Hundreds of smaller Multiple Listings Services and literally thousands of real estate brokerages throughout the U.S. will be able join the Real Estate Standards Organization – or RESO – next year for as little as $50 annually.
The RESO Board of Directors announced it has revised its 2017 membership dues to increase industry participation in standards development, and to ensure that adoption and certification of standards are accessible to all organizations. RESO Board also announced that effective immediately, Certification will be a membership benefit covered by the member’s annual dues, eliminating separate fees for Certification.
“By creating new membership tiers and slashing our annual dues for brokerages with fewer agents and MLSs with lower membership counts, we make RESO membership in 2017 more accessible for everyone in the real estate industry,” says Jeremy Crawford, executive director of RESO. “This ensures all market segments are affordably represented in the creation of industry standards, and greatly strengthens our ability to implement data standards, which directly improves the process of buying and selling homes for everyone,” he adds.
By enhancing the RESO Fee Schedule to include Certification as a member benefit covered by annual dues, Crawford says the RESO Board’s move will immediately lower RESO administrative expenses and help streamline the certification process for everyone – RESO previously billed separately for each Certification – and it also should help attract more members.
The 2017 annual membership fee for MLSs with fewer than 500 members was cut in half from the current dues of $500 to $250 per year. This group represents the vast majority of the nation’s estimated 770 MLSs. Real estate brokerages, with fewer than 100 agents will see their RESO dues slashed from $500 a year to $50, a 90 percent reduction in dues.
RESO Board Chairman Art Carter CEO of California Regional MLS (CRMLS), says, “This move will expand the reach of RESO deeper into the real estate brokerage community. It also demonstrates that RESO is working aggressively to give more MLSs and Brokerages a seat at the table to ensure they have an opportunity – and a voice – in controlling their own destiny in proposing, adopting and implementing new standards for real estate.”
Carter empathizes that real estate standards “drive software innovation, ensures portability, eliminates redundancies and obtains maximum efficiencies for every part of the real estate transaction. These moves by the RESO Board should help to accelerate that effort.”
For more information, visit www.reso.org
