Do Your MLS Subscribers Suffer From Overlapping Market Disorder (OMD)?

MLSs, an indispensable part of the multi-faceted real estate industry, are gaining ground when it comes to adoption of innovative data-share options. The trend is being fueled by increasing demand for greater accuracy, efficiency, standardization and widespread access across multiple jurisdictions.

That data then invokes a powerful transformation among REALTORS® by deepening their degree of influence when working with buyers and sellers. Simply put, data-driven agents are equipped to present all available options to clients, moving closer and more quickly to the closing table.

Through cooperative data-share systems, such as RPR View™ (which we’ll cover later), MLSs overcome Overlapping Market Disorder (OMD), a condition that requires agents and brokers to enter listings into multiple systems and pay dues to each of those systems. This multiplicity of effort has several downfalls by:

Driving up expenses for subscribers
Doubling or even tripling workloads
Skewing market reports
Narrowing promotion of properties
Limiting property searches on IDX-powered websites

One of Minnesota’s leading multiple listing services, NorthstarMLS®, is listening to their REALTOR® subscribers who, when asked by Clareity Consulting, said access to multiple MLSs is essential to adequately facilitating their businesses—a whopping 87 percent agreed.

Northstar and seven other Minnesota MLSs are partners in a reciprocal data-share agreement that provides over 17,600 REALTORS® with access to data from neighboring MLSs. RPR View, one of the many features offered through Realtors Property Resource® (RPR®) administers the agreement.

As one of the nation’s largest listing data-share initiatives, RPR View offers agents access to listings from MLSs outside their coverage area, including on- and off-market properties.

“I could say that the fundamental reason for choosing RPR is that there are no fees or contracts, but that would be an oversimplification,” says NorthstarMLS CEO John Mosey. “The fact that it’s free takes a lot of dialogue out of the political environment. Everybody is on the same page, focusing on the mission, rather than political or personal agendas. Our MLS also keeps absolute control over who sees our listings and which fields we share.”

Today, 377 MLSs representing over 840,000 REALTORS® share on-market listings with another MLS through RPR, and 355 MLSs share off-market listings with another MLS. The feature has helped save thousands of dollars for MLSs that often pay vendors for such functionality.

The Ithaca Board of REALTORS® and four other local MLSs in Upstate New York also use RPR View to share data. Norma Jayne, executive officer of the Ithaca Board of REALTORS®, says, “We believe sharing data creates an enhanced opportunity to use the RPR Mobile™ application. We also believe members can produce better comparable property reports, since they often list near the boards we’re sharing data with.”

This month, RPR unveiled a “new view for RPR View,” a fully-transparent display of every MLS that’s agreed to share its data across an agent’s home state and even across the nation, including which types of data are being shared: on-market, off-market, additional info and covered counties.

For more on RPR View, visit blog.narrpr.com/mls/rpr-partner-integrations.

Laurie M. Brown is the marketing communications manager for Realtors Property Resource® (RPR®).