Our Company

We write so much in our industry about stuff.  Stuff like technology, politics, data and other topics dominate our blogs and daily reading but today I want to share a few thoughts about a person that many of you may not know, Chris Warner, who was very important to me, and others, in our early days in our industry.  Chris recently passed away.  Chris and I, like many of our cohorts in our industry, worked together at PRC Realty Systems in the 80’s when the whole MLS industry was in the process of becoming computerized.  I actually learned of Chris’s passing through a PRC group we all belong to on LinkedIn from his wife Pat, which shows how strong that early connection still is.  It was very sad to hear about Chris’s passing and our deepest sympathies go out to Pat and Chris’s whole family.  Today, though, I want to share something I learned from Chris that has always stayed with me that I have shared with others through the years.  It was a simple lesson really but like many simple things that are true it has stood the test of time for me.  I pass it along as a gift from Chris.

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CoreLogic made it official today with the launch of their  Partner InfoNet program.  The program allows participating MLSs to share revenue that results from its inclusion in various risk management products.  

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It is an exciting time for Multiple Listing Services.  The announcement of REALTOR® Property Resource by NAR has spawned many debates and several new programs allowing MLSs to leverage local property information in many new ways.  The programs are exciting, but are evolving quickly and thus can be a bit confusing and even overwhelming at times.

In an effort to help every MLS understand the unique values of each of the programs now available, the Council of Multiple Listing Services (CMLS), commissioned WAV Group to complete the attached evaluation.  Ideally, the paper will assist each MLS and their governing boards in understanding the key facets of each program so that they can make an informed choice based on their unique local circumstances. 

Download the paper

This paper does not recommend one program over another but is intended to:

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Press Release:

Property Panorama announced the appointment of Mike Barnett as the companys Chief Information Officer. Property Panorama provides its world leading suite of online marketing tools and products to over 200,000 Realtors in more than 45 MLSs across the U.S. and Canada. Property Panoramas easy to use solutions empower Realtors with unlimited Virtual Tours, Video Tours, PodCAST Tours, and MobileMedia Cell Phone Tours at unbelievably low prices.

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If you have worked in the MLS world as long as I have you know how many moving parts there are in terms of technology to run the organization effectively.  With the creation of RETS, the so called “standard", the use of multiple modules to provide services has increased even more.  What has been obvious to me for many years looking at the industry’s technology, however, is that no one has done a good job of pulling all of the important data points together for the MLSs so they can run their organizations more effectively.  

Today, MLS systems do a great job of helping brokers and agents look and use property data. Accounting and membership systems manage member information and allow for billing while call tracking systems, if in place, allow MLSs to track user interactions.  MLS websites reach out to consumers and may provide valuable analytics on search behavior.  But, with few exceptions, these systems and products really don’t share data.  Yes, accounting systems can push some data over to the MLS system and there are other examples of simple data sharing but it is really not being done the way it should be.

Imagine this….

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