![MLS Insight: 25 Years by the Numbers (Updated May 5th)]()
by RMLS Communication Department | Apr 27, 2016
MLS Insight is a series about how things work at RMLS™.
As we celebrate 25 years of service to the real estate community in the northwest, it is interesting to look at some of the high-level numbers that describe the business and economics of the multiple listing service.
Let’s start with the number of subscribers. In March 1991, before service had even begun, there were over 3,400 Portland-area REALTORS® committed to participating in the new multiple listing service. This March, we had 12,472 subscribers from all over Oregon and southern Washington. The March with the most subscribers was 2007 with 14,178 active REALTORS®.
The chart below shows the rise and fall of subscriber numbers (as of March of each year) plotted against total numbers of closed residential sales for the year across the entire MLS. Sales peaked in 2005 with a total of 57,745, two years prior to the peak in subscriber numbers. The number of sales has been steadily rising since the recession low of 31,028 in 2008. The 55,979 sales in 2015 were the second highest number recorded in a year at RMLS™.
Due to a much higher overall average sales price, the total dollar volume of residential sales posted in RMLS™, 2015 achieved a new high water mark of $17,567,003,000 despite fewer total sales than 2005. The average sales price across all RMLS™ sales in 2005 was $268,300 compared to $313,800 in 2015.
If you have questions on any RMLS™-related topic that you would like to have answered, I encourage you to post a comment.
UPDATE: May 5, 2016
By subscriber request, here are the same graphs broken down by state:
![MLS Insight: 25 Years by the Numbers (Updated May 5th)]()
by RMLS Communication Department | Mar 24, 2016
MLS Insight is a series about how things work at RMLS™.
At their annual leadership retreat, the RMLS™ Board of Directors reviewed a list of potential projects and prioritized those they believe will have the best benefit for RMLS™ subscribers. Following is a brief description of the three projects that will get the attention of our software development team this year along with a fourth that will be scheduled if possible. The forms changes approved in 2015 are also in the works.
Watch List: This project will create a new feature on RMLSweb enabling subscribers to add individual listings to a “shopping cart” and receive push notifications when the status or a price change occurs. Potential scope includes ability to tag tax parcel records for notification when a listing is published.
Mobile Innovation Project: This project will utilize information available in a mobile device – photos, GPS, etc. – to create a property profile for use in creating CMAs, running reverse prospecting searches, and starting an in-progress listing in RMLSweb.
Frequency of Auto-Emails: This project will re-engineer auto-emails to reliably run the entire process within an hour. As part of this project, subscribers should be able to refine the frequency at which auto-emails are sent to individual clients.
Facebook Integration: This project will allow subscribers to easily post their own listings to Facebook, and will also fix formatting problems for mobile devices when RMLS.com listings are shared to Facebook.
If you have questions on any RMLS™-related topic that you would like to have answered, I encourage you to post a comment.
by RMLS Communication Department | Dec 23, 2015
MLS Insight is a series about how things work at RMLS™.
Before we plunge headlong into the new year, let’s take one last look back at 2015.
It was a year of growth and change, energized by real estate market conditions. Closed sales recorded through November approached or exceeded 120% of closed sales in the previous year in almost every area served by RMLS™. This translates into a 20% increase in dollar volume of transactions. 2014 posted approximately $15 billion in sales, and 2015 will see over $18 billion in volume for all properties sold through RMLS™.
The improvement in real estate prospects has not gone unnoticed by job seekers. RMLS™ started the year with 10,676 subscribers and is projected to end 2015 with over 12,200 subscribers, an increase of 14%.
Some highlights of 2015 for RMLS™:
- Eight new RMLS™ classes were added to the list over the course of the year, including RPR Basics, SentriLock Essentials, Android Essentials, iOS Essentials, Utilizing RMLSweb Statistics, RMLS™ Rules and Regulations, RMLS™ Rules and Regulations Jeopardy, and Mobile Apps for REALTORS®. (To register for any of these classes, please contact training@rmls.com or call the Help Desk at 503-872-8002 or 877-256-2169 toll free.)
- RMLS™ was invited and became a Home Energy Info Accelerator Partner in May, when that US Department of Energy program was established.
- A listing forms change in July featured a new supplement for green/energy information.
- We became the fifth MLS in the nation to be certified with RESO (Real Estate Standards Organization) Data Dictionary version 1.3 in August. (We went on to surpass that level in December and were certified compliant at 1.4 Silver.)
- A new photo loader was introduced on RMLSweb in October which allows up to 32 images per listing and features high-resolution imagery and built-in basic editing tools.
- A new Beaverton training venue was inaugurated in November.
- A new mapping interface for RMLSweb was released in December.
- The Financial Tools on RMLSweb were modified to work with multiple browsers in February and the outdated default values within the tools were updated in December.
We want to take this opportunity to say a special thank all of our subscribers. We appreciate the opportunity to serve you and look forward to sharing our 25th anniversary celebration with you in 2016.
If you have questions on any RMLS™-related topic that you would like to have answered, I encourage you to post a comment.
![MLS Insight: 25 Years by the Numbers (Updated May 5th)]()
by RMLS Communication Department | Jun 25, 2015
RMLS™ Forms Committee Chair Maureen Bonfiglio (left) works with RMLS™ staff member Christina Smestad to plan 2015 committee strategy.
MLS Insight is a series about how things work at RMLS™.
The RMLS™ Forms Committee is responsible primarily for what information is collected in Listing Load on RMLSweb. They also consider how that information is available for searching, as well as the contract language in the Exclusive Right to Sell agreement that RMLS™ provides.
Maureen Bonfiglio, RMLS™ Director and Chair of the Forms Committee for the past two years, has actually been a member of the committee for more than ten years. She has reviewed and discussed thousands of suggestions in that time. In her words, “the RMLS Forms Committee is instrumental in providing the best venue possible for the successful marketing of homes for sale. Each year dedicated REALTORS® volunteer their time to serve on this committee to review suggestions from RMLS™ subscribers and address real estate trends. We encourage you to email us with any suggestion you feel would enhance the listing input or provide important information to our membership about a property. If you would like to serve on this committee please contact Christina Smestad at RMLS™.”
The 2015 Forms Committee will meet later in the summer. It usually takes two or three two-hour meetings to review and discuss all the suggestions.
Last year, for example, the committee reviewed about 170 suggestions over the course of two meetings. The work of the committee resulted in 47 recommendations for changes to the collection and searchability of property information, which were all approved by the RMLS™ Board of Directors in November 2014.
Changes approved include additional tax ID fields to denote parcels included with the listing, additional fields in several of the supplement forms, additional values in several fields, and an increased number of value choices in several fields (i.e., increasing Garage Description maximum choices from one to three, and Lot Description from one to two.) Search improvements include a streamlined search for residential listings with dual or multi-household living possibilities and any bedroom on the main floor.
A special subcommittee reviewed the Green/Energy Efficiency fields with the objective of aligning our fields with national efforts by NAR and NAR’s Green REsource Council. This will result in a new Green/Energy Supplement for RMLS™.
You will see most of those changes at the end of July. Two of the recommendations will be released shortly after that. The ability to add up to 24 photos will coincide with the release of updated photo-loader functionality. A new status – Pending Lease Option (POP) – will also be released a little later. Because accepted offers with lease option terms tend to stay in Pending status for extended periods of time, the new status will provide better information about them and better statistics for the accepted offers with other terms.
There has been a standing Forms Committee at RMLS™ since 1991, when our multiple listing service began. This goes a long way to account for the rich dataset RMLS™ maintains about property listed by our subscribers.
The next post will focus on mapping in RMLSweb. If you have questions on any RMLS™-related topic that you would like to have answered, I encourage you to post a comment.
![MLS Insight: 25 Years by the Numbers (Updated May 5th)]()
by RMLS Communication Department | Jun 25, 2015
RMLS™ Forms Committee Chair Maureen Bonfiglio (left) works with RMLS™ staff member Christina Smestad to plan 2015 committee strategy.
MLS Insight is a series about how things work at RMLS™.
The RMLS™ Forms Committee is responsible primarily for what information is collected in Listing Load on RMLSweb. They also consider how that information is available for searching, as well as the contract language in the Exclusive Right to Sell agreement that RMLS™ provides.
Maureen Bonfiglio, RMLS™ Director and Chair of the Forms Committee for the past two years, has actually been a member of the committee for more than ten years. She has reviewed and discussed thousands of suggestions in that time. In her words, “the RMLS Forms Committee is instrumental in providing the best venue possible for the successful marketing of homes for sale. Each year dedicated REALTORS® volunteer their time to serve on this committee to review suggestions from RMLS™ subscribers and address real estate trends. We encourage you to email us with any suggestion you feel would enhance the listing input or provide important information to our membership about a property. If you would like to serve on this committee please contact Christina Smestad at RMLS™.”
The 2015 Forms Committee will meet later in the summer. It usually takes two or three two-hour meetings to review and discuss all the suggestions.
Last year, for example, the committee reviewed about 170 suggestions over the course of two meetings. The work of the committee resulted in 47 recommendations for changes to the collection and searchability of property information, which were all approved by the RMLS™ Board of Directors in November 2014.
Changes approved include additional tax ID fields to denote parcels included with the listing, additional fields in several of the supplement forms, additional values in several fields, and an increased number of value choices in several fields (i.e., increasing Garage Description maximum choices from one to three, and Lot Description from one to two.) Search improvements include a streamlined search for residential listings with dual or multi-household living possibilities and any bedroom on the main floor.
A special subcommittee reviewed the Green/Energy Efficiency fields with the objective of aligning our fields with national efforts by NAR and NAR’s Green REsource Council. This will result in a new Green/Energy Supplement for RMLS™.
You will see most of those changes at the end of July. Two of the recommendations will be released shortly after that. The ability to add up to 24 photos will coincide with the release of updated photo-loader functionality. A new status – Pending Lease Option (POP) – will also be released a little later. Because accepted offers with lease option terms tend to stay in Pending status for extended periods of time, the new status will provide better information about them and better statistics for the accepted offers with other terms.
There has been a standing Forms Committee at RMLS™ since 1991, when our multiple listing service began. This goes a long way to account for the rich dataset RMLS™ maintains about property listed by our subscribers.
The next post will focus on mapping in RMLSweb. If you have questions on any RMLS™-related topic that you would like to have answered, I encourage you to post a comment.
