The MLS of the future March 8, 2007
Recently, the Center for Realtor Technology and Jim Duncan’s Real Central VA had blog posts on the desire to have MLSs’ add another column to their schema that indicated the broadband access status of a property. I think this is an idea whose time has been a long time coming. When I moved from my old home in Carnation to my new home in Issaquah, the new owner of my old house wanted to know everything I could tell him about the home’s local ISP (I believe he was a network engineer). Similarly, one of the major reasons I moved into my current home, was that it had bandwidth to spare (my ISP’s top of the line plan is currently 8 M download / 2 M upload speeds). In the Emerald City or the Bay Area, this information is probably second in importance only to the list price of a home or its location. Simply put, a home’s high speed internet capabilities is an increasingly important factor in your purchasing decision.
However, as long as the MLS DBA is mucking around with database schema and typing in ALTER TABLE Residential ADD Internet varchar(50) and other SQL DDL commands, why should we stop there? Here’s what I’d like to see when the MLS gets around to enhancing it’s database schema.
Use Links. Why not enhance school, local government, builder & utility information in the MLS to have both names and urls? When I move to a new home, usually the first thing I need to do is contact all the local utilities and let them know I’m in a new place. Having links to Puget Sound Energy, Issaquah School District, Specialized Homes, and King County Government in the MLS would save me time. Finding contact information and phone numbers is a much bigger pain than it should be at times.
Cell phone reception information. If you don’t have good cable or DSL internet access, knowing how strong Sprint’s or Clearwire’s signal is would be nice to know. I suspect real estate agents and other professionals that increasingly depend on wireless internet access would find this information very helpful.
More accurate and fewer errors. OK, I’ve complained about this before. Still, is it really too much to ask? If a property doesn’t geocode, somebody may not find it when they use a popular map based real estate search engine.
Embrace RETS. Enough said.
Richer media. OK, so the MLS allows you to upload 10 or 20 small photos (or whatever the number is). Why not allow larger photos, MP3 files, video files or PDF flyers? As broadband takes over the world, the stuff is a lot more practical. Although, the idea sounds nice in theory, I’m not sure agents are ready to hire professional audio engineers or videographers when many haven’t learned the value of high quality photography yet. I also think the MLS IT infrastructure isn’t ready for this kind of load (frankly if you can’t handle the bandwidth demands of digital photography, you should probably outsource to Amazon S3 or Flickr Pro before it’s too late), and it’s going to make life more a lot more interesting for us IDX vendors.
So, if you could change the MLS database, what would you like to add or change? What information do you wish was there, but isn’t? Is built green home information and information on low flow toilets something today’s home buyer wants to be able to search for? Do you think more information would pose an undue burden on agents or brokers (those MLS listing forms are one step removed from a tax return), or do you want more, more, more? What would you like IDX vendors to do differently, regardless if the MLS changes or not?
Check out these related posts:
- The Future of MLS search is coming to Rain City Guide
- There you go again - the MLS doesn’t scale
- SELECT * FROM MLS WHERE Remarks = ‘Whoa’
Article Tags>> amazon | data | flickr | MLS | S3 | schema | search
- Posted in : General Real Estate
- Author : Robbie
I don’t know your relationship with your buyers agent (or the sellers), or...
Comments»
This is a great topic and one which the RETS community has been working on quite a bit. For those interested in this topic, I encourage you to participate in the discussions on-going right now regarding the Real Estate Transaction Standard (RETS) version 2 payloads. Though the standards certainly will evolve over time, the broader and deeper the standards are developed now, the more productive users will find the data. The wiki.rets.org site has links to the schema, and I know the community is developing some tools to allow people who don’t want to plow through xsd files an easier time to review and comment on the standards.
Micheal,
It’s great to see an MLS vendor that has a blog! The more of us software types that blog, the better the software will eventually be for everybody who plays in the real estate space.
Another idea I had, was adding HTML to the remarks fields. Unfortunately, I know all too well the security challenges that poses since I used to work on OWA. I also have a hunch that adding HTML would impede folks from implementing full text search features that folks want, since I don’t think SQL DBs are smart enough to ignore markup. Also, the last thing I want as a consumer is pop-ups, marquee or blink tags in your IDX web site.
Still, I can’t see anything wrong with adding more hyperlinks. You end up with more useful web sites, it improves the ole SEO, and it’s easy to implement.
“The more of us software types that blog, the better the software will eventually be for everybody who plays in the real estate space.”
Can we make a list of who that might be? MLS members should be in two groups. Agents for Sellers and Agents for Buyers. What new things will help them and how, if Agents for Sellers only want to convey better and best info to Agents for Buyers?
I am totally in favor of richer media capabilities being added to the MLS. That would allow the agents that are using these newer and more useful technologies such as video walk thrus, PDF flyers, and audio or video podcasts to feature them on the MLS. The agents who would prefer to only put 1 or a couple of small pictures on the MLS can continue to do as they always have. Raising the bar on online marketing for real estate is a good thing. If agents choose to utilize these advancements that is up to them.
“What new things will help them and how, if Agents for Sellers only want to convey better and best info to Agents for Buyers?”
In that case, they’d leaving those columns/fields blank. for example, if a house doesn’t have a broadband connection, seller’s agent will leave that column blank that gives enough info to buyer’s agent.
I’m also kind of surpised that open house data isn’t part of many (most?) MLS IDX feeds. I think it’d be another high value / low cost feature for agents & ther clients (auto generate appointment for your calendar client using iCalendar files).
I think are great Robbie. I especially agree with the information regarding cell reception and bandwith. These are important questions that come up. I also like the links to more detailed school information. As for my requests, I just wish the MLS would make a few more of the fields that we can search by “required” fields in order to help fine tune our searches and not have to pull up listings that don’t meet our clients needs (ie: fully fenced backyard, pet restrictions for condos, bonus room, etc…) Thanks for thinking outside the box!
Robbie, open house data is a part of most feeds, but most agents who are members of the NWMLS don’t input open houses. It would be nice if they did!
Rebecca, try those searches on ShackPrices - just type in “fully fenced.” Pet restrictions are a little trickier…
Thanks for the welcome, Robbie. I’ve been reading Rain City Guide for awhile, along with a bunch of other RE.net blogs, and figured an MLS software vendor’s voice couldn’t hurt. Regarding HTML in comments, perhaps a solution to that could be similar to what some of the virtual tour companies do in providing “branded” and “unbranded” tours. The MLS could provide remarks copy with or without HTML. I also think that things like video and audio are best handled by links. There are many good video and audio services today, there doesn’t seem to be a need for the MLS vendors to reinvent that wheel but rather should just allow effective link integration.
Rebecca, we looked at pets a while ago, so I forgot how we dealt with them. If you type “dogs” into ShackPrices, you will see all the buildings that explicitly allow dogs or that say pets are subject to restrictions. It works the same way for cats. “Pets” will bring a strange mix of buildings that allow no pets and buildings that are “pet friendly.”