John Van Loo passed away on April 23, 2015, leaving a substantial hole in our real estate community. RMLS™ joins his family, friends, fellow REALTORS®, and co-workers at RE/MAX Equity group in mourning his loss. John served as a valued Director on the RMLS™ Board of Directors for eleven years. He joined the board in 1994 for his first term which ended in 1996, and then rejoined in 2004, serving through 2011.

John was the Chairman of the Board in 2008, and gently guided RMLS™ through a difficult year. Our then CEO, Beth Murphy, was out on an extended medical leave through much of the second half of the year and the recession was was making itself felt. Budgets needed to be pared. In all, John served RMLS™ on the Executive Committee for five years from 2005-2009.

Like so many people, I was a personal recipient of his wonderful nature. In the year John was our Board Chairman, I was meeting him for dinner at the end of a long trip to the NAR mid-year meetings in Washington, DC. Arriving at the restaurant to meet him, I foolishly left my wallet in the cab and it sped away. Nothing could have exceeded the kindness and practical help that John and his family provided. My wallet was miraculously returned, but I never forgot that glimpse of John’s true humanity.

Kurt von Wasmuth, our RMLS™ President and CEO, was appointed Acting CEO during John’s chairmanship in 2008. In his words, “John was a dedicated leader that helped guide RMLS™ during a time when we needed him the most. He will be sorely missed.”

A celebration of John Van Loo’s life will be held on Thursday, May 28, 2015, at Abundant Life Church in Happy Valley, OR.

Distribution Services Staff Kim Hutchinson and Jeff Mitchell.

MLS Insight is a series about how things work at RMLS™.

Distribution Services at RMLS™ facilitates and manages the electronic transfer of RMLS™ listings outside of RMLSweb. RMLS™ listings appear on the internet and are utilized in applications that support REALTORS®—all in accordance with agreements between RMLS™, our real estate firm participants, and third party vendors. Currently we have almost 6,000 active data access agreements.

When RMLS™ began serving REALTORS® in 1991, there were no property listings on the internet. In fact, as natural and universal as the internet now seems, the World Wide Web was only invented in 1989 and it was not until 1993 that commercial providers were allowed to sell internet connections to individuals. That is when the explosion began in earnest and web traffic over the internet increased by 300,000%.

At RMLS™, an internet presence was approved by the Board of Directors in November 1995, and the first appearance of RMLS™ listings occurred in late April 1996. The internet created radical change in the way business was conducted in many industries, and 1998 was a year of intense discussion and debate in the real estate community about how the internet could and should be integrated into the multiple listing service. That November, the consensus from those discussions became the first RMLS™ Internet Policy. It put the brokerage in the driver’s seat. The basic premise of that first policy—that no listings would be posted on internet without the consent of the participating firm—remains the guiding principle for data distribution today.

Today, RMLS™ listing data is utilized in a variety of ways by our participants. Many offices and individual brokers have their own websites, where they display the listing data according to the IDX (Internet Data Exchange) and/or VOW (Virtual Office Website) policies. These policies are hammered out by National Association of REALTORS®. Firms may also instruct us to send only their own listings to various internet portals or syndication aggregators. This is how listings are funneled to sites like Zillow, Homes.com, OregonLive, etc. Firms can also request data sets to drive products that are used internally, with no consumer display. These can include statistical analysis, AVM creation, CRM programs, transaction management platforms, etc. Because Distribution Services is not part of the core MLS service, data access fees are charged that offset the expense of the program. The service providers, not the subscribers, pay these access fees.

Jeff Mitchell, Distribution Services Technician, manages all the agreements and administers the flow of data. Jeff says that when our subscribers ask about the format of the IDX data, he explains “RMLS™ makes IDX data available in a raw data format, so you will need an IDX Service Provider to process and populate this data on your website.”  Forms and Documents on RMLSweb has a list of IDX service providers that are already established with RMLS™. Each of these service providers offer different services, as well as different monthly fees. We are also happy to work with new providers, but it takes some time for them to ramp up.

Kim Hutchinson, Data Quality Technician, works with the RETS computer that dishes up the data. Kim, along with other staff at RMLS™, work closely with RESO, the Real Estate Standards Organization, whose mission is the standardization of both the process and real estate data that is distributed. This benefits our subscribers by increasing the variety of tools and applications available to them.

The Distribution Services department is committed facilitating the flow of our participants’ listings outward in accordance with their direction and with timeliness, quality, and efficiency. You can contact Distribution Services via email or by phone at 503-872-8053.

The next post will focus on the RMLS™ Forms Committee. 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 is a series about how things work at RMLS™.

At their annual leadership retreat last month, the RMLS™ Board of Directors reviewed a list of potential projects and prioritized those they believe will have the best benefit for RMLS™ subscribers in 2015. Following is a brief description of the three projects that will get the attention of our software development team this year, following their completion of their work on reverse prospecting and the forms changes approved in 2014.

RMLSweb Menu Bar: This project will update the blue menu bar on RMLSweb so it always appears at the top of the screen. No matter what page you are on across the website, the menu will be locked and visible, so that you will not need to scroll up to go to a new location.

Prospecting Improvements: This project will include a variety of improvements to prospecting on RMLSweb, including the following examples:
• Options to refine the frequency of the auto-email to your clients, including days of the week and month as well as the number of times per day;
• Copying an existing profile (as a template) and creating a prospect from Advanced MLS search;
• Performing a reverse prospect search in Listing Load and CMA;
• Setting a minimum price change amount that will trigger a notification message to clients; and
• Customizing the subject line in prospect emails.

View Count Enhancements: This project will allow the listing agent to automatically schedule and email the Listing View Counts report to their seller. The plan is also to enhance functionality by allowing searching view counts by date range. Other goals include investigating the possibility of adding additional data to the reports, such as SentriLock showings and the number of active prospects that match the property.

The next post will focus on Data Distribution services at RMLS™. If you have any questions you would like to have answered, I encourage you to post a comment.

Wanda Kennedy and Vallerie Bush – the RMLS™ Data Accuracy Team

MLS Insight is a series about how things work at RMLS™.

The accuracy of data in listings posted by RMLS™ is something we take very seriously. Data accuracy makes the MLS real estate marketplace hum with the least possible friction. Because we understand that the reason we have rules and regulations is to facilitate a fair and efficient platform for our REALTOR® subscribers, RMLS™ has always focused on education and data correction instead of punishment and income for the MLS.

In fact, we renamed our Rules and Regulations Department to the Data Accuracy Department to reflect this mission!

Of course we still have a process for taking formal complaints—the standing Rules and Regulations Committee to review complaints and impose sanctions (fines in most cases), and the Hearings Committee, whose job it is to conduct hearings if sanctions are appealed. (Hearings are conducted in substantial accordance with the procedures applicable to Professional Standards.) This year, the Rules and Regulations Committee is chaired by RMLS™ Director Rick Jenkins and the Hearings Committee is chaired by RMLS™ Director Mark Meek.

However, the great majority of the work of the data accuracy process is proactive at RMLS™. We respond to all inquiries, questions, and complaints from our subscribers and also conduct regular audits and data checks. To give you some idea of the scope of this effort, here are some numbers from 2014 to ponder:

• Our Data Accuracy staff, Vallerie Bush and Wanda Kennedy, responded to more than 8,000 issues—an average about 670 per month.
• Of these, about 5,300 came from the REPORT ISSUE button that appears on the lower right corner of all Agent Full reports in RMLSweb.
• The department took over 3,100 phone calls.
• In proactive audits, 399,541 listings were reviewed and 6,400+ violations identified. (For frame of reference, 81,594 listings were added to RMLSweb in 2014.)

We also try to analyze Listing Load to prevent inaccuracies at the data collection source if we can. For example, we have blocked the ability to mark both Short Sale and Bank Owned/REO with a YES at the same time. Entry of a sold price with a +10% difference from the listing price will produce a warning message. If the property type INPARK is selected, then the style options become limited to the manufactured home types.

The system also runs auto-checks for certain potential issues upon the publishing/saving of a listing, automatically sending an email to the listing agent to alert them of a possible problem. Emails are automatically sent when there is a missing school, missing tax ID, or when the status has been pending (PEN) for over 3 months.

News Flash! One of the reasons for an extended pending is a lease option. The Board of Directors approved a new status for pending listings with lease option terms.  The “POP” status will be available later in 2015.

One of the responsibilities of the Data Accuracy Department is to comb for possible fair housing violations. Some history is relevant here. In 1995, RMLS™ entered into a conciliation agreement after a fair housing complaint. The particular complaint was due to a listing that advertised “available for adults over 40.” As a result, RMLS™ promised to conduct fair housing/HUD checks on all listings in the future and to promote fair housing on RMLSweb. RMLS™ also paid $30,000 in the settlement, which was a lot of money for a company only three years old. Today, there is a list of words that are flagged in Listing Load upon the publishing/editing of listing remarks. Staff members review a system-generated fair housing/HUD file daily with a more extensive list of possible word violations, and all remarks (public, private, supplemental remarks) are reviewed.

Data accuracy makes RMLS™ better. I encourage you to click the REPORT ISSUE button if you think you see a possible problem on a listing. If it isn’t really an issue we’ll let you know, and if it is we will contact the listing agent to get that data corrected! You will remain anonymous, unless you are submitting a formal violation report that you intend to have reviewed by the Rules and Regulations Committee.

The next post will focus on RMLSweb development projects that were approved by the Board of Directors for 2015. If you have any questions you would like to have answered, I encourage you to post a comment.

MLS Insight is a series about how things work at RMLS™.

RMLS™ began disaster recovery/business continuance (DR/BC) planning in earnest in 2002. The events of September 11, 2001, brought home the absolute necessity for this kind of planning, as it did for many businesses. Of course, part of running a responsible business has always been planning for emergencies and contingencies, but that process was formalized for RMLS™ starting in 2002.

Our first attempts at documenting the steps for disaster recovery were a little clumsy and hard to maintain. We are now on our third iteration of our DR/BC plan, and have refined it to identify the response needed for various types and levels of events—a snow day or an RMLSweb outage to the loss of our corporate facility due to earthquake or fire.

Everyone at RMLS™ has a role in helping to respond appropriately to situations that threaten the safety of employees and the continuity of the services we provide. Of course, the highest priority in any crisis is care for life and physical safety of anyone present, if that is an issue. After that, attention goes to reducing loss of data and assets. Since our service is critical to our subscribers, our goal is uninterrupted service, so a focus on speedy recovery and communication are key elements of our planning.

Part of that speedy recovery is having a redundant database and servers for RMLSweb. In 2008, we moved our DR/BC servers from a location in Portland to a building in Roseburg, built in partnership with the Douglas County Association of REALTORS®. Data is continually replicated to those servers, and during maintenance mode each month, RMLSweb actually operates from Roseburg while the main Portland servers receive their patches and updates.

Disaster recovery planning is not something that you can do once and forget about. It needs to be part of the business plan and a living, changing process

The next post will focus on listing data accuracy. If you have any questions you would like to have answered, I encourage you to post a comment.

Photo: iStockPhoto/Endurodog

The stellar RMLS™ Help Desk staff: Joanne Fulgaro, Ryan Jacobsen, and Serena Kendrick.

This post is part of MLS Insight, a series about how things work at RMLS™.

The RMLS™ Help Desk receives the highest scores of any department at RMLS™ on our annual Subscriber Satisfaction Survey. For the last three years running, they have garnered a 4 out of 5, or “Very Satisfied.” What makes the Help Desk tick?

To help answer that question I asked for the call log for a single day. That day turned out to be Monday, December 15, 2014. As it happened, Monday, December 15th turned out to be an average day at the call center. Eighty calls were received. In the twelve months ending in November, there were just about 23,000 calls. The Help Desk is on duty 5-1/2 days a week, so the average number of calls per day is roughly 80.4 calls.

Calls on Monday, December 15th came from subscribers in offices located in 21 different cities and towns in Oregon and Washington. Everett, Washington, was the northernmost and Joseph, Oregon, the most easterly. Port Orford was both the most southern and most western location of a call received that day. Incidentally, Port Orford has the distinction of being the westernmost incorporated place in the lower 48 states. The highest number of calls came predictably from Portland at 27, followed by Vancouver, Washington, and Lake Oswego, Oregon, at ten each.

Almost three fourths of the calls—58—came from subscribers. Fourteen participant brokers, four appraisers, and three personal assistants called. One call was received from a non-member in central Oregon, looking for information about joining RMLS™.

The Help Desk technicians were able to resolve all but one of the 80 calls that same day. One call concerning a browser problem was carried over for resolution the next day. In that case, a session for the technician to use a remote desktop was scheduled the following day to delve further into the problem.

More than eighty percent of those 80 calls received on December 15th were handled by the Help Desk technicians. Most of the other 15 callers were referred to internal RMLS™ resources, primarily the Accounting, Membership, and Data Accuracy staff. In only three cases were subscribers redirected to other entities. On this day those were AOL, RPR, and SentriLock.

Fifty-four of the calls were about some functionality in RMLSweb, including 20 calls about password issues and 16 about Listing Load. These two areas are consistently at the top of the call topics list. Other RMLSweb questions concerned searching of various kinds (4), report printing (3), inventory (2), and tax ID (2), leaving seven other unique RMLSweb questions. Other areas our answer folks provided help in were SentriLock (9), membership (6), Data Accuracy (4), and training classes (2). There were five calls about other topics such as transaction forms, RPR and IDX.

It was a full day of questions and answers at the Help Desk on Monday, December 15th, just like it is on most days. Thank you, Help Desk!

Next time we will talk about disaster recovery/business continuance planning at RMLS™. If you have any questions you would like to have answered, I encourage you to post a comment to this blog post.

The RMLS™ accounting team—Dalece Lauck, Cheronn Foster, Ceri Howell, and Stacy Waples—are the friendly voices on the phone if you call regarding your RMLS™ bill.

This post is part of MLS Insight, a series about how things work at RMLS™.

Do you know there is an opportunity for receiving a discount on RMLS™ dues? This year, our annual Subscriber Satisfaction Survey revealed that only around 20% of those responding knew about it.

Generally, subscriber dues are quarterly, billed in advance. However, there are now two options to make discounted payments for a longer time period. If you pay all subscriber dues annually in advance, you will receive a 10% discount, and there is now also a brand new offering of half-yearly advance payment with a 4% discount. With the end of 2014 rapidly approaching, so is the opportunity for making an annual payment to take advantage of this discount opportunity for the full year in 2015. Call RMLS™ Accounting at 503-872-8003 for more information.

The Accounting Department works hard to make the billing process as easy and streamlined for subscribers as possible, while maintaining the highest level of fiscal responsibility for RMLS™. Last year, our billing process did not allow for payment of fees without penalty in the quarter of service, because this allowed us to virtually eliminate bad debt. No one received service that they had not paid for. However, this policy caused problems for some subscribers who needed to pay in the month or year that the service was actually received to make their accounting work the way they wanted it to. This year our billing timeline allows for payment without a late fee until the sixth of the month after billing occurs, eliminating those problems and not significantly increasing our exposure to unpaid service.

RMLS^™ will upgrade its billing and membership system in 2015. The RMLS™ Board of Directors approved a new contract with Abila, Inc, to use their cloud-based system netFORUM Enterprise. RMLS™ has used the same membership system since 1993. A change was needed because that system does not operate optimally over a wide area network—in plain English, this means that our branch offices often experience slow response and other difficulties. It has been increasingly difficult to maintain PCI compliance for credit card processing with the current system. After reviewing many products, Abila was chosen for its solid platform, customization potential, and commitment to PCI compliance and data security. The system will also replace our outmoded HelpDesk software, as well as some other staff tools. Customization of the system and data migration will take place over the next six months or so. We do not expect to bill subscribers with the new system before the third quarter of 2015. When the system is rolled out, it will include an upgrade to the online payment system for subscribers.

Next month we will spotlight another department at RMLS™. If you have any questions you would like to have answered about how things work at RMLS™, I encourage you to post a comment to this blog.

This post is part of MLS Insight, a series about how things work at RMLS™.

RMLS™ is renewing its agreement with Oregon Real Estate Forms to pay for MLS-Connect® for zipForms on behalf of the RMLS™ subscribers who use the OREF Forms. The Board of Directors approved payment of this annual fee of $3.00/OREF Forms subscriber at its meeting in October. MLS-Connect® allows for auto-population from the listing data. We recently audited the available fields, and are sending all the data that is compatible to OREF for use in this functionality.

RMLS™ and OREF are two separate entities with a history of cooperation in serving Oregon REALTORS®. From 2004 through 2010, RMLS™ provided the on-line forms software solution for OREF. The program was based on Microsoft technology, and after six years of operation, some key components were no longer available to support the software that RMLS™ had built for OREF. The REALTOR®-owned zipLogix platform was chosen by the OREF Board of Managers and was launched January 1, 2011. RMLS™ has participated in the MLS-Connect® feature from the beginning to add value for our subscribers.

Thanks to everyone who commented on the last post – Thinking About an MLS Without Area Numbers! As I stated, this is not in the works at this time, but discussion about how things might work in the future is healthy. Technology moves at a great rate, and we don’t always know where it is headed. Even just thinking about doing things in a different way keeps us mentally agile and a little more ready for whatever changes comes our way. Thanks again for participating.

I took a detour this month to tell you about OREF. Next month we will get back to talking about the various departments at RMLS™ and their plans for the upcoming year. If you have any questions you would like to have answered about how things work at RMLS™, I encourage you to post a comment to this blog.

This post is part of MLS Insight, a series about how things work at RMLS™.

An MLS without area numbers: this idea might strike terror in your heart….or you might say to yourself, “it’s about time!” In any case, it is not a proposal that is currently on the table, but with the changes in technology and the way people think about location, it is probably not too early to start the conversation.

When RMLS™ opened its doors in 1991, it was to the REALTORS® in the Portland metropolitan area in Oregon. At that time, the major advertising vehicle for homes for sale was the newspaper—The Oregonian, in our case. RMLS™ based its MLS area numbers on the map and classified ad numbers of The Oregonian. The 12 core areas for Multnomah, Clackamas, and Washington counties have remained basically unchanged for 23 years.

When regions were added, local preferences regarding area numbers were retained. Clark County, for example, is divided into more than 30 areas, while Coos County is contained in one area.

The end result is more than 200 area numbers in RMLSweb, without a common reason why each geographical area is an “Area Number.” In some cases, a single area comprises several large but dissimilar communities. In others, areas may have so few listings and sales as a sample size that few, if any, conclusions could be drawn from looking at their data. In fact, there are rural areas that had no new listings and no closed sales in all of 2013.

In the world of today, The Oregonian posts its real estate ads online and there is no search option for area numbers. GPS location services have replaced maps to a large degree. It is a very different world than the world of 1991, when there was a Thomas Brothers map in the car of virtually every REALTOR®.

Here are some things to think about:

What role do area numbers play in the life of an RMLS™ subscriber today?

Has map search replaced searching by area number? Could it?

What could replace area numbers for searching besides map search—counties? zip codes? There should be something to narrow the initial search that pertains to location.

What about Market Action and other statistical reports? (Some counties are already reported in terms of zip codes in Market Action.)

If and when we ever do move away from area numbers, we need to have a good plan to meet the needs of our subscribers. Ideas?

Thanks for voyaging into the future with me. Next month we will talk with the various departments at RMLS™ and their plans for the upcoming year. If you have any questions you would like to have answered about how things work at RMLS™, I encourage you to post a comment to this blog.

UPDATE (November 20, 2014): RMLS™ is not the only MLS engaging in this interesting discussion. Here’s an article from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer about NWMLS area numbers.

This post is part of MLS Insight, a series about how things work at RMLS™.

In our early years, RMLS™ leadership had the goal of positioning RMLS™ as the primary source for information about the residential real estate market—so statistical information has always been a priority. Then and now, RMLS™ provides compiled data and directs media to working REALTORS® for interpretation and projections.

In other words, our expertise is the WHAT, and we leave the WHY to industry professionals who have access to the buyers and sellers whose activity underpins the data on sales, prices, and listings.

Market Action

The first issue of our monthly statistical newsletter, Market Action, was published as four printed pages in March 1992. Today Market Action is 69 pages long and covers all the market areas we serve. Next year, we will be expanding coverage to include separate stats for new construction and existing homes. Watch for a survey question in our Annual Subscriber Satisfaction Survey to weigh in on the most important data to include, or leave a comment below.

Market Trends and Market Stats

To explore the other statistics reports that RMLS™ has to offer, head to the Statistics tab on the RMLSweb menu bar.

RMLSweb also features video tutorials on how to use both Market Trends and Market Stats. (You can find these and others on RMLSweb by clicking on Training Tutorials under the Toolkit menu.)

Market Trends allows searching by geography (area number, city, ZIP code) and a few other criteria such as bedrooms, year built, lot size, etc. The resulting report produces not only a summary of data by month within the range you select, but also six graphs like the one below that are a click away from copying for your use in your own CMAs or newsletters.

Market Stats provides several reports. The Comparables Report has several additional graphs which depict sales data by sold terms and number of bedrooms. (See below for the type of info available in the Comparables Report.) The Dollar Value by Area and Inventory Reports are strictly data reports that give a very streamlined overview of market areas.

Home Sales Report

In addition to these dynamic reports which pull data according to criteria you select, RMLS™ also provides static reports under the Statistics menu. The Home Sales Report has information as early as 2001. Since July 2011, these reports have presented information for new construction—both separate from existing and combined.

Statistical Summaries

Finally, the Statistical Summaries compile years worth of Market Action historical data into a few pages and provide up to nine annual snapshots of various aspects of the residential real estate market in all our market areas. Access them under the Statistics menu on RMLSweb.

As you can see, RMLS™ takes stats seriously! If you would like to learn more about how to use stats in your business, call RMLS™ Training at (503) 236-7657 to get more information.

Thanks for taking this brief tour highlighting some of the statistical information available from RMLS™. Next month we will talk about envisioning an MLS without area numbers. If you have any questions you would like to have answered about how things work at RMLS™, I encourage you to post a comment to this blog.