a Broker to have as many IDX downloads as the Broker wants —as long as the providing Vendors sell their products only to that Broker’s agents. For agents this is great as we should see a greater range of MLS data solutions. The downside is I’ve heard that it these vendor agreements will be excluding public access solutions of the data. In other words, you might be able to develop a really bitching CRM system for agents that accesses MLS data directly, but we (agents) are still limited to our company’s primary IDX feed for our website data.
  2. NWMLS Sold Data to Become Public  – Not sure they are going to give us all of the data fields on this, but a lot of the fields that become public record (e.g. close date, purchase price, etc) will be available on Broker-controlled websites. My guess is you will see some of the brokers coming up with online CMA systems for the general public. (Heading Zillow off at the pass?)
  3. FINALLY!!!  Digital Signatures. – NWMLS approved and endorsed DocuSign as the sole electronic signature system for NWMLS documents.

– Robert

What do real estate industry people talk about?

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My 10-12 weeks of “blogging” have been quite interesting for me, in that for 15 years I mostly have talked about the real estate industry with other industry people, and talked about local real estate with my own clients and local agents. Blogging opens up talking to consumers generally about the industry, which is in and of itself, quite a revelation.

Given I will be attending the MIT dinner event tomorrow, I am contrasting the speakers of that event with the participant theories of my normal industry discussions. Tomorrow’s event will be “the newbies” Zillow and Redfin plus HouseValues, whom I wouldn’t call a “newbie”.

I am “lifting” this discussion of the past few days from the forum that has been around since 1995 or so, and I have participated in since 1998. I thought this particular discussion was a huge complement to whatever I may hear tomorrow night. For the benefit of those attending tomorrow night, you might want to read this beforehand for “balance”. I have removed the names, except mine, since I am “lifting” it out. I think at least Robbie’s interest will be peaked by that part of the discussion that suggests that the MLS may cease to exist as an end result to all of this.

*******************

Agent A says:

I would guess that there is not a large brokerage in the country that doesn’t have plans to withdraw from MLS depending on the outcome of the DOJ suit. I believe that many large brokers are considering withdrawing from MLS REGARDLESS of the outcome of the DOJ suit…

All across America, in every major city there are 3 or 4 large brokers who control around 80% of the inventory. If COURT mandated MLS rules don’t make competitive sense to those brokers MLS will END.

Even if you and Attorney Barry and the rest of the majority of the NAEBA are victorious your victory will be pyrrhic– MLS will be run YOUR way but it won’t contain enough listings to be a market force.

“Ardell” wrote:

What I am asking everyone one to focus in on is what “should be” as opposed to what “has been” since before buyer agency existed.

and

My major beef with the industry is that buyer agency was set into a system, parts of which should have been revised accordingly, and still need to be revised.

Agent B says…

Could it be that buyer agency will be given as the justification for the large brokers pulling out of the MLS? As Ardell notes, the whole system is a carry-over from a time before buyer agency. Does it really make sense to “cooperate” with other brokers in an adversarial relationship in the same way as when it was a subagency relationship?

One could argue that a listing agent is not truly acting in their seller’s best interest by making the property available to buyers working with their own agents until they have made every effort to find a buyer themselves. If a buyer agent is really going to save their buyer money, help them get more concessions, etc, isn’t it in the seller’s best interests for their agent to find an unrepresented buyer?

Consider this hypothetical situation:

Large brokerage with a state-of-the-art website and large advertising budget decides that they will take all of their listings as exclusive, non-MLS, non-cooperating listings for 45 days. No lockbox, the listing agency will conduct every showing, and there will be no showings to buyers who have not gotten a mortgage pre-approval. During this period, they will not do dual agency, and will attempt to find buyer customers for their listings. If they do not sell in 45 days, the listing will then be entered into the MLS. Their justification for this is that they believe that this maximizes the chances that the seller will get an offer that is in their best interests. Is there anything that would be illegal or unethical about this?

I think it is very easy to come up with scenarios in which the MLS becomes the dumping ground for the bottom of the barrel properties and over-priced dogs. It’s also easy to see scenarios in which MLS entries are very bare bones affairs with just enough info to generate a lead from Realtor.com, but not enough to be useful for other agents anymore. I find it very hard, though, to picture a scenario in which the large brokerages will just happily keep providing data-rich, picture-laden MLS entries for all of their listings, if they lose control over how and where these listings will be used and displayed.

I thought this might be food for thought for those who have not considered how the industry might change in order to counteract the events currently taking place with regard to mls access.

Crossing the MLS moat

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One of the things I’ve noticed over the past few months is that an MLS feed is hard to get a hold of. The NWMLS places a 2 internet feed limit on brokers and agents are essentially handcuffed to their brokers IT decisions. The problem is that software engineers can’t develop new web sites for brokers unless they already have feed access and brokers can’t give you their feed access unless you already have their web site completed for them. Needless to say, this helps explain why online real estate search & estimation are relatively immature technologies, because the folks who could mature them, are kept out of the castle.

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Although, I got past the black knight guarding the castle, I can’t help but wonder how much better the technology would’ve been if things were less restrictive. This stance imposes artificially high technology switching costs on brokers. Oh well, in a way, I’m kind of happy there’s a black knight. The fewer unhappy Micro-softies that get into the castle, the easier it will be for me to get my share of the King’s gold.

"bottom feeder" sites and the mls

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pac Let’s start with an analogy. I love analogies.

I come to your store and ask if I can take that really cool T-shirt out into the light to see it better. The shirt costs $8.00. You say sure. I go out and set up a little stand with your T shirt and get five people who want to buy the T-shirt. Now I come back in the store and say, I don’t want to buy anything in your store after all. But I have five guys over there who will buy your shirt if you give me $2.00 each. You scratch your head and reluctantly agree.

Now I ask to look at your T-shirt out in the light one more time please. I go out and tell everyone the shirt is only five bucks. I come in the store with 10 people this time and say OK. I still want $2.00 a shirt, but these guys will only pay $5.00. Hmmmm…

How many times do you give the guy the T-shirt to see in the light? Is the horse out of the barn, Robbie? LOL

A “bottom feeder” site does not sell real estate, never has. The original site said “put your listings here for free” so we can all look at them. It’s really cool! Look you can see it on the internet. Very Kewl! Then the site said, if you pay me $250 for each of your listings, I will put your name on it. Hmmmm…well why didn’t you put my name on it in the first place. Hmmmm…OK, I do want my name on it, so here’s $3,000 for all of my listings.

Now when you go look at your listing on the internet it has your name. But it also has a little flashing button that says click here for a school report. You click on the button for a school report and there’s some other agent’s name in there. Hey! What the heck is that all about? So you call the site and they say you can buy a flashing button that says school report and get double the exposure! Hmmmm, so you pay him another $3,000 to get school report flashing buttons on all of your listings that point to you again.

Then you go back to see your listing on the internet and at the top of the page there is another flashing button that says “find a Realtor”. Your name no longer shows on your listing unless they click for details. You say Hey! I’m paying to have my name on my listing. They say sure, and if someone clicks the detail button they do see your name. But if you want to have your name behind door number 3, the flashing button at the top of the page….another $3,000, later there’s a button in the side bar….

Bottom feeder sites and the people behind them don’t know anything about how to value homes or sell homes. Bottom feeder sites don’t ever go out and see a house, nor write up a real estate contract or accompany a buyer to a home inspection. But they do get paid when a house is sold. They post the mls on a website, just like the guy who takes the T-shirt out into the light. They then sell the consumers who want the houses back to the agents, just like the guy comes in the store with people who like the shirt. Then they tell the consumers “let’s get those guys!” Let’s tell them we only want to pay 1/3 of the old price! Then they still want to get paid their “finders” fee for finding buyers using the agent’s listings to do it.

The mls doesn’t want anyone taking the t-shirts out to the pavement anymore 😉

Technology Sucks!!!

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OK…Got that off my ample chest.

I know you guys just love the technological advances, but some days I just want to kick it all back to the 80’s. If you “kids” can say “I Want MY MTV!”. then why can’t I say “I Want My MLS BOOK!!!”

You guessed it. The mls is DOWN! It’s a beautiful sunny Sunday, I’m ready to show houses, and the system is acting up. Guess I’ll have to go to my own website, www.SearchingSeattle.com, and find properties to show.

We are getting a new super-duper, upgrade to the mls. Well thank you very much Rappatoni boys! Who asked for it! The whole system will be screwy in the meantime, for what? So we can say we “added” something? So the background color can be different or the buttons can be “cooler” and rad or whatever you kids say today.

Then I call the mls to gripe, so I don’t have to do it here, and they are closed for President’s Day from Sat. through Tuesday.

Are the upgrades really worth the inconvenience? Then we all have to take a class to learn how to use the stupid new upgrade…OK, I’ll find the homes the way that you do.

I bet the darned new upgrade is just a fire wall designed to help keep Robbie and his RSS feed out 🙂

"Sarasota Realtor sues local real estate association"

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In response to Giles comment and question, here is an Inman article from December 2004 giving the whole story. Lois had been emailing me some strange things. She then went into a coma and passed away. I believe her suit was dropped at that point. I’m pretty sure the Association won on the Kentucky suit. Not sure what happened in Spokane. Not sure how Barry can do these in so many states, aren’t lawyers restricted to the state where they are a member of the bar?

“A Florida Realtor is suing the Sarasota Association of Realtors for allegedly forcing local real estate agents to buy memberships in the association as a condition of purchasing lockbox keys and multiple listing service data.

The suit, filed Wednesday in federal district court in Tampa, Fla., seeks $5 million and class-action status, amounting to $4,500 for each member of the class, and names 14 association directors as defendants. Lois M. Hekker, broker with Buyer’s Agents International Realty in Sarasota, is the plaintiff in the suit.

A representative from the Sarasota Association was not available to comment on the suit Wednesday afternoon.

The complaint cites the 1991 federal appeals court decision in Thompson vs. Metropolitan Multi-List in Florida, which held that a Realtor association that had monopoly power over its MLS could not force real estate agents to purchase memberships in the trade association as a condition of gaining access to the MLS. The complaint alleges that the Sarasota Association and other Realtor associations in Florida evade the Thompson decision by tying lockboxes and historical MLS data to purchases of membership.

The suit seeks an injunction ordering the Sarasota Association to sell lockboxes and historical MLS data without requiring MLS users to purchase trade association memberships.

“In order to practice her profession as a real estate broker, plaintiff needed to buy lockbox services and MLS comparable data from the Sarasota Association, which forced her to purchase trade association services she did not want,” the complaint states.

Agents purchasing the local trade association services also must purchase state and national association services, totaling about $424 per agent in 2004, the complaint states.

Sarasota Association members rent electronic lockbox keys from the association, which purchases them from GE, according to the complaint. Lockboxes are attached to the front door of a for-sale home and contain a key so agents can show the home to prospective buyers. “Licensees who purchase lockbox services have lockbox keys that open all lockboxes in the area covered by the MLS,” the complaint states.

The 21-page complaint cites other states where courts have declared it illegal to tie the sale of trade association services to the sale of the MLS, including California, New Jersey and Colorado.

San Francisco-based attorney David Barry of Barry & Associates represents the plaintiff. Barry has filed more lawsuits against Realtor associations than any other attorney in the country. He has racked up a number of losses with the exception of one case in San Diego that accused the Sandicor MLS of illegal price fixing. Barry has attempted repeatedly but unsuccessfully to obtain class-action certification in the Sandicor lawsuit.

Barry filed two similar lawsuits this year against the Northern Kentucky Association of Realtors and the Spokane Association of Realtors in Washington, alleging antitrust violations through Realtor association and MLS membership ties-ins. Both suits are pending and neither has reached trial.

The plaintiff in the Kentucky suit is Sherry Edwards, broker of Florence, Ky.-based Buyer’s Corner Realty. Edwards seeks return of association membership dues from the past four years.

Real estate brokers Mathew Prencipe and William Koshman of Prencipe Realty and Robert Cooke of R.H. Cooke & Associates are the plaintiffs in the Spokane suit, which seeks up to $8.7 million in damages and an injunction ordering the association to sell MLS memberships to agents whether or not they join the Realtor association.”

Real Estate Search is an evil hard problem

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google evilOne of my pet peeves about most real estate search sites is that I can’t search on what I want. All of them, ask the same 4 or 5 questions. Where is your house located? How much can you afford? How many bedrooms? Blah, blah, blah..

Well, I’m going to attempt to change that. I want to find houses with CAT-5 wiring built in! I want to find houses with home theaters & wine cellars. I want to find a home with air conditioning (believe it or not, summer is coming). And now, I can. I proudly present our new search remarks feature.

Using the power of SQL Server‘s Full-Text Indexing features, this is now possible. Granted, our search is a long long ways away from being Google good, but it’s a start. If somebody wants to throw a lot of money at me so I can turn around and buy a copy of Endeca In Front or a Google Search Appliance, I suspect we’d get a lot better.

For example, when I looked for “cat 5” and found a house that doesn’t have a black cat. I looked for “home theater” and found a lot of homes (but not lot of homes with home theaters). Do a search for “media rooms” and you’ll find a lot rooms (but not as many media rooms). Obviously, you need to pick your words carefully to get what you want. Also, I need to start adding words like “home” & “room” to SQL’s noise word list since those words appear on nearly every listing’s remarks section. But, let’s face it, writing a search engine is hard. Eventually, I’ll tweak things so I can get Google or Microsoft to do my dirty work.

In the mean time, I hope finding your dream home got a little easier.

Robbie
Caffeinated Software

Zillow MLS membership – done

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Zillow gossip of the day (already reported by Dustin in the comments): Rumor has it that Zillow is now a member of the NWMLS and they’re aiming to get a license in every state.

You could spin this as the story of a company that promised an MLS-free “revolution” settling on improving the current system, but business-wise, I think it makes sense; going it alone is a much higher risk strategy that could lead to spectacular failure and would definitely be an uphill battle. This means they can have all the listings of brokerage sites, a way better interface, and sell leads and maybe make more of the process.

In my mind, consumer-centric web design is Zillow’s true innovation in the real estate industry. Even the biggest sites still view the internet as a way to snag customers into using their “real” business. No broker or agent site approximates the consumer-centric feel of Amazon.com circa 2000 or Google and Yahoo today, although I think the race is on to get there. I give Zillow a good shot as it looks like they’re first to market with a trully consumer-oriented, national real estate search site.

-Galen
ShackPrices.com

UPDATE: John Cook of the Seattle PI picked up this story and has some interesting quotes from Zillow vice president Jorrit Van der Meulen, NWMLS Chief Executive Jack Johnson and Redfin Chief Executive Glenn Kelman. Well worth a read.