MLS CEO speaks to value of data share for REALTORS®

A tale of eight MLSs committed to making customer need their number one priority

MLSs, an indispensable part of the real estate industry, are gaining ground in the integration space. The trend is fueled by increasing demand for greater accuracy, efficiency, standardization, and widespread access across multiple jurisdictions.

A consortium of Minnesota MLSs (MichRic) has answered the call by REALTORS for deeper, wider access to real estate data. Their journey began with gaining feedback from its subscribers who, when surveyed by Clareity Consulting, claimed “access to data from multiple MLSs” is essential to facilitating their businesses—a whopping 87 percent agreed.

Fast Fact

87% of MichRic Realtors say “access to data from multiple MLSs” is essential to conducting daily business.

As a result, eight Minnesota MLSs now take part in a reciprocal data share agreement through RPR View™, a move that provides more than 17,600 REALTORS® with access to data from neighboring MLSs.

RPR View™, one of the many MLS integrations offered through the real estate data platform, is a set of sharing permissions which allow partnering MLSs to make listings viewable by REALTORS® in other markets, all via the RPR platform.

Permissions within RPR View™ are segmented into on- and off-market, and confidential. MLSs choose their own fields to remain compliant with local business rules.

RPR View

As with all integrations, there is no cost from RPR for this feature.

So how and why did Minnesota make the leap to RPR View™?

To find out, we interviewed two executives from one of Minnesota’s leading multiple listing services, NorthstarMLS® (15,700 subscribers).

John Mosey
Tom Flaherty

Politics aside, members first

Q
Why did you choose RPR View™ as Northstar’s data share solution?

 

John:
The fundamental reason for choosing to share data through RPR is that there are no fees or contracts, but that would be an oversimplification. The fact that it’s free takes a lot of dialogue out of the political environment.

Tom:
When we first learned about RPR View™, we knew immediately that it would make things easier for our users. They are already familiar with RPR, which helps offset any learning curve. And features like single sign-on (SSO) are added benefits.

We knew that if there was something we were able to do, then we could do it with RPR. Of course, RPR View™ is offered as part of our NAR member benefits so there are no costs or contracts.

Data consistency and security

Q
What was your process for choosing which fields to share?

John:
As for confidential fields, we anticipated, and RPR worked hard to find a way to display those fields to REALTORS®. Thankfully, everybody who uses RPR is within the REALTOR® family and therefore licensed. So, together we found ways to assure consistency across all boundaries.

We called it a ‘crock pot.’

Q
What does RPR View™ offer NorthstarMLS® that other solutions did not?

John:
We had been involved in a data sharing agreement for several years … a coalition of parties who contributed data to a vendor who homogenized it and sent it back to the parties. We called it a ‘crock pot.’ It was expensive and not entirely accurate.

What RPR’s been doing for a long time now is being able to pull in all this data and make it digestible, while still being accurate.

Plain and simple process

Q
Tell us more about the implementation process.

John:
It was painless. Plain and simple.

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3 Comments

  1. Cheryl Smith October 29, 2015 at 12:00 pm - Reply

    My father is a realtor. He uses the MLS all the time. I’m sure, he would agree that cooperative data sharing, would be a good thing. Hopefully, this would reduce the number of times he enters a single house into the system.

  2. […] the RPR Blog. IRES recently joined RPR View as […]

  3. […] a recent article, RPR interviewed NorthstarMLS President and CEO John Mosey and Director of Marketing and […]

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