by RMLS Communication Department | Apr 17, 2012
Spotlight: Open Houses
By Nick Church and Mary-Frances Makichen
The National Association of Realtors® has scheduled “National Open House Weekend” for April 28 and 29. This is a great opportunity for Realtors® to showcase the amazing properties currently on the market.
This event actually started in Washington State! For years, several Washington REALTOR® Associations conducted open-house events. They were so successful that the first state-wide open house weekend was held in 2009. In 2010 the concept went national and nearly every state participated. Once again this year the National Association of REALTORS® is helping to promote this event. 2012 will be bigger and better with hundreds of thousands of open houses across the nation and currently in 13 other countries! The event has gone global.
What you may not be aware of is that many real estate websites, including our public site www.rmls.com and the National Association of Realtors® site: www.realtor.com, display open house information. This information comes directly from properly entered open house information in RMLSweb.
We know many of you are going to join in on National Open House weekend and want to remind all subscribers to get the most out of your advertising by making sure your open house information is properly entered in RMLSweb. Check out our “How to Enter an Open House on RMLSweb” tutorial for clear instructions and help.
For some quick tips on holding an open house, check out these ideas from Realtor Magazine .
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by RMLS Communication Department | Apr 16, 2012
By Mary-Frances Makichen, RMLS™ Communications Specialist
A couple of weeks ago I had the privilege of participating as a judge for the Fair Housing Council of Oregon’s (FHCO) annual poster contest. This annual contest is open to children in first through eighth grade. Entry is free and prizes are awarded for the winning submissions. The theme this year was, “Fair Housing Welcomes Everyone.”
It was amazing to see all the creativity that kids poured into their entries. Better yet, it was fun to note that kids want fair housing for everyone including dogs, cats, rabbits and turtles. It’s gratifying that this contest gets children thinking about the idea of fair housing and inclusiveness at an early age.
This was the first time I had judged the contest but many of the other judges have done so for years. In the course of our time together they talked about how even many adults don’t understand the mission of FHCO.
Here is a brief description of the work carried out by FHCO in their own words:
The Fair Housing Council of Oregon (FHCO) is a statewide civil rights organization whose mission is to eliminate housing discrimination through access to enforcement and education. We are a nonprofit corporation, not a governmental agency.
We promote equal access to housing by providing education, outreach, technical assistance, and enforcement opportunities specifically related to federal, state, and local fair housing laws.
In the end we were all very pleased with the grand prize winner that was chosen. If you want to know more about FHCO please visit www.fhco.org
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by RMLS Communication Department | Apr 16, 2012
This Week’s Lockbox Activity Decreases for Washington and Increases in Oregon
When comparing the week of April 2 – April 8 with the week prior, the number of times an RMLS™ subscriber opened a Supra lockbox decreased 11,4% in Washington and increased1.6% in Oregon.
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by RMLS Communication Department | Apr 9, 2012
This Week’s Lockbox Activity Is Mixed for Washington and Oregon
When comparing the week of March 26 – April 1 with the week prior, the number of times an RMLS™ subscriber opened a Supra lockbox decreased 7.6% in Washington and increased 1.6% in Oregon.
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by RMLS Communication Department | Apr 6, 2012
The use of photos and photo captions on listings is something we hear a lot about at RMLS™. Our subscribers ask us to remind listing agents to put multiple photos on their properties and to use photo captions. Subscribers have told us that photos and captions help clarify what a property has to offer and saves time.
Here are some quick tips for using our photo manager and captions.
- In Listing Load you’ll find a column titled “P” for photo. The buttons in this column indicate the number of photos currently uploaded for a listing.
- To use Photo Manager you need to download Microsoft’s FREE Silverlight product. It only takes 30 seconds to install.
Rule Alert — RMLS™ requires that at least one photo must be attached to a new listing within 72 hours and it must be an exterior building view. You cannot add a caption to this first photo. If the property is land then a photo of the bare land is required.
- You can upload a total of 16 photos to a listing.
- Silverlight will resize your photo prior to upload to 640×480.
- If you upload a photo smaller than 640×480 Silverlight will add a white border around it rather than stretch it to fit.
- The caption link allows you to choose a caption and sub-caption for each photo.
Rule Alert – The reason subscribers can’t type in free form captions is that they have to be checked for HUD violations. The staff time required to check listings individually would be prohibitive. RMLS™ believes the best solution to this issue is offering a broad and extendable set of standardized choices for photo captions.
- Click on the photo in the Agent Full report to display a pop-up photo viewer.
- Captions are displayed in the photo viewer.
- Did you know if there’s a caption you want to use that isn’t part of our pre-approved list the Rules and Regulations Department can add it? Send them an email and they can add it our list for all subscribers to use.
That’s all there is to it! If you have any questions about using photo manager and captions please call our Help Desk at 503-872-8002 or send them an email. We’re here to help.
