2005 MLS Committee Report

By Gerry O'Neil, Chair
MLS Committee

This year has been an exciting one for the MLS Committee! We have addressed several issues and created policy to assure the accuracy of the MLS data. This allows REALTORS® to gather and use this data to properly advise clients on the value and market time of their properties.

To protect our data is my number one focus this year. There are many groups and business models that believe our data is public domain and that they should be allowed to use and package it to serve their purposes. This includes those that want to capture and sell leads back to brokerages and agents. Others want to place your listings on their web sites in order to have the valuable content that will attract consumers so they can sell them ancillary or other services and products. There are some businesses that are just set on stealing our data to resell to other web sites. This is called "scraping".

It is the primary charge of the MLS to "Provide and protect accurate data to promote the cooperative sale of Real Estate between the members of the CBR." The subsequent distribution of the data on Realtor.com, IDX and VOW sites is secondary to this charge.

I am in my last year of a 3-year term and served prior to this twice as a CBR Presidential appointee for members who resigned their seats on the MLS committee. During that time the MLS Committee spent hours hearing from members via fax, email, letter, and in person regarding the misuse and abuse of the MLS system, the withholding of listings from the MLS, and reports of brokerages having listings in the MLS as Exclusive Right to Sell Listings and not allowing other agents or brokers to show or sell them. All the complaints we heard were addressed with existing or new policies but there was little the committee could do beyond informing the violating agent or Broker.

In May 2005, a subcommittee was formed to consider a fining system for violations of MLS rules and policies. To the committee's surprise we found we were one of the last major MLS's in the country not to have a fining system. The subcommittee contacted several MLS chairpersons around the country that were of similar size and they conveyed their fine system and guidelines to us. From these guidelines

and CBR policies already in place, the subcommittee drafted a fining system. The board of Directors approved the system in August 2005. The new fine system will begin January 1st, 2006 with warnings issued until April 1st 2006. Specifics on this process will be explained in up coming articles in the In Contract Magazine.

Our MLS service areas continue to grow. In December 2005, area "10" was created for the downtown district. In June 2006, the "ILR-Indian Lake Region" was created in Logan County and Pickaway County will be divided in to 5 areas by the end of the year. All of these were done by request and consensus of the membership in those service areas. I encourage members to contact the MLS committee chairperson or a committee member to improve the MLS by defining areas or other points of interest.

On the horizon of the CBR and MLS is the concept of an Electronic Transaction Platform. This will be a centralized system that integrates the MLS, contracts, fax, mortgage, title work, pest inspection, appraisal, and warranties, in to a single entry multilevel access platform for all the parties involved in the transaction. This allows all parties to have pre-set limited access to the documents and progress of a transaction from listing to closing. Ultimately, the closing will occur when all parties have completed their part. Then electronic funds transfer will occur to all parties' accounts.

A group composed of me, the Technology Users Group Chairman, Larry Metzger, Stan Collins, and several CBR and other directors went

to NORMLS in Cleveland to see presentations by 3 vendors offering these types of platforms that are currently in use by other boards around the nation. Though we are not at the stage of employing one of these vendors, a time will come when we will have to make a decision if the CBR is to provide a platform like this or we will be forced to use a platform dominated by another entity that does not have

our membership's interest or goals in mind.

The pursuit of an affordable IDX and VOW solution for member Broker's web sites is currently in progress. The purpose of this is to secure our data. Currently we allow by contract, any 3rd party vendor contracted by a member Broker to download our data, reformulate it, and upload it to the contracted Broker's web site for an IDX/VOW solution. The risk is that once our data is downloaded we have lost control of it. By providing an affordable and cutting edge IDX/VOW solution the data will never leave the CBR server. The solution will appear via a frame into the member Broker's web site. This will be a live link in real time so there will be no lag-time between downloads from the CBR server and the Upload to the member-Broker's site. Only Broker's who own and have physical on-site control of their servers will be allowed to continue to down load the MLS data. I plan to have a solution presented before the end of my term.

I thank all the Broker members who voted me to the committee and I hope I have served them and their agent members during my term. We have one of the best boards of REALTORS® in the nation. I believe by keeping up with advances in technology and securing our MLS data, we will keep the REALTOR® at the center of the transaction while using our data to create a venue to stay in direct contact with the consumer.