Press Release: Kurt von Wasmuth Named President and CEO of RMLS™

Kurt von Wasmuth

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: January 8, 2010

Kurt von Wasmuth Named President and CEO of RMLS™

RMLS^™ Board of Directors promotes company’s Senior Vice President

PORTLAND, Ore. – RMLS^™ (Regional Multiple Listing Service), the largest Realtor^®-owned multiple listing service in the Northwest, announced the promotion of Kurt von Wasmuth to President and CEO today.

Von Wasmuth joined RMLS^™ in 1998 as a Help Desk Technician and most recently served as Senior Vice President. He has also held management positions in training, communications and information services within the company. He holds a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Washington.

“With more than a decade of leadership in the industry and a strong focus on subscriber priorities, our Board of Directors is confident in Kurt’s ability to lead RMLS^™in this challenging market,” said Gary Whiting, a principal broker with John L. Scott and the 2010 Chairman of the RMLS^™ Board.

“I’m excited to step into this role and look forward to helping RMLS^™ grow its services and solutions for real estate professionals in the Northwest,” said von Wasmuth.

Former-president and CEO Beth Murphy retired in December after 11 years in the position and 15 years with RMLS^™. After initial plans to move into a consulting role with RMLS^™, she has instead elected to embrace full retirement.

About RMLS^™

RMLS^™ produces and provides multiple listing and related services to facilitate cooperation between its more than 12,000 REALTOR^® subscribers. It is the primary source for real estate information and the premier Multiple Listing Service in the Pacific Northwest. For more information, visit www.rmlsbenefits.com.

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New Year, New Listing IDs

RMLS listing IDs to increase by a digit to accommodate new decade

Remember when everyone was worried about Y2K in 1999? Well, this year is nothing like it, but you might be curious to know what will happen with listing IDs on RMLS™ when we leap into 2010.

As you may know, the first number currently indicates the year (ex: 9000002) but what will happen when we hit the new decade? It will still indicate the year, but the listing IDs will increase from seven digits to eight. So, for example, in 2010, listing IDs will start at 10000002.

For our subscribers with IDX feeds, we have notified your providers about this change, so they should be prepared and you won’t need to stock up on emergency supplies like I did for Y2K.

Photo courtesy of jagarts.

Holiday Greetings from RMLS

Happy Holidays to all of our subscribers & friends in the real estate world!

We’re thankful to be working with a great network of 12,000+ Realtors® and real estate professionals in Oregon & Southern Washington. Thank you for all you do & for helping so many people “be home for Christmas” this year.

Warmest wishes this holiday season and cheers to a wonderful 2010!

RMLS™ Holiday Schedule

All RMLS™ offices will be closed for Christmas on December 25 and for New Year’s Day on January 1. Some of the RMLS™ offices will also be closed for an additional day around the holidays.

Closed December 24: Hood River, Coos County, Curry County

Closed December 31:Eastern Oregon

Closed January 4: Florence

The RMLS™ Help Desk will also be closed Saturday, December 26 and Saturday, January 2. Should you need to report an emergency during this time, please call our Corporate Office (503-236-7657 in Portland, 877-256-2169 outside of Portland) and select the “Emergency” menu option and a technician will contact you shortly.

December Real Estate Events & Education

Take a free RMLS™ training course

Here’s a quick rundown of upcoming real estate events & education for the remainder of December in Oregon & Southern Washington. If you have an event that is not listed here, please let us know by commenting below. For future events, please send an e-mail to communications (at) rmls (dot) com.

– December 2: Oregon Association of Realtors® hosts Short Sales & Foreclosures:
What Buyer’s Representatives Need to Know

– December 3: National Association of Realtors® offering free Safety Webinar

– December 7: Portland Metropolitan Association of Realtors® (PMAR) Installation Event

– December 9: Eugene Association of Realtors® (EAR) hosts Taxes & Investment Properties Part 1

– December 10: Women’s Council of Realtors® – Portland Chapter hosts Business Resource Luncheon & 2010 Officer Installation – “Mastering the Clock with Time Management”

– December 12: Salem Association of Realtors® Community Fund Children’s Christmas Party

– December 17: Clark County Association of Realtors® (CCAR) 2010 Officers & Board Installation & Awards Banquet

– December 17: EAR hosts Taxes & Investment Properties Part II

Also, if you’re an RMLS™ subscriber, we have lots of FREE opportunities for continuing education credit at a location near you; click the link for your area to view the December Training Calendar:

– Coos County
– Eastern Oregon
– Eugene
– Gresham
– Portland
– Roseburg
– Salem
– Vancouver

Image courtesy of jen|nif|er, available under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

Thank You.

It’s our favorite time of year, a time for family, succulent turkey, delicious pies, stuffing… well, we could get carried away about the food… more importantly, though, it’s a time to give thanks.

To our subscribers, we want to thank you for:

– Cooperation. The network of more than 12,000 real estate professionals that subscribe to RMLS™ have assisted 31,122 people in Oregon and Washington with a real estate transaction in 2009.

– Your feedback. You’ve provided lots of feedback about our services this year. We received more than 2,100 responses alone in our first ever customer satisfaction survey. While we evaluate the survey results, we encourage you to continue to provide feedback and suggestions on RMLSweb – just scroll over Toolkit and click on Questions/Comments. We serve a diverse group of customers, each with unique business needs. While it might not always be possible to meet each need, we’re doing our best to listen to all of your ideas and work toward making them a reality.

– Your patience. We’re proud to say that, aside from planned outages, RMLSweb has officially been available 99.9% of the time this year. But sometimes we have to close up shop to make changes or additions and, on rare occasions, something goes wrong. Thanks for understanding when we aren’t available for you.

– Our subscribers who serve. RMLS™ Realtor®-subscribers comprise our Board of Directors, Service Advisory Committee, Technology Committee, Forms Committee and Rules & Regulations Committee and also serve on other task forces as needed. Thank you to all who generously contribute their time and efforts to helping guide our decisions.

– Reading this blog. We’ve had over 10,000 visits since we launched this blog in June and we’re starting to have some great conversation about RMLS™, market trends and other industry news. Thanks also to the hundreds of followers and fans of our Twitter & Facebook accounts. We hope you’ll continue to make these a part of your online activities and that you’ll join in the conversation.

– Attending our classes and events. Approximately 4,000 of you have chosen to take an RMLS™ class or have attended an RMLS™ Trade Fair this year. We hope that you’ll continue to take advantage of these free educational opportunities.

We’re thankful for being able to work with such a great community of Realtors® and real estate professionals and we wish you a wonderful Thanksgiving and holiday season!

Photo courtesy of Jennifer Dickert, available under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

How Should Agents Use the Private Remarks?

What Information Do You Want To See There?

We often get requests to post messages on RMLSweb suggesting that agents use the Private Remarks in a certain way. For example, I received these two requests this week:

Please ask agents to include when there is no water or power in the Private Remarks.
Please remind agents that adding “No showings till MM/DD” in the remarks field is a rules violation.

As a general rule of thumb, we recommend that the Public Remarks be used for information about the property and the Private Remarks be reserved for information pertinent to other agents. But, apart from the following two sections of RMLS™ Rules that mention the Private Remarks directly, we don’t have any official guidelines for how to use these fields in the listing input forms:

3.12: … “A listing which excludes individually named prospective Purchasers, as may be agreed to by the Seller and Listing Broker, shall clearly indicate such exemption in the Agent/Private Remarks when loaded into the RMLS™ System by the Listing Broker or (in the case of RMLS™ load) on the Listing Data Input Form. Commercial Lease listings do not have the List Type field.”
3.25: … “How the reduction is allocated in a Short Sale is at the listing broker’s sole discretion, as long as the method (not the amount) of such allocation is set forth in the Listing’s private remarks, or the cooperating broker, in his discretion, has agreed to the allocation in writing after the offer has been presented. This section does not apply to the Commercial Lease category.”

So, what do you think? What are some examples of your best practices regarding Private Remarks? What would you like to see from other agents? Let them know by commenting below.

Open House Info Coming to RMLS.com & IDX Feeds Soon

Look for it on October 1

Effective October 1, open house data will be available on RMLS.com and in IDX feeds to your personal websites. What does this mean?

IDX feeds: your IDX provider now has access to these fields. They may be able to set up an open house search feature for you – ask your IDX provider about what they can do with the new data.

On RMLS.com: users will not be able to search exclusively for open houses, but if there is open house information for a listing, it will be displayed in the listing information. So, if someone sees a house they like, they can look to see if there are any open houses coming up for it.

Benefits? Get more exposure for your open houses! Make sure to enter specific open house data on RMLSweb – here’s how:
1. Go to Listing Load on RMLSweb.
2. Find the listing you want to enter an Open House for and click on the OH/BT button (Open House/Broker Tour).
3. Click “New Open House”.
4. Enter all of your Open House details & click Save.

New Terms of Service for RMLSweb, RMLS.com & RMLSweb Mobile Coming Soon

New Process for Reporting Copyright Infringement

Starting on October 1, you’ll notice that you have to accept new Terms of Service (TOS) for RMLSweb, RMLS.com and RMLSweb Mobile.

Note to RMLSweb Mobile users: you will need to login to RMLSweb first to accept the TOS, otherwise; you will not be able to use RMLSweb Mobile until the new TOS are accepted.

The changes to the TOS are in accordance with Title 17, United States Code, Section 512(c)(2) Digital Millenium Copyright Act. As part of the new TOS, if you feel a photo or other content acquired by another subscriber is in violation of copyright, you can now e-mail copyrightagent@rmls.com.

By e-mailing us we can start an investigation, but before we take any action, we need to receive a signed statement with specific information about the infringement by mail or as an attachment to your e-mail. For more details, you can preview a copy of the Claims of Copy Right Infringement instructions.

As a reminder, section 10.3 of the RMLS™ Rules & Regulations states:

“By the act of submitting any property listing content to RMLS™, the Participant represents that Participant has been authorized and also thereby does grant authority for the MLS to include the property listing content in its copyrighted MLS compilation and also in any statistical report on comparables. Listing content includes, but is not limited to, photographs, images, graphics, audio and video recordings, virtual tours, drawings, descriptions, remarks, narratives, pricing information, and other details or information related to listed property.”

Use Your BlackBerry as Your Lockbox Key

eKEY for BlackBerry now available via RMLS™

Good news for all of you BlackBerry fans!

Your BlackBerry smartphone can now be even more versatile as Supra is offering an accessory that will allow you to use it as a lockbox key. You can now purchase Supra’s eKEY BlackBerry Fob at RMLS™ offices and sign-up for eKEY Basic or eKEY Professional Service from Supra.

Since the BlackBerry devices don’t have infrared (which is needed to open Supra iBoxes), Supra created a fob that converts signals from the BlackBerry into infrared signals.

This should be nice for any agents that love their BlackBerry and don’t want to carry an ActiveKEY as well. While the BlackBerry Fob is another piece of equipment that you have to keep handy, it requires little maintenance, as it doesn’t need to be charged.

The BlackBerry Fobs are in-stock at our Portland, Vancouver, Eugene, Salem and Roseburg offices. At all other RMLS™ offices, you can call or visit and we will place an order for you.

For more information on using your BlackBerry as an eKEY, what types of BlackBerry devices are compatible and more, visit Supra’s website.

Update: I heard some folks are wondering what the fob looks like, so here is a photo of it:

Firmware Update for ActiveKEY – September 1

Supra is releasing a firmware update for RMLS™ ActiveKEY users on Tuesday night, September 1. If your ActiveKEY’s radio is turned on, the upgrade will happen automatically. To verify that your ActiveKEY’s radio is turned on:

Press your ActiveKEY’s On/Off button. The display should show “Ready for Use”.
If the display indicates that the radio is off, you can press “1” to turn the radio ON.

According to Supra, here’s what you can expect from the update:

The new firmware will improve your ActiveKEY’s performance in several ways.

The Showing Notification ON/OFF feature enables you to extend your ActiveKEY’s battery life (operating time between battery charges) by turning off Showing Notifications on your ActiveKEY. A Showing Notification is a text message that is displayed on the ActiveKEY when an agent opens an iBox. You may opt to turn off Showing Notifications on your ActiveKEY if you:

prefer to receive their showing notifications via email,

do not have active listings,

or do not use the showing notifications that are sent to your ActiveKEY.

With the new Battery Conservation feature, the ActiveKEY will no longer search for Showing Notifications during the off-peak hours of 9 p.m. to 9 a.m., Daylight Time. Our analysis shows that less than 2% of showings take place during this time. If you live in an area with poor cellular coverage, you may find that this feature increases your ActiveKEY’s battery life.

Finally, with the new Quick Charge feature it will take less time for your ActiveKEY’s battery to charge.

For a complete list of new firmware features, read: ActiveKEY Firmware Update 1.14

P.S. – Supra has also added a new “Safe Mode” feature if your key gets too hot. However, they still advise that you do not leave your key in spaces with extreme temperatures.