This post is about the “sindication” arguments erupting over the web over the last few months and more heatedly the last few weeks. For background, check out: Rob Hahn, AgentGenius, GeekEstate, Jay Thompson, Kris Berg, and the video from the managing broker at ARG in San Diego that set off the recent web storm. Read them all, especially the comments.
What to make of all this debate? First, there’s not much new here. Brokers are competitors and will make independent decisions about where to advertise their listings. This is called syndication and it’s been happening since the beginning of real estate brokerage. Historically, the syndication channels were newspapers, home magazines, flyers, signs, etc. Now we have the web and sites like Zillow and Trulia. So, this debate is nothing new.
Brokers will continue to decide how they can gain a competitive advantage for their listings. Some brokers only want their listings on their own web site or their franchise web site. Other brokers find value in Zillow or Trulia or Realtor.com. Others yet post to Craigslist and dozens of other sites, on the theory that more is better. In my view, here’s the rub:
On its own, syndication (the decisions of individual competing brokers) will never result in a critical mass of listings on any one site, because competitors will naturally choose different destinations to distinguish themselves.
This is what distinguishes syndication from the MLS. Almost five years ago, I wrote about how the MLS is more than technology. In that post, I wrote:
The representative decision-making process of the MLS is what allows for the broad cooperation necessary to create critical mass in terms of data sharing. Without this, I believe we’ll simply have a mishmash of data strewn here and there, with no possibility of a national repository or any other useful portal. The MLS embraces the duality of competition and cooperation, and strikes a limited balance that enables critical mass to be established. This feat should not be underestimated.
Five years later, that post proved prescient, because, indeed, what we have today is a mishmash of data strewn here and there. The only site that has anywhere near a complete data set is Realtor.com, because they were successful in working directly with the MLS organizations that have worked so hard to encourage cooperation among the brokers.
Importantly, however, the necessary cooperation will never be the strength of syndication channels (Zillow, Trulia, etc.), because they make most of their money by selling ads to brokers and agents on top of the listing data, which is inherently non-cooperative. In fact, this practice of selling ads on top of the listings to competing brokers really irks the listing brokers and results in claims of “coming to dinner with just a fork” and, ultimately, “we need to take back our data!”
But let’s stop and evaluate that last call to action, “we need to take back our data.” Where I think those who advocate against syndication go wrong is in using the terms “we” and “our.” In the competitive landscape of real estate brokerages, the only “we” and “our” is the MLS but the MLS is not a syndicator. By definition, syndication is the decision of an individual broker for their listings alone, and has nothing to do with the cooperative aggregation of listing data in the MLS. As suggested above, some brokers will decide to syndicate, others won’t, and the market ultimately will decide who has made the best decisions. This is as it should be.
The tougher issues arise, however, when brokers extend these same arguments to the MLS aggregation. In this regard, those arguing against “MLS” syndication are right. The MLS should not send the MLS aggregation to any advertising site, because the business models of those sites conflicts with the cooperative model of the MLS. As I wrote five years ago, the value of the MLS is in creating that fragile cooperation that allows for the aggregation. What we’re now seeing is that the fragile balance of cooperation will not stand for the MLS sending the aggregate data to any advertising site.
Instead, the MLS should continue to foster the IDX and VOW policies that have been successful so far and modernize them with stronger terms of use designed to make it clear to brokers that their data will only be used by home buyers and sellers for their personal home buying and selling decisions. Such a foundation will not only preserve but strengthen IDX and VOWs, and help brokers and agents extend the collective MLS data to their customers on the web, mobile devices and whatever new technology comes down the pipe next.
This morning we took our new mobile site (http://m.flexmls.com) out of beta and added a few new features. But the bigger news probably was from some time ago, when we launched mobile portals and mobile IDX, which makes Flexmls more mobile than ever. Now, whether you are an agent accessing the private version of Flexmls, an agent’s customer accessing a customer portal, or a consumer accessing a broker or agent IDX site, you can do so with your touch-enabled mobile phone or tablet.
In addition to moving the new mobile project out of beta, we’ve added some new features as well, including an enhanced full-screen photo tour, auto-loading of listings and photos as you scroll or swipe, ability for consumers to take notes on listings, and uploading of photos by the listing agent.
Mobile, in all its forms, continues to be a primary focus for FBS and we expect to continuously add functionality to this new platform.
Readers of the FBS Blog may recall the controversy at the last few NAR meetings over franchises using IDX listings on their franchise portal web sits. First NAR voted to allow franchises the use IDX listings and then said they couldn’t. In saying they couldn’t, the recommendation was that franchise sites should be treated the same as any other listing portal (e.g., Zillow, Trulia, etc.) and receive data via syndication.
In response, several of the largest real estate franchises (C21, RE/MAX, Coldwell Banker, Realty Executives) recently announced a major new initiative with Move, Inc. and its Listhub syndication subsidiary to streamline that syndication. The new syndication network is called the Real Estate Network (REN) and is described as follows in the press release:
With the launch of REN, the 376 MLSs and 43,000 brokerage firms currently distributing listings through ListHub may now choose to send their listings to one or more sites within the network with one easy click. Participating brokers and MLSs retain full control over where their listings are and are not syndicated to within the network. One set of standardized, industry-friendly rules will govern the display of listings on publisher websites in the network, and can be found at: http://www.listhub.net/networkrules.html. Franchisors themselves will also participate in the network, displaying each other’s listing inventory on their websites.
I’m still processing what this new syndication network means for MLSs but I think two key points are made in the last two sentences in the quote above.
Starting with the last first, it sounds like the network will facilitate direct franchise to franchise syndication, bypassing the MLS. That seems pretty significant.
Update: I chatted with Rob Reed from Listhub at Inman Connect and he said there is no franchise-franchise syndication, rather the syndicated data is coming from the MLS systems and each franchise site is another syndication destination from the MLS according to the discretion of the listing broker.
Second, the rules are now being established by the license agreements that are part of this syndication network, not NAR and not the MLS. That, too, seems pretty significant.
The billion dollar question, of course, is whether the initiative already has or will achieve critical mass of participation from additional franchises and independent brokerages.
Victor Lund over at the WAV Group blog has some great quotes of various reactions to this new initiative. I’m interested to hear your reaction to this new initiative. Please comment below.
Though my headline may seem like a bad joke or a terrible way to get over a hangover, I’m hopeful Rebecca Jensen and I will be able to surprise those who come to our session on MLS data standards at the Inman Connect conference in New York City this week. The session is intended to be a discussion about how the industry can implement the data standards being developed by the Real Estate Standards Organization and what innovations may stem from the new standards. Here’s the description of the session by Inman:
Data Standards: Building the Momentum
Standards are finally gaining steam. RESO, CMLS and a group of industry visionaries are charging hard. This workshop will lay out a path for accelerated progress in 2012.
Rebecca and I hope to engage the audience on a variety of questions, including what new innovations (products, processes, cost savings) will be possible with data standards implemented across MLSs. We’ll be pitching in our own thoughts but mostly hope to get a conversation going.
We’re now well past the point of realizing why data standards are important and now is the time to lay down some concrete ideas for what new innovations might occur as data standards are implemented. Please join us for the discussion and bring your ideas!
One of our MLS customers has reported that Zillow is seeking permission from MLSs to syndicate listings they now possess through the acquisition of Diverse Solutions. The email forwarded states, in part:
Also, something we were not expecting is coming up. We are starting to get inquiries from agents and brokers that are Diverse Solutions and Zillow customers wondering if we can take THEIR listings from the IDX feed we maintain for them and syndicate them to Zillow.com. The benefit to them is that their listings would be 100% up to date at all times and they won’t have to do anything to maintain their listings.
Since we are receiving these requests we would like to know if this syndication would be allowed.
Of course, this move by Zillow isn’t surprising and likely was a key motive behind the Diverse acquisition. I’m curious if other MLSs have received a similar approach from Zillow and, if so, whether your MLS is allowing the syndication.
Update: Zillow CEO Spencer Rascoff addresses this topic on his own blog.
I wrote a few days ago about IDX policy once again being a hot topic at the upcoming NAR meetings in Anaheim next week. Furthering the discussion, CMLS President Merri Jo Cowen sent a letter (PDF) to the NAR’s MLS Issues and Policies Committee urging, among other things:
Basically, with respect to these two issues, CMLS’s position appears to be that the IDX policy is working, so please leave well enough alone. Perhaps following a rumor that the Realty Alliance brokers are planning to form their own MLS, CMLS also warns that, with regard to allowing IDX on social media sites, “Some MLSs fear a mass exodus by brokers if they are offered only the all inclusive IDX- Yes or No choice.”
I completely agree with CMLS’s primary point that the stakes are high here and messing with a successful program like IDX is dangerous business. As Jay Thompson said last summer at Inman SF, without IDX he is likely out of business as a broker and I suspect many other brokers feel the same way. Yet, several of these thorny issues continue to dog the IDX policy, because the world just keeps on changing and that leaves questions about what the current policy means.
In this case, everyone is wondering whether “participant’s web site” in the IDX policy includes the broker’s branding page on Facebook, Twitter or other social media web sites and whether the accepted practice of providing updates via email can be extended to RSS under the current policy. Unfortunately, the current policy just isn’t clear on these issues, likely because these technologies hadn’t yet been applied to IDX when the current policy language was drafted.
One of the primary points I want to make with this post is that I don’t see RSS or even the social media issue as a big deal. FBS doesn’t provide RSS updates with our IDX solution (largely because of this controversy) and I certainly don’t think the world will end if RSS is not allowed for IDX. Frankly, this issue may well be a tempest in a teapot and evidence of how slow the IDX policy discussion is, because many argue that RSS as a consumer technology is dead.
Leaving the irony of this aside, the main point here is that the industry needs IDX (as Jay Thompson so well said) and the industry needs an approach to IDX that responds to technological innovations without so much angst. Importantly, this is not a debate of those “for” innovation and those “against”. Proof of this is that there is no debate about whether IDX data should be allowed for use in mobile applications, even those that most definitely are not “web sites” as defined under the current IDX policy. In other words, everyone understands that mobile applications are critical today, and so no one is debating this issue, even though there many mobile applications allow for sharing on Facebook, Twitter, etc. Oh, goodness, do you see the tangled webs we weave when we don’t have a firm foundation or understanding of what we’re doing with IDX that allows for change?
As I suggested in my previous post on this topic, I believe the solution here is to focus more on the terms of the license agreements being accepted under IDX, all the way from the MLS, through the broker and agent, and to the consumer. Central to those license agreements is the condition that the data only be used by consumers for their personal home buying and selling research, which I understand as the core purpose for IDX. In other words, IDX does not allow others to re-purpose the data for any reason, even if they are just providing it to consumers. There are no middle-men allowed here (like franchises), the last license relationship is direct from the broker and agent to the consumer and the consumer can only use the data for their own personal research.
This is directly relevant to the RSS issue, which CMLS (quoting MLSListings CEO Jim Harrison) and others have argued is risky because:
RSS technology opens the door for savvy users or websites to essentially export any IDX data; aggregate, store, and manipulate that data without any consent from the broker or MLS. In the hands of technology providers unaccountable to IDX data policies, the persons or entities receiving the data have no obligation to present or use the content in a manner defined by the policies. Without this agreement, the MLS cannot assert any governance or corrections. Any abuse or other use will have to be suffered in silence.
I’m confused by this argument, because I know there are web sites that provide RSS updates with license agreements clearly required.
A very prominent example is the New York Times, which has an entire page dedicated to the many RSS feeds they offer. Prominently displayed at the end of that page are the terms and conditions for use of the Times’ RSS feeds:
This is very similar to what many IDX sites also do. For example, here’s the disclaimer/terms text from an MLSListings IDX site:
The listing information marked with Internet Data Exchange icon (a stylized house inside a circle) comes in part from the Internet Data Exchange program of the MLSListings(TM) MLS.
The broker providing this data believes the data to be correct, but advises interested parties to confirm all information before relying on it for a purchase decision.
The information being provided is for consumers’ personal, non-commercial use and may not be used for any purpose other than to identify prospective properties consumers may be interested in purchasing.
© 2011 MLSListings. All rights reserved.
This is a good statement but I would love to see a link to a more detailed Terms of Use agreement, like the one provided by the Times, which has much clearer language about the terms being binding on the consumer, the right of the Times to discontinue providing the service, non-allowed uses, display requirements, and much more. (The need for this agreement for the broker-agent/consumer relationship is made all the more obvious by the recent acquisition of IDX vendor Diverse Solutions by Zillow.)
I do not provide the above example from the New York Times in defense of allowing IDX updates to consumers via RSS, because, as I mentioned, RSS in itself is a relatively minor issue. Instead, I provide the above example as a demonstration of the proper foundation for licensing data for consumer use on the web today. (Notice, too, how the Times only provides limited info in their RSS feed, which I’ve also argued is a good idea for certain IDX purposes.) This approach provides the MLS, brokers, agents and consumers (all the parties to the IDX relationship) with a clear understanding of what is being licensed (allowed) and what isn’t. As I asked in my last post, if agreements like these are firmly established for every use of IDX data, would broker’s object? Don’t these agreements, regardless of the technological medium, protect everyone and serve the fundamental purpose of IDX?
As Brian Larson has pointed out, “the license agreement is . . . only the first step, but it is an essential one.” Subsequent steps, of course, are enforcement of the terms of the license agreement. With regard to enforcement and compliance, the most important thing is to have a strong program to discover and shut down un-licensed uses of the data.
Looking out for the “bad hats” who steal data is an easier (not easy, but easier) task than monitoring thousands upon thousands of IDX web sites out there. Instead of worrying about those individual sites, spend money on looking for the bad hats and make sure your agents and brokers know that if a bad hat is found to have been ripping off their IDX web site, the broker or agent will be in violation of their license agreement, their feed will be terminated, and will be liable for the violation under the terms of their license. As I said in my last post, this approach “reduces the need for compliance by MLSs, focuses compliance where it should be on brokers and agents deploying the data, and creates a mechanism and incentive for everyone to amp up their compliance game, while also allowing for technological innovation without heartache and endless PAGs every few years.”
The stakes are high here, people. We need to direct this conversation away from these specific technology issues like RSS and social networks that are impossible to predict, can be so easily misunderstood by policy makers, and ultimately are less important than the fundamental purpose of IDX, which is to allow brokers and agents to provide listing information to consumers for their personal use. I fear that the way the current discussion over RSS and social networks has heated up and become confused, we’re just creating more controversy that will result in brokers becoming divided and decide opting out is best. And perhaps they’ll not just opt out of IDX but also opt out of the MLS altogether.
To avoid this, we need to work very hard and together to frame this discussion properly and establish a foundation for IDX policy that is more able to respond to technological and other (e.g., Zillow acquiring Diverse) changes. I hope the above is helpful to that discussion and look forward to hearing your feedback.
P.S. Another thing that confused me about the CMLS letter was the point made about RESO/RETS dictating transport for IDX: “As NAR has provided policy that requires MLS’s to adhere to the latest specification of RETS, the standard as published by RESO should be relied upon to frame data transport mechanisms, not the IDX policy.” RETS outlines one possible transport among many for use by RETS servers and clients. This standard has and should have little or nothing to do with IDX policy. Sure, many IDX vendors get data from MLSs via RETS servers, but the web sites they provide to agents and, in turn, consumers, do not use RETS as a transport, they use the web. Similarly, as I’ve pointed out many times, there seems to be little controversy over the fact that nearly every IDX web site allows updates via email, which is not a RETS-specified transport, either. Further yet, if we limited transport to those provided in the RETS specification, most mobile apps likely would have to be shut down, because RETS does not make for a good transport for mobile development. Anyway, this is kind of an aside, as I suspect it was intended in the CMLS letter, but I’m hopeful the above clarifies the distinction between RETS specifications and IDX policy.
Zillow announced today that it acquired IDX vendor Diverse Solutions for $7.8 million in cash and stock. I’m interested in learning what others think about this acquisition. Here are some of my initial questions and thoughts:
Overall, this is an excellent move by Zillow and a nice win for Justin LaJoie and the entire Diverse Solutions team. Congratulations to all of you!
We’re just about a week away from the annual NAR meeting in Anaheim and that means IDX is once again a hot topic. You may recall IDX was a hot topic last May during the mid-year meetings, and the same topics are being re-hashed again ahead of the meetings next week. Specifically, the issues are:
1. Should franchises be allowed to use IDX the same as participants?
General consensus: No.
2. Should the IDX policy be adopted to new technologies like social networks, RSS, and mobile applications?
General consensus: No, no and yes.
I’m pretty sure the franchise IDX issue has been exhausted and is no longer very controversial, so I’ll leave that alone. My primary interest in this post is in the second question, regarding whether IDX can be adopted to new technologies.
First, I will state what I see as the basic purpose of IDX: To allow broker participants to provide consumers with IDX listings from the MLS for their non-commercial personal use. I may be wrong about this basic purpose, but let’s just assume that I’m right for a moment as we analyze the controversies present in the revised policy.
Interestingly enough, no one argues that IDX should be banned on mobile applications, even though those clearly are not “web sites” as outlined in the IDX policy. Leaving that gaping hole aside for a moment, however, let’s turn just to the questions raised by social networks and RSS feeds. There are many reasonable objections that display of IDX listings in social networks and RSS feeds are dangerous and, therefore, need to be excluded from IDX. The arguments go something like this:
For sake of argument, let’s assume all of the above to be true. Even if true, my contention is that the same arguments are equally applicable to “web sites” and other technologies already commonly used today in connection with IDX data.
At the most basic level, a “web site” (the currently defined method for displaying IDX) is an HTML page available to the entire world over the “world wide web”. Let’s repeat and rephrase: Allowing IDX data on world wide “web sites” makes the data as open and accessible as it can be. Any other method, including RSS and social networks, provides much more limited exposure.
Web sites, open to the whole world, can be crawled, scraped, and framed by thieves just as easily RSS feeds. Even if the thieves don’t have programming skills themselves, paying a programmer in China or India a few dollars to scrape your web site is no big deal, it’s just a cost of doing business. Further, if you can deploy anti-scraping technologies on a web site, you also can deploy those on an RSS feed. Lastly, every IDX web site I’ve seen allows customers to sign up for email updates, which can be identical to RSS (e.g., the email may contain IDX data such as address, price, beds, baths, etc., or the RSS feed may only contain a link to the listings on the web site). In either case, there is no real difference between RSS and email updates and the purpose is exactly the same, namely to remind site visitors to come back and visit your site for their non-commercial personal use. The bottom line is that the current IDX policy allows display of the data to the whole world along with updates by email, and these technologies are very challenging to monitor.
Similarly, the idea that social networks are harder to police for MLSs than web sites or mobile applications is specious. There can be an unlimited number of web sites whereas the number of social networking pages is much more likely to be limited to the number of members in your MLS given that sites such as Facebook or Google+ try pretty hard to make sure that the people on their sites are real people. No matter what, however, the number of Facebook, Google+, Twitter or whatever other sites arise in popularity cannot be more than unlimited, which is the current compliance problem MLSs face from web sites alone. In other words, the compliance issue for MLSs is no greater from social networks than it is for web sites, because the number is unlimited in any event.
I’m hopeful that what I’ve said above is relatively non-controversial, but I’d like to summarize it to try to make sure of that. First, IDX currently allows display of IDX listings on an unlimited number of “web sites” (and in email and mobile applications). Second, display on web sites makes the data available to anyone in the whole world. Third, such wide open access to the data makes compliance very challenging. In other words, regardless of new technologies like RSS feeds and social networks, IDX compliance is a big challenge.
Now, let’s evaluate a potential solution that reduces the need for compliance by MLSs, focuses compliance where it should be on brokers and agents deploying the data, and creates a mechanism and incentive for everyone to amp up their compliance game, while also allowing for technological innovation without heartache and endless PAGs every few years.
The basic solution is to get away from thinking about IDX in terms of MLS policy and instead shift the discussion toward creation and enforcement of license agreements for the IDX data. Many MLSs already have a strong set of license agreements pertaining to the IDX data and my basic argument is that as long as the license agreements are enforceable and enforced, all the questions regarding who is in control, who is responsible, and what can be done with the data should be answered without the need for an MLS policy on IDX.
The license agreements should cover every relationship in the chain:
Each of these license agreements should have compliance, enforcement and remedy provisions in them and such provisions should be extended to every other party in the chain, including the right to audit, terminate the license on violation, and sue for damages, including liquidated damages as a penalty for violations.
Let’s assume that these license agreements are all in place, and everyone in the chain is comfortable with the provisions. Does it really matter whether the consumer gets the data for their non-commercial personal use via RSS feed, Facebook, mobile application, email, snail mail, or in person? Is it not the case that the only thing that really matters are the terms of the license agreement for each party in the chain and that the agreements are enforced properly (and aggressively)? Isn’t the question of “control” answered by whether or not the broker has a proper and enforceable license agreement in place? Isn’t this approach of focusing on the terms of the license agreement for each link in the chain much easier to understand than the nuanced language tweaking required to try to anticipate future technology?
The reality is that we cannot know what new technology will be invented tomorrow, but I’m hopeful that most everyone agrees that brokers getting IDX data in the hands of consumers so they can buy houses is a good thing, regardless of the technology used. If we focus attention on crafting license agreements that allow that and restrict any other uses, the many thorny questions surrounding IDX may just go away.
FBS is very pleased to announce that Peter Shuttleworth and Steve Malme have joined FBS’s Board of Directors and bring a wealth of talent and experience to us.
Peter and Steve are joining our other outside director, Dan Woolley of WR Studios (creators of CloudCMA and Dwellicious), to bring FBS diverse and and deep outside leadership.
Also new to the FBS Board are two employee-owners, Jaison Freed (FBS’s VP of Hosting) and Matt O’Brien (Web Developers), who were recently appointed to the Board. FBS is a 100% employee-owned company and so it is important to us to have significant employee-owner leadership at the highest levels of FBS. Jaison and Matt are sure to bring passion and excellence to the Board’s efforts to lead FBS.
The September 2011 RETS meetings were held last week, with a lot of forward momentum in terms of a data dictionary, potentially new API approaches and new governance model for RESO.
The most important movement was the recommendation to the Board to form a workgroup to extend the existing standard names approved for RETS 1.8 into a data dictionary, including data types and enumerations. The first meeting of this new workgroup likely will be just before the NAR Annual meetings in California. Because they’ll be starting from the standard names document, this workgroup is going to move fast and so hopefully we’ll see the first version of the dictionary approved in the next 3-5 months. The need for a data dictionary is legion, and it’s incredibly heartening to see this moving forward based on the already existing standard names document.
All other work will stem from the development of the dictionary. New payloads likely will be developed, but only once the dictionary lays the foundation. The data dictionary will provide the RESO workgroups and the real estate community as a whole with an incredibly valuable way to inform MLSs and consumers of data best practices for implementing different field types and categories. The process for adopting new field definitions also will be very streamlined to ensure that the dictionary can respond to new market developments, such as we’ve seen over the last few years with green fields and short sales. Instead of every MLS developing their own approach because there is no guidance, the data dictionary will give them much needed guidance.
Another interesting conversation at the meetings was regarding the development of RESTful APIs. I was part of a panel moderated by Mark Lesswing called The Great API Debate, along with Sergio del Rio, Steve Clarke, and Scott Petronis from OnBoard.
I was first up and reviewed our new flexmls API, which is focused on delivering data real-time without the need for the data to be replicated in other databases. In addition to providing efficient and secure real-time access to the MLS data, one of the the main reasons we developed this API was to help us promote adoption of RESO data standards to all of our MLS customers. We built the API based on the current standard names document and are working on harmonizing those standards across all of our customers.
At the same time, we’re using the flexmls API to build new products such as our real-time flexmls WordPress plugin and our new touch-enabled mobile flexmls site, which took some major strides just the other day when we added support for flexmls customer portals and IDX. By building new products on the real-time flexmls API, our customers will see the benefits of data standards and ask for more. User demand for more standards will increase even more as the API gets used by third party developers. Our theory essentially is to create demand for standards by making it easy for developers to create cool products agents, brokers and MLSs will want to improve their business. We’ve been calling it the “field of dreams” or “build it and they will come” approach and we’re excited about the results we’ve seen so far.
Sergio del Rio represented MRIS and reviewed how their new RESTful API (called MRIS Data Services) provides real-time data access as well. There are a lot of similarities between the approach MRIS took with their API and the approach we took, including use of OData query formats and delivery of data in JSON (and also XML) format. It’s great to see other developers seeing the benefits of RESTful APIs.
Steve Clarke and Scott Petronis also discussed several important points about how these new API developments could help promote data standards and provide benefits for real-time data access. Steve made an important point that as the new APIs develop, the RESO community needs to be careful to try to provide guidance to help avoid fragmentation.
To that end, Mark Lesswing made a presentation later in the day where he reviewed RESTful APIs and sought feedback from the community regarding whether they saw this approach as a viable for future consideration by RESO. I was very encouraged that support seemed widespread for a RESTful approach generally and use of OData for query formats, JSON and XML for payload format, and possibly oAuth as well. One of the main points Mark made was that it made sense to not reinvent the wheel when there are good tools already available and proven.
The last, but certainly not least, of the developments reported at the meetings are related to governance of RESO. Chair of the RESO Board, Rebecca Jensen, reported that by-laws have been filed with the State of Illinois for incorpration of RESO. In the new by-laws, the RESO Board of Directors firmly asserted control over governance of the standard.
Without as much as a peep from the community as a whole, the Board now has sole authority to create workgroups and approve the standard and really anything else that goes on with RETS and RESO. There will be no more votes from the community at large, even, from what I can tell, for the Board itself.
Rather, input from the community is garnered through workgroup participation. This change could appear controversial, but, in reality, the workgroups have been where the real work is done anyway and it’s a very rare change proposal that makes it out of a workgroup that isn’t approved by the community and so this shift of control to the Board likely won’t change that and it could have the benefit of making the process move faster as we won’t have to wait for the semi-annual meetings to approve changes.
Another potentially controversial issue that didn’t seem to raise too many hackles was the institution of a new RESO membership fee. The primary benefit of paying the RESO membership fee is that a representative from your firm can then be considered for the Board of Directors, as Board members are appointed based upon membership class. If the Board is successful raising funds from the largest vendors and MLSs, there won’t be many seats available because 12 of the 16 seats are automatically appointed to NAR (2 seats), vendors with over $50 million in revenue (4 seats), and MLSs with over 50,000 members (6 seats). Today, there probably aren’t that many large vendors or MLSs/Associations, but the Board nonetheless will be weighted strongly toward the biggest as those who are appointed from the biggest vendors and MLSs get to appoint the remaining seats.
Whereas I don’t see too much difficulty with the Board taking control of approving the standard because the workgroups are where the action is in defining the standard anyway, I’m a bit more concerned with the lack of input from the community on who gets on the Board. There appear to be few checks and balances in place with this new structure. The biggest check and balance, of course, is that the community can cease to participate, but that might be too little, too late. I have no problem with the largest MLSs and vendors having Board seats, but I’d like to see more clear broker involvement and a stronger role for the community in providing oversight to the Board through some participation in the election process.
In conclusion, despite my long-term concerns about the lack of checks and balances for the Board, congratulations are due to the RESO Board as a whole but especially Chair Rebecca Jensen, NAR CTO Mark Lesswing, and RESO Executive Director Travis Wright for the progress they’ve made in moving RESO in the direction of data standards and to creating a clearer and stronger organization structure.
