I’m excited about the panel we’ve assembled for our FBS Summit on June 12 to discuss the issue of whether or not MLSs should have consumer-oriented listing search sites:
This panel brings a variety of perspectives on listing search sites, and we’ve convinced them to spend three hours with us so we can delve deeply into the issues. We’re going to have three one-hour sessions: (1) initial overviews by the panelists of their views; (2) a panel discussion moderated by me; and (2) round-table discussions with one panelist at each table for 12-15 minutes and then rotating to the next table until each table has had an opportunity to ask questions of each panelist.
With the recent settlement of the NAR/DOJ litigation on VOWs, I think this topic is more relevant than ever and I can’t wait to delve into the issues. If you have any questions you think I should ask of the panel, comment on this post and I’ll follow up after the event here with their responses.
Whoa, check it out, our little niche hit the New York Times today. They call it M.L.S., which I find funny, but most likely is correct. Anyway, on to the article. I wonder if Bob Hale knew they would start the article like this:
The triple threat of a weak market, legal pressure and increasing competition has compelled real estate professionals to offer their information more freely online, putting cracks in a walled garden of data that stood strong while the industry enjoyed its breakaway growth. It also presages an end to the days when sellers must list their homes with a broker so buyers can see them.
I also find this quote interesting:
Tom Hurdlebrink, chief executive of Northwest M.L.S., said his service’s shift [in allowing Redfin and others to display FSBO's and non-MLS foreclosures intermingled with MLS listings] was meant to “create a balance of giving consumers what they want while promoting the best interest of our broker members.â€
Bob Hale concludes:
But Mr. Hale, of Houston’s M.L.S., suspects that resistance will wane. “Their attitude has been, ‘Just because the consumer wants it doesn’t mean we have to give it to them,’ †he said. “It’s the sure way to your demise.â€
Hmmm, at some levels, this seems like a “dead if you do, dead if you don’t” conundrum, but, at the least, it poses a very good prelude to the discussion we’ll be having at our FBS Summit June 12 regarding public-facing MLS sites. We’re assembling a panel with Brian Larson from Larson/Sobotka and Marilyn Wilson from WAV, who each have written papers recently on the issue of public-facing MLS sites and have somewhat different views. We’re also in the process of getting at least one MLS executive and one broker with differnt views. We’ll start with some presentations and a panel moderated by me and we’re going to then follow with a speed Q&A session that I think will be really interesting.
For example, Trulia and Realtor.com are mentioned in the article as well. R.com is against FSBO’s for data quality reasons and Trulia is against them because they offend brokers. Who has the better model here? Does it all come back to Google in the end? Are we in a battle for links and link love? Because here’s the deal: Links require public-facing sites. Does the MLS have a role to play in that battle? Or not?
The Gateway/TREC/TBD discussions are heating up again, sort of. Re-visiting the topic seems timely with the latest iteration of the NAR PAG report recently “released” and the trimester RETS meetings in Philadelphia next week.
My take is this: The NAR may well have the cart before the horse. So far, the NAR’s PAG seems to have focused on defining a “system” for aggregation but the TREC documents avoid the fundamental question of the terms of use on which brokers and MLSs will agree to share data. Here’s a quote from the document:
Then, further down, the document says:
These two statements seem inconsistent, because an MLS or broker submitting data to TREC will be required to license that data to all other TREC subscribers and such a license is a transfer of intellectual property rights. This apparent conflict is just one of many key questions, however, regarding the terms of use for the data submitted to TREC.
The document also stresses that the data will not be publicly accessible. Yet, at the same time, the “Statement of Inevitability” at the beginning of the document lists the proliferation of “[c]onsumer-focused real estate websites” as one of the reasons TREC is necessary — to keep Realtors “at the center of the real estate transaction.” At this level, not only does the concept feel like the cart before the horse but also like trying to put the horse back in the barn, just as they’ve started to run free.
This brings us back to the core issue: What are the terms of use on which brokers and MLSs will allow others to use their data? TREC tries answering this question only in the most narrow terms (broker/agent to broker/agent, in private, behind a walled garden) but the web insists on asking a much bigger question involving not just brokers and agents but consumers and third-party aggregators and so many others. As the links above show, brokers are already answering these questions for themselves by sending listing data here and there but not yet everywhere, which creates the very real likelihood that TREC will be too late to the party.
Of course, NAR is hamstrung in fostering the necessary dialog about usage of listing data on the web by the DOJ litigation. Also, in spite of the insistence that it isn’t any such thing, TREC very well may be the first gingerly step in the direction of addressing the question of how listing data should be used on the web. Rather than being the cart before the horse, an actual implementation of a national aggregation may be exactly what is needed — and all NAR can do for now — to incubate the discussion. For this, I applaud the work of the PAG.
Like the NAR PAG, I believe this is a defining moment for real estate data on the web and I encourage the NAR to consider how it can re-visit the big issue of sharing listing data on the web. That’s what the consumers want, not having to go through an agent to access the data. For example, one of the best uses of TREC data would be for an agent or broker to create a publicly accessible web site to engage their customers. Yet, that seems off the table. I’m pretty certain the NAR PAG would have loved to create a more sweeping plan involving both public and private access, but felt it wasn’t possible. The result is the proposal focuses on implementing a closed system instead of creating a foundation on which others can build systems.
What I think would be useful is for NAR to foster a discussion among brokers, agents and MLSs regarding the Open Web and what that means for real estate. This same discussion is occurring right now with regard to the web as a whole, and Brad Neuberg recently suggested: “If we take the long term view, how can we give the web an open enough infrastructure to evolve over time and meet each generations needs, while maintaining its structure enough to actually mean something and stay true to its promise, similar to the U.S. Constitution?” He emphasizes that this isn’t so much about specific technology but rather the general philosophy: “if we define the Open Web in terms of [specific] technologies, then we risk losing sight of what makes the web special and being able to have the intellectual nimbleness to evolve the infrastructure of the web. . . . We will be fighting yesterdays battle while allowing new, proprietary technologies to take over if we focus on technologies rather than philosophy.”
This is where I think NAR can provide leadership, by fostering discussions around how aggregated real estate data can be made most valuable in an ever changing world. IDX has been and remains one of the best tools available to agents and brokers for engage with customers on the web today. Is it time to revisit the IDX policies of old? Are the same questions and controversies that arose over VOWs in the DOJ litigation still a concern? Or is it now possible to redefine IDX in a way to make it even more useful? These questions are left unanswered by TREC, for good reason no doubt, but I think they remain the core questions.
Here’s our new baby. Though already weighing in at hundreds of pounds, we’re excited to watch it get even bigger!
I’ve been at the Clareity MLS Workshop in Scottsdale for the last few days and yesterday was the first day of sessions. There were sessions on:
There were other sessions on security and web site privacy policies as well, but I won’t be covering those here.
John Mosey from RMLS-MN and Art Carter from CARETS conducted a session on the data consolidation efforts they are pursuing in their areas (Minnesota and California, respectively). As Art described the CARETS approach, they are creating a new listing repository to which all of the participating MLSs will send their data. Users also will have the option to upload listings directly to the repository. Each MLS will then be able to download the entire dataset to present it back to their users. In fact, the only access to the data will be through one of the MLS systems; there will not be front-end provided by CARETS, it is only a repository of the data.
In creating the one data set, Art described how they had to “kill some hamsters.” If you think of the fields in the current disparate data sets from each MLS as a bunch of hamsters in a cage, you have two choices of how to combine those hamsters: you can either build a bigger cage or you can kill some of the hamsters and only keep the best ones. CARETS chose to kill some of the hamsters and created a data set that is best of all the systems for their area.
John Mosey from RMLS-MN spoke next and described how he would rather be stripped naked, dipped in honey and covered with red fire ants than ever try to merge another MLS into RMLS-MN after his failed attempt with the Southeast Minnesota Association of REALTORS. Instead, John’s approach now is to follow a model similar to CARETS only using his Northstar database instead. John repeatedly lamented the fact that RMLS-MN represents 80% of the agents (or something like that) in Minnesota and yet has all the headaches of dealing with the smaller MLSs outside his area.
I think Gregg Larson had the best advice of all regarding regionalization, data sharing, etc., when he said that every market area is different. Sometimes data sharing makes sense, sometimes a repository makes sense, and the key is to consider the objectives you are trying to achieve and weigh those against the costs. There is no one-size-fits-all solution. Out in the hallways between sessions, I had conversations with several who were wondering exactly the same thing — what are the objectives being sought in these efforts? Clearly, trying to eliminate duplicate entry and providing easier data access for overlapping markets are laudable goals, but where is the value for less overlapping markets? There is a real sense, expressed well over at agentgenius this last week, that one unstated objective of the rush to data consolidation in some markets may very well be to consolidate power.
John and Art were followed by Chris McKeever from the Center for REALTOR Technology (CRT), who described the NAR’s plans to create what they’re currently calling The Real Estate Channel (TREC) and what used to be called the Gateway. As Chris described it, TREC is going to be very much like CARETS, except that no listings will be directly entered into the system, they will only received from local MLSs. NAR also intends to purchase/license public records to build a parcel-based system like Zillow’s. Maybe they should just buy Zillow instead? Nah, that wouldn’t work, because NAR intends for this to be open to agents only, not consumers. I’ve said before and I’ll say again, NAR could make something of this by simply focusing on creating a standard for a universal property ID to let the web organize the information. NAR could create a non-profit that could be the ICANN for property IDs, and that would be valuable for tying together the efforts of those publishing real estate info on the web. Trying to cram everything into one silo is never going to happen.
Next up was Saul Klein from Point2, Mark Tepper from Homescape, and Marty Frame from Cyberhomes, all of which were advocating syndication of listings to their or other sites. Saul’s pitch was that the listing is a marketing asset and should be promoted all over the web, similar to how agents use yard signs to promote the listing and themselves. Marty Frame had a very interesting discussion about how Cyberhomes is working on focusing their web site experience to the various stages homeowners, buyers and sellers experience, as opposed to treating all users the same. All of these speakers were very focused on the need to collect and analyze user activity data to improve the experience for users and to understand the return on investment (ROI) from syndication. In other words, focus on which sites provide the best leads from your ads.
The next panel included Bob Hale from HAR.com, Jim Harrison from MLSlistings.com, and Jenny Natale from MLSLI.com, all of which operate public facing MLS web sites. The message was clear: MLS web sites do not compete against broker sites for traffic. Instead, MLS web sites can drive enormous traffic to broker sites. Bob Hale presented a ton of stats from Media Metrix showing that in market after market across the country, broker web sites rarely rank highly in terms of traffic . In contrast, public facing MLS sites almost always rank highly, even more than popular sites like Realtor.com and others.
Those were the big highlights for me from the first day. Kudos to Gregg, Matt, Tina and the entire Clareity team for putting on a great conference.
Oh, wait, I almost forgot, Gregg gave the FBS Blog a Clareity award for being the best blog on MLS issues. Gregg also said he thought blogging was the most over-hyped technology for 2007.
There’s an excellent conversation going on over at agentgenius regarding local versus national MLS, consumer access to listings, and the value (or lack thereof) of listing aggregators. In the midst of this is a post by the XBroker dissecting the value of real estate agents and several posts regarding Redfin’s new features. Let’s see if I can pull all these together.
First, the agentgenius wave of posts and comments illuminate for the participants that there is a difference today between the MLS agents use and advertising listing portals focused on consumers. Second, Redfin is proving that these hitherto disparate worlds are merging into something new. Third, the contrast of Benn Rosale’s rant with the XBroker’s, illuminates that the value agents bring is in making a market for real estate.
At least that’s how I interpret Benn’s post. The agents are on the ground, in the field, representing homeowners. That’s the curious thing about markets, made up of many individuals making many decisions for themselves, creating a whole leaning toward efficiency. That’s the value I see agents bringing to the table. This is backed up by Redfin, which is a participant in the market, bringing their own offer, seeking (and getting) acceptance. There you have it, an offer accepted is a contract and many contracts make markets, which bring efficient value.
Postscript: I should have mentioned this post earlier, but it’s highly, highly relevant here, from the BlueCollar Agents over at Redfin: Why Sergey and Larry would have a hard time with Trulia and Realtor.com.
I’ll be in Scottsdale this week for the Clareity MLS Workshop. The agenda for the workshop includes this: “Gateway Update – is it already quietly under construction? How might RETS based systems ‘plug and play’ to form a national Gateway faster than one might think?” I’m looking forward to hearing more.
Over on AgentGenius, Mariana Wagner has a post called A National MLS Will NOT Work And Here Are Three Reasons Why . . .” I commented on Mariana’s post but included only one link for fear of getting caught by Akismet if I included more, and so I’ll also post some additional thoughts and links here to try to expand the conversation.
Further to Mariana’s point that “A National MLS is a HUGE pile of mess to throw under one umbrella with one ringmaster”, check out my post Good Standards Break Monopolies, Not Make Them. To summarize, you don’t need a national MLS to gain the benefits of standards, like RETS, and, in fact, an effective standard will foster competition instead of limit it.
To further Mariana’s point that a national MLS isn’t necessary because her “MLS rocks”, check out my post Are Competitive MLSs Possible or Desireable? To summarize, competition among MLSs can be encouraged by a national repository with right of mutual download, but tricky questions about IDX and other “terms of use” would remain. This is where expanding the conversation as Mariana is doing becomes so valuable. These are not easy issues and yet they are being debated, and that debate can produce effective solutions. If the issues are not debated here in the blogosphere, in the open, then they will be debated in the back rooms at NAR or wherever and the “solutions” very well may be what you don’t want. For example, the NAR clearly is pursuing a “Gateway” and spending REALTOR money to do so. Yet, there remains very little information available regarding the actual plans. Hmmmm.
Finally, to further Mariana’s point that “If Real Estate is Local, why should the MLS be National?”, check out my posts Raging Regionals, Regionals, Part II, and, more recently, Why RETS?. To summarize, real inefficiencies (pain) are being experienced as a result of brokerages growing across multiple MLS service areas. The question is how to solve these problems while preserving competition and the benefits of the local MLS Mariana extols. I believe the solution lies in data standards but there is much more required. Nothing less than the constitution — the very fabric — of MLSs is at stake here.
I’ve suggested before that the future of MLS is now, and so I’m very excited to see these issues being discussed out in the open. We need more participants for broad and intensive debate. Perhaps a track on these issues can be developed for REbarcamp. As I said in Is there or could there be a TED for real estate?
A few or several days of “broad and intensive debate“, with the best minds in the industry, about the interconnectedness of competition and cooperation in real estate, including offers of compensation, data sharing, data quality, data ownership, syndication, consumer engagement, MLS competition, consolidation, lead generation, and so much more. As Chris Anderson says in his video below, what’s exciting for him is how mind-blowing it is to see how interconnected so many issues are. Those interconnections are where learning occurs.
Maybe the interconnections can occur here, on blogs, if we get enough participants in the discussion. To that end, thanks, Mariana, for your post!
Jonathon Miller discusses it on his Soapbox. You just gotta love the spectacle of big bureaucratic attempts to solve problems.
Following some conspiracy theory discussions I had this week with a colleague about the NFL (yes, he’s a Patriots fan), I found the comments to this post on SockedSite to be amazing. A home was listed for sale in San Francisco but was not put on the MLS, and several commentators (starting with the ninth comment) presumed that the reason it was not listed on the MLS was because the agents were conspiring to keep the inventory low in the MLS to keep prices from going down further:
To answer arlo’s question, the rationale is what I listed above. If the brokerages listed every home that was for sale right now, the prices of all homes would drop. And the two dominant brokerages tell the sellers that they can communicate to most of the buyers without the MLS anyway: it’s such a small community that there are other ways around the MLS.
Get this through your head: The MLS is a marketing tool that exists only to serve the interests of the realtors. It is NOT a public service. If the Realtors’ interests are served by misleading the buyers, then that’s how they are going to use it. Plain and simple.
Perhaps some education or better public relations could inform conspiracy theorists like these that such manipulations are not possible in the MLS, because the rules require members to submit every listing unless the agent provides a written request from the seller not to be listed. However, I don’t know that PR or education will ever overcome this negative attitude. What do you think? Is this type of conspiracy theory thinking common or crackpot? Is there anything that can or should be done to address it? Would it change if the MLS were more open to consumers? What would or could that look like?
