What do you think the future of MLS is?

[Reindex.com]

It used to be a violation of MLS rules to allow a customer to use the MLS book. Now MLS allows it to be published. The Internet gives us access to each others pages, and MLS is not as necessary as it used to be for knowing what is for sale in another office.

Also, when MLS allows non-member sites to download our listings to populate their site, is it working in our best interest? We get charged for the leads our work is generating for those sites. Sounds backwards to me.

These practices are only a few years old. Can we recover? In my office, we are dealing with customers that think they know the market as well as we do. They have surfed pages for 2 months in some cases, and they know many properties for sale. They do miss a lot, because they are "part timers", but it is diminishing their view of the profession.

Will the downloading of the MLS to generic sites dilute our business to just being the information gatherers?

[Brimultimedia]

Publishing on the web is in a limited form in virtually all good mls systems. Without the MLS systems and structure where the agents and brokers are going out and collecting the information, taking photos, videos and preparing the property for sale is what powers the MLS. The agents do all the work and then they vote on what information is to be released to the public. I have IDX powered websites for many MLS systems and the public feed is only about 20 - 50 fields of information when there is actually 200 that the Realtor has access to. So the Realtor is much more informed and knows alot more about the property than the person searching the Internet.

Buying back leads from non members...

This is a crock of you know what and should be stopped...

Honestly if your mls allows that to happen then there is a problem with your organization. Most of those sites that sell you leads are not using your MLS information they just act like they are. They get people to fill out their generic form and they sell you that as a lead for someone interested in buying or selling in your zip code. The leads are not very good, and there are lots of them that waste your time.

I suggest spending that $300 a month on your own marketing in search engines and start competing against them head to head for your leads that should go to you in the first place. I have spent thousands of dollars fixing this problem and have a special website that does the same thing theirs does. But.... Mine creates leads for the owners of those website and they can call in their referrals on their own or share them with the entire office.

Imagine the power of an office of 10 Realtors with $300 a month on marketing one website that collects referral leads nation wide. That is a really nice budget that should produce good results. Think about who you spend your money with.

As far as buyers go...

An educated buyer is a good buyer. Some are a pain in the *** but they usually can afford more home than an uneducated buyer.

Restricting your addresses on your sites will generate more calls.

Address calls from people who just want to drive by is a real time killer. Give them the address and a map and a sat image from Google and let them drive by and look at it and the other 25 on their list they printed off your website. Let them eliminate the 80% they hate and you won't have to drive them all over town and waste time and money.

Be realistic. You want them to use your site to get information. Give them enough. Trust me. I have sold houses to people years ago from just a website and a virtual tour.

Brian Blake
ExRealtor
Idaho Real Estate Hosting
Brimultimedia LLC

[AlbertJusto.com]

I love my MLS, however, one flaw I would like to see policed a bit more is the updating issue. Acitve listings that are CS. Or CS that are still showing A. This can be a big deal when you are trying to do accurate comparables. But this is the Realtors faults or Brokers actually. Anyway other than that, which I overcome by supplementing my research with REAP, the MLS is a great tool. The good of the MLS certainly outweighs the bad points.

[BrianChicago]

To determine the future of the MLS, you really have to think about what the MLS is and how it relates to our profession.

You see, the MLS is nothing more than a repository of information about what is for sale. Our associations and organizations have slowly been allowing more and more of the information contained within the MLS to be shown to the world. Why? Because they still think we can still control the information.

We can't. We are collecting the information and storing it in a central place. But any halfway decent computer scientist can, in a weekend, create their own MLS. If they have enough money to inform the world about its existence and convince people to post their own homes for sale in that MLS, there's nothing we can do about it. And in one instant we would no longer have any sort of monopoly on the information.

Therefore, it is imperative that the future of the MLS is to continue to operate it, and continue to increase the amount of information anyone can see whenever they want. It's also imperative to increase the accuracy of the data.

The only reason the MLS and our profession still exists is because the general public believes we can do a better job. I am not convinced, to tell the truth. I look through the MLS and see an extraordinary amount of listings with missing or incorrect information. Why is that? Laziness? Incompetence? It's unacceptable.

There's a saying in the computer world. Garbage in, garbage out. It's our responsibility to make sure we aren't throwing garbage into the MLS, and too many of us are failing. If this continues it's only a matter of time before someone says "I can give you the same accuracy, but my MLS is completely open and it doesn't cost you a dime to list your house here."

My opinion is that the future of the MLS is a completely open one, where anyone search and find potential properties without needing to divulge personal information to an agent and getting spammed for the next few months.

The future of our profession lies in convincing people that we are relevant, that we offer value. Our experience in completing deals and saving people time, offering knowledge that only comes with living and breathing real estate.

You can't stop progress, and you shouldn't try. Adapt and prosper.