Where Real Estate Gets Its Dirt

KW acquires SmarterAgent

Keller Williams is building a new consumer-facing app to challenge Zillow and Redfin

“You’ve heard Gary [Keller] talk about the agent-enable tech versus the tech-enabled agent, and so the idea of a Zillow or Redfin coming in and buying SmarterAgent then having access to all 400,000 agents’ mobile apps out there being used by millions of people was something that was concerning to us,” Team said.

Team said the acquisition is a signal to Keller Williams agents that the company is serious about its investment in technology and revealed that the company has quietly acquired a number of other tech platforms in the past four months.”

Nice scoop for Inman News. It’s starting to feel like 1999 again. But the quotes from Mr. Team seem a bit all over the place, the quote above is a good example. Maybe they weren’t ready to announce yet? No mention of SmarterAgent’s patents. I know they did a deal with CoreLogic but I’m not sure if any of their patents were covered by CIVIXX.

I am happy for Brad and Eric they have been at this quite awhile and created a great business. Congrats!

REColorado and IRES end merger negotiations

From REColorado.com

REcolorado-IRES Merger Talks End

“For more than a year, the managements, Boards of Directors, and shareholders/members of both REcolorado and IRES have tried to move forward with a potential merger of the two MLS organizations. The parties could not reach agreement on a number of key terms. We appreciate the deep involvement of the shareholder/member associations of both REcolorado and IRES, and are not ruling out future discussions.”

From IRES MLS

IRES Subscriber Update May 22, 2018

After working for more than a year to find a mutually beneficial path to merge IRES and REColorado, we received a letter from REColorado’s CEO on May 21st stating REcolorado is terminating all merger negotiations.

We are both surprised and disappointed by this. In fact, we were discussing a meeting with some of the owners of REColorado to further the conversation just hours before receiving the letter of termination.”

You can just tell by the tone of each post how far apart they still are.

“Sandicor” adieu

The Litigation Between Sandicor Shareholders Has Ended

The settlement was drafted and reviewed by attorneys representing each respective Association Of REALTORS®, Sandicor® and CRMLS. All parties involved support the details of the settlement. With this resolution, NSDCAR and PSAR will join California Regional MLS (CRMLS), and GSDAR will obtain its MLS through an entity separate but owned by GSDAR, named San Diego Multiple Listing Service, Inc. (SDMLS). The name Sandicor®, as a distinct brand in the San Diego marketplace, will cease to exist. Each Association has acted with the intention of providing its membership with the most valuable MLS products and customer service.

To ensure all members receive open access to as much information as possible, all three Associations have agreed to share data across both MLSs, maintaining the same county wide coverage there is currently. MLS Subscribers will continue accessing MLS data and have the same level of access and user experience through Paragon, the software platform San Diego-area MLS users have been using for over three years. All members will continue to have the same look and feel that Sandicor® members have grown accustomed to, with no disruption of service.

It unfortunate this took as long as it did. Anyway you look at it it’s a huge win for CRMLS. Having the name Sandicor still around would have been problematic. And with the addition of the members of NSDCAR and PSAR, if my math is correct, CRMLS membership is just shy of 100,000. Impressive.

OMD Visualized

Hi res version of the map can be found here.
Kevin McQueen via Facebook:

“How many MLSs are there? (updated). I have been working with a number of reliable data source with a dream of having a reliable “source of truth” about active residential MLSs. This information is actionable and useful to the industry and this is long overdue. Thanks to RESO, RPR and others for helping us align definitions and counts – 677 is a reliable count this month. We can now identify key information about each one to enable every board of directors, association exec and brokers in each market to make informed decisions about what is best for their members and firms.
Facts and truth replace emotions and drama in decision-making. MLS is a business and we need this data to do it right. Brokers are counting on us.

Here is one visual representation of MLSs by state, along with the number of Realtor users.

– 88 MLSs serve 80% of the Realtors.

– The other 20% have the power to change the MLS landscape by doing what is best for their members and brokers.

– 11 dark red states on the map don’t have a problem with too many MLSs.

– 311 of the MLSs are in just 10 states.

– 20 markets have a bad case of OMD (overlapping market disorder).

What about yours?

If you need more facts and truth to make better business decisions in your boardroom for your members, let us know at info@t3sixty.com“

Love this! Looking forward to sharing a conversation I had with Kevin on an upcoming episode of Listing Bits. We talked about his history in the industry, consolidation and about the map graphic above. Only thing I wished I’d asked was if he was related to Steve McQueen?

MetroList expands reach in Northern California

MetroList® Expands To Amador County

“The Amador County Association of REALTORS® will be transitioning its MLS operations to MetroList in June 2018, and will operate a local MetroList Administrative Center to fulfill all MLS related services for Amador County real estate professionals.
“We are pleased to expand our geographic market area and deliver MLS services to our neighbors in Amador County”, said Bill Miller, CEO of MetroList Services, Inc. “As the largest MLS in Northern California, MetroList provides a robust offering of products and value-added benefits to help our subscribers grow their real estate business.”

MetroList has the largest geographic coverage in California and also offers access to eight other MLS systems. Nice win for MetroList and members of the Amador County Association of REALTORS.

Say Yes to the MLS!

An email sent out to NORMLS members made a special announcement.

The Shareholders of these two companies voted on January 22, 2018 to consolidate into one new company to be known as Yes-MLS. The combined membership will exceed 12,000 members and will serve 36 Counties in Ohio and West Virginia. Yes-MLS will be the largest MLS in Ohio and is expected to be fully complete by early Spring 2018.

Carl DeMusz, current CEO of NORMLS will serve as CEO of Yes MLS. “This consolidation opens many doors for our members as we empower our brokerages to serve their clientele locally and on a national scale by implementing standards that knock down barriers to their businesses”, said DeMusz.

John Kurlich, current CEO of CRIS who will serve as COO of Yes MLS observed, “The ‘consolidation’, rather than a ‘merger’, enables us to create a new and forward-looking MLS for our members. One that provides accurate data and the technology to use that data in an increasingly data driven real estate environment.”

Congrats to Carl and John. Love the new name!

“NAR’s Goldberg kills AMP…”

NAR’s Goldberg Kills Amp and Powers Up Upstream

We’re starting to see the impact of a new leadership team at the National Association of REALTORS® led by Bob Goldberg, a strategic, yet practical leader that is SERIOUS about making the industry function more effectively. He also seems to be critically evaluating every investment in technology and making some bold moves to re-focus efforts.

NAR announced yesterday that is shutting down development on its Advanced Multilist Platform, or AMP. AMP was under development for a few years at a burn rate of $6 Million per year. The concept behind AMP was solid – consolidate MLS data into a single data repository and allow developers of systems like Matrix, FlexMLS, Paragon, Stratus, Rapattoni, Navica and others focus on the front-end software development.”

Victor does a good job in this post summarizing, at a very high level, what’s going on with all the initiatives and his thoughts on AMP. I don’t agree with some of his assumptions (especially the Upstream propaganda toward the end) but its a good overview.

LIBOR and HGAR talk consolidation

HGAR, LIBOR in Talks to Create Regional MLS

“The leaderships of the Hudson Gateway Association of Realtors and the Long Island Board of Realtors, the two largest Realtor organizations in New York State, announced on Feb. 1 that the two Realtor groups are in negotiations to create a regional multiple listing service that would service approximately 36,000 subscribers.”

36,000 is huge. That puts them in the top 5.

“MLSLI is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Long Island Board of Realtors, Inc. of West Babylon. LIBOR is a not-for-profit trade association consisting of 25,000 real estate professionals working in Nassau, Suffolk, Queens and Brooklyn. —

HGAR is a not-for-profit trade association consisting of approximately 11,000 real estate professionals doing business in Westchester, Putnam, Rockland and Orange counties, as well as the Bronx and Manhattan.

One of the other things that strike me is how diverse their membership will be. I wonder what the naming might look like. Empire State MLS? Greater New York MLS? HGAR, LIBOR

Could Cloud MLX be the answer to your consolidation efforts?

CLOUD MLX LETS BROKERS AND AGENTS SEARCH DATA FROM MULTIPLE MLS PROVIDERS USING A SINGLE MODERN INTERFACE

“Rather than combining data into a single database, Cloud MLX acts as a virtual MLS layer on top of multiple MLS databases. Real estate agents are able to search for listings similar to how they search on Google, providing a modern way of searching, sharing and collaborating with MLS data, clients and other agents.

I’ve been excited to share this with everyone. I think Cloud MLX can serve as another tool in regard to consolidation challenges. Right now SFAR and BAREIS are on Rapattoni, and BridgeMLS is on Paragon. Theoretically we could have any type of MLS System under Cloud MLX and multiple MLS providers, and all those databases are still separate. This allows everyone to maintain their independence while providing their respective members with seamless access to the MLS data they need.

With this type of setup we could have launched BrightMLS (BrightMLX?) in under a month. It could also work for combined single database efforts like GRID MLS (GRID MLX?). You could have agents search either their local traditional MLS system, or login in to Cloud MLX and have access to multiple MLS providers with an easy to use modern interface. See below for a quick promo video we created to promote the Bay Area launch to get a better idea.

As is often discussed, the tech is somewhat easy, the politics are hard, but the MLS providers in the Bay Area made it happen. Kudos to K.B., Walt, DeVina and the others for starting this journey with us.

And if you are interested in learning more about Cloud MLX this video is a good start.

FBS acquires Solid Earth

FBS acquires Solid Earth’s Spring software platform to achieve powerful industry vision

“Michael Wurzer, CEO of FBS, says he looks forward to building on the foundation established when FBS and Solid Earth announced a partnership earlier this year to build the Spring Portal on the Spark API. “Spring is the best MLS consumer portal in the market and powering it with the Spark API reduces duplicate entry and data lock-in for brokers and agents,” Wurzer said. “Today, MLSs, brokers, and agents need to clearly and beautifully communicate the full-breadth of the powerful value proposition they deliver together, and Spring is laser-focused on creating the best portal to deliver on that value proposition.”

Smart (an both sides). It basically gives FBS more design focused products to sell in to its market, and the integration work is already done. Matt Fowler, Solid Earth co-founder will stay on and serve as Vice President and lead the Spring team.

and this…

“Spring and Spark together create a platform that does not exist today and achieves a long standing goal of MLS industry leadership,” Wurzer said. He noted that an initial focus is to enhance the current Spring offering to include products that help MLSs showcase all of the valuable products and services they provide to members. “Together with Flexmls, this will be the most complete MLS portal available, serving all customers of the MLS beautifully and efficiently,” Wurzer said. “

This is basically a counter to the Clareity Dashboard, which was acquired by CoreLogic earlier this year.

Unsaid in this release is any future involvement Solid Earth might have in AMP, NAR’s backend effort into the MLS business. I’ve seen Matt at many of the AMP presentations. Not sure if that is going to happen any longer.

2017 was certainly a year for consolidation, both on the MLS side and the vendor side. And I don’t think its going to slow down. Congrats to Michael and Matt and both of their teams.

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