Here at HAR’s Real Estate Information Symposium, we were treated yesterday to a speech from Dale Stinton, NAR’s Chief Executive Officer. Dale provided what he said was an unprecedented public review of NAR’s long-term strategic plan. I didn’t get everything written down Dale said about the plan (though Rob Hahn may have), but it included several of the initiatives NAR has talked about recently, especially RPR and HouseLogic.
One thing that Dale didn’t mention at all as part of NAR’s strategic vision, however, was the Real Estate Transaction Standard (RETS) or data standards. I’ve written before that I think RPR is full of potential, but it specifically isn’t focused on addressing the very real efficiency and competition problems caused by a lack of implemented data standards in the industry.
In discussing this with a few people after the conference yesterday, the two themes that emerged for why NAR doesn’t talk about data standards as a strategic initiative is that it won’t sell to the members and NAR can’t be seen as forcing MLSs to a common data format. I can understand both of these issues. Data standards are boring. More importantly, most agents, brokers, etc., are actually astonished to know that the data is different in every MLS. When they hear that isn’t the case, they’re shocked.
I’d suggest that this shock is exactly the thing that should be leveraged to sell the need for data standards to the industry. Admit the problem, and put some energy toward fixing it. The Cove Group of MLSs has shown interest in fixing it. Mark Lesswing, NAR’s CTO, has expressed interest as a skunkworks project, and it would be great to see data standards be a bullet point on Dale’s next set of slides for NAR’s strategic vision.
Dale is a compelling and passionate advocate for REALTORS, and the NAR is being well-served by his passion and vision for the future. If Dale also were to include data standards in his passion and vision, the mountains would begin to move. Without that top-level backing, however, it may be time to move standards efforts into a new organization.
I was searching for some images for a conference panel I’m on today, and I ran across this article from web-usability expert Jakob Nielsen, which includes this comic that tickled my funny bone.
Brian Larson posted today about a new push he and several MLSs (see below) are making to create a new top-level domain of .mls (you know, like .com, .org, .tv, etc.) exclusive to MLSs. I think this is a great idea. One challenge I can see as MLS regionalization efforts rage on is how battles over the domains will be resolved by the MLSs themselves. What MLS, for example, will get Atlanta.mls?
Anyway, this is a great example of some innovative thinking to brand MLSs more clearly, and I look forward to seeing the effort progress. For all of our MLS clients, I recommend you support this effort here.
The founding MLSs of this effort are: Arizona Regional MLS (ARMLS), Austin Board of REALTORS (ACTRIS), Carolina Multiple Listing Services (CMLS), First Multiple Listing Service (FMLS), Metropolitan Regional Information Systems (MRIS), Midwest Real Estate Data (MRED), Multi Regional MLS (MRMLS), Multiple Listing Service, My Florida Regional MLS (MFRMLS), Realtor Association of Greater Ft. Lauderdale, Regional MLS (RMLS), Southern California MLS (SoCAL), TREND, and Triangle Multiple Listing Service.
As I wrote following the last RETS meeting, the Cove Group (a group of the largest MLSs in the country) has moved forward to submit a new list of standard field names to be used as part of the Real Estate Transaction Standard (RETS). This new list of standard field names was approved today during the RESO meeting in Chicago. The list of field names is optional for MLSs currently, but the RESO group anticipates the field names becoming a required part of the standard in the future. This is a good step toward creating data standards across all MLSs.
Another good step forward was Mark Lesswing, NAR’s CTO, coming out today in support of data standards across all MLSs. Mark would love to see the RETS no longer need metadata, which currently is necessary because each MLS has its own data definitions. If the data were all the same for every MLS (i.e., we had data standards), metadata would no longer be needed, innovation would be enhanced, data updates would be faster and more efficient, and fewer server resources would be needed.
Having an incredibly smart and prominent person like Mark advocating for data standards (Mark used the term “data dictionary”) is a great development and I look forward to hearing him speak about it more in the future. Combining Mark’s advocacy with the efforts from the COVE Group and others greatly increases the chances of creating standards that can lead us into the future.
The above is the good news. The bad news is that I overheard that some previous supporters of the RETS will no longer be participating in the meetings. I’m not aware of the reasons behind this decision but it’s disheartening just as the group seems to be making some progress on the critical piece of data standards.
Another piece of bad news is that the RESO still has not yet finalized an intellectual property (IP) policy to ensure that the RETS may be freely used by developers, brokers, agents, MLSs, Associations, etc. Pat Bybee (current RESO Chair) stated that Laurie Janek, NAR’s General Counsel, has committed to getting these issues resolved soon, but Laurie hasn’t yet provided a firm schedule for getting this in place. Having such a policy in place is critical to any standards effort, and was a core reason for starting the RESO process over two years ago. The original draft of the RESO IP policy has been around since August 2007, and it will be great to see the policy get finalized.
Clareity Consulting recently published the results of a survey called “Beyond The Listings” in which the questions are aimed at finding out what content MLSs should offer beyond listings. The top five types of non-listing content are:
Items of slightly less (but still important) interest were points of interest and public transport and air traffic overlays.
One of the items in the survey I (and Matt Cohen, author of the survey) found most interesting is that MLSs “want [this type of information] integrated in MLS reports even if they already have access to the content somewhere else.” This confirms my experience providing MLS software. Agents and brokers don’t want yet another web site to have to manage, they want the content to be integrated into the sites they already use. This is one of the reasons I’m hoping the RPR APIs are robust and enable MLS vendors such as FBS to serve our mutual customers, the REALTORS, by integrating as much of the data as possible into the MLS system.
