Dear Friends,

This year RMLS™ is celebrating its 25th anniversary!

In 1991, Regional Multiple Listing Service (RMLS™) was created out of five Portland-area REALTOR® associations. Over the last 25 years our subscribers have gone from scanning listings in bulky listing books to being able to find dozens of options for clients with the touch of a button. Along the way, RMLS™ has been there providing the technology and ensuring the accuracy of data. We’ve expanded our service area greatly in that time, and the type of services we’re able to provide across the region.

You’ll see RMLS™ observing this milestone across Oregon and Southwest Washington throughout 2016. We’ll be reaching out to partners at local associations and celebrating at RMLS™ events around the state such as the RMLS™ Education Summit and Trade Fair happening in Portland next month. You might even see a surprise or two pop up on RMLSweb.

RMLS™ flourishes through the partnerships of our shareholder organizations, local organizations, and the RMLS™ Board of Directors. Their support provides direction for the organization. Of course, RMLS™ would not exist without its REALTOR® subscribers! RMLS™ subscribers provide invaluable knowledge in their daily business that spurs innovation on RMLSweb.

Here’s to another 25 years! We hope you’ll help RMLS™ celebrate in 2016.

Sincerely,

Kurt von Wasmuth
President/CEO

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.

Real estate professionals: you are invited to save the date for the 2016 RMLS™ Education Summit and Trade Fair! This year’s trade fair will be taking place on Friday, March 18, 2015, at the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel in the heart of the Lloyd District of Portland, OR.

It’s Our Silver Anniversary!

RMLS™ will be celebrating its 25th anniversary in 2016, and this is the largest event RMLS™ organizes each year. RMLS™ is proud of the services it has been able to offer regional real estate professionals since 1991, and the trade fair will offer plenty of opportunity to celebrate.

About the Location

RMLS™ has moved the event location in recent years in order to find a space with a perfect fit. The DoubleTree offers a new location in the heart of the Lloyd District, plentiful parking, easy access by transit, and also enables RMLS™ to offer more amenities to attendees and exhibitors.

Join Us!

RMLS™ members and non-members are welcome to attend the event, and class registration will be open by early February. Monitor RMLStradefair.com, RMLS™ on Facebook, or RMLS™ on Twitter for the latest updates.

Whether you’ll be attending classes, reaching out to REALTORS®, or window shopping around the trade fair floor, RMLS™ looks forward to seeing you at our annual trade fair this spring!

Thanks, Sponsors!

Special thanks to our sponsors for making this event possible…

Diamond

Silver

Ask Technical Terry is a series RMLS™ aims to offer once a month. RMLS™ subscribers will drive the content—submit any question about RMLS™ to Technical Terry in the comments or by emailing communications@rmls.com. Don’t be shy—we won’t identify you by name.

Hey, Technical Terry.

What can I do about all these emails I keep getting from RMLS™ about my pending listing? It’s got a lease option right now and I don’t need more emails in my inbox!

William Wesley Wiewel

Hey WWW-

Did you know about the Pending Lease Option status we introduced on RMLSweb last month? This status is for listings which have offers accepted with lease option terms.

Just mark your listing as POP and enter in the anticipated lease end date. This will change when you receive status change reminders from RMLSweb. You’ll see fewer unnecessary emails.

When searching for listings on RMLSweb, you can also include or exclude the POP status from your search.

Good luck on taming that email inbox!

Dear Technical Terry:

I’m sure the RMLS™ office move to the Portland airport area made perfect sense for many reasons—but those of us on the west side of Portland really feel left out! It’s such a long way to drive for a training. What do you suggest?

Alan of Allen Boulevard

I feel your pain, Alan! The Portland metro area is slowly becoming Bay Area North as far as traffic is concerned. I’m pleased to report we have been working on a sustainable solution for this very issue for some time.

Starting this month, we’ve begun offering training classes in Beaverton at The Round (the Beaverton City Hall building). We chose this location for several reasons: it’s close to Highway 217, it has free parking, and they offer a variety of classroom sizes and configurations.

Our very first day of classes was met with great success! We heard many positive comments about the facilities, location, and so on.

Tell all your west side REALTOR® friends of this exciting new training location! We’ve reserved space at The Round for the next three months and expect the location to be very successful (which would result in us reserving space going forward) but the decision to keep training at this location will be somewhat influenced by REALTOR® attendance.

Take a look at the Beaverton training calendar for November and December on RMLSweb (login required).

Remember—the RMLS™ trainers love doing office trainings/presentations as well. If you want a trainer to come to an office meeting, just let us know! Email training@rmls.com or call us at (503) 236-7657 to set up an appointment.

The RMLS™ Training Staff: Ryan Jacobsen, Caryl Frazier, Melanie Huff and Lynn Solmonson.

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

When was the last time you attended a training class held by RMLS™? Whether you want to tame your smartphone or research real estate statistics in a specific ZIP code, we’ve got you covered. Our training staff aims to adapt to meet the needs of subscribers—we’re even testing out a new training facility in Beaverton this fall, to help reach more REALTORS® on the west side of the Portland metro area!

New Classes

RMLS™ Training has greatly increased its class offerings this year. This month was the debut of the Mobile Apps for REALTORS® class, which focuses on 50 apps available for iPhone, Android, and Windows devices that can help REALTORS® get organized, stay productive, and feel safe and secure.

RMLS™ also rolled out introductory classes for iPhone and Android users this year. Android Essentials for REALTORS® and iPhone Essentials for REALTORS® focus on teaching users how to get the most out of a smartphone device.

Want to be the expert in your market area? In the RMLSweb CMA and Statistics class, our trainers will show you how to get the statistical data you need to do just that. We’ll use the RMLSweb statistical modules to examine MLS areas for trends that will help you become more knowledgeable about your market area.

Finally, the RMLS™ Rules and Regulations Overview class will strengthen your knowledge of the RMLS™ Rules and Regulations! These rules and regs help keep the data accurate and useful for all our subscribers.

How to Access RMLS™ Training Opportunities

Come to us or we will come to you!

Did you know you can have an RMLS™ trainer come to your office with our RMLS™ Updates Class? With the recent release of the new photo loader and the annual forms change, now might be a great time to take advantage of this service. We also offer the new classes listed above at your office location. Just email training@rmls.com or call us at (503) 236-7657 to set up an appointment.

Find schedules for regular classes in the RMLS™ training rooms on RMLSweb under the Toolkit menu—click on “Training Calendar” for a list of schedules. Scroll to the bottom of the list for access to the ongoing webinars offered on a regular basis, which can be accessed from the comfort of your own home or office. Register online for any of the classes by selecting “Training Registration” under that same Toolkit menu.

New Training Facility in Beaverton

This fall, RMLS™ is offering classes at a new training facility in Beaverton. The Round in Beaverton is located at 12725 SW Millikan Way, which is MAX-adjacent and offers free parking for class attendees.

We’re looking forward to offering classes at this location, but class attendance will be key to continuing to use this facility in 2016. If you like having a training facility in Beaverton, come to a class this fall to show your support!

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™.

One of the thing I enjoy most about writing this column is the ability to provide extra-early notifications of upcoming changes. So when the Board of Directors approves a new program or there is some other significant change coming, you can get a heads up well in advance of implementation. We told you about the new mapping in July, and there are now two more improvements to RMLS™ services to share with you. Both should be available before the end of the year.

REALTOR® Agent Profiles

At their August meeting, the RMLS™ Board of Directors approved the addition of links to the REALTOR® agent profiles being collected by Realtor.com. They will appear in the Find A REALTOR® section of RMLS.com, in the RMLSweb roster, and possibly on report banners. When accessed through an RMLS™ avenue, the Agent Passport will not be branded with the Realtor.com logo. If you want to get a jump on creating your profile, there is a there is a quick start guide on Realtor.com.

Financial Calculators on RMLSweb

A little history… Since our earliest days, RMLS™ Directors have consistently promoted inclusion of a robust set of financial tools for RMLS™ subscribers. It has not always been easy to reach this goal. The first tools provided were released in 1994 and were called PC Financials. A DOS 3.5″ floppy disk was provided at no charge to each subscriber. The 90s were the decade when Windows took over computing, so it was not long before the attempt was made to recreate these financial functions in a Windows-based program. These attempts were not met with success before RMLS™ migrated totally to its current web-based MLS system, RMLSweb in 2002.  A set of financial tools was licensed and added to the system that same year, and those same tools still live in the Toolkit menu. Over the next decade, the company licensing the tools to RMLS™ changed hands several times and eventually we lost the ability to effectively update and repair the program. It was not multi-browser compatible, and many subscribers attempting to utilize the tools got an error message instead.

Fast forward to 2014. The RMLS™ Board of Directors remained firm in its belief that RMLS™ should provide robust financial tools for subscribers. After surveying the marketplace for other alternatives, RMLS™ took the opportunity offered in June 2014 to assume in-house control of the code for the tools we were already using. The first improvement was to make the tools available through multiple browsers, which happened in January this year. Next we hired a researcher to update the default values, and I am happy to announce that those values will be updated and much more accurate later this year. Stay tuned to the RMLS™ Weekly Report for more information.

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 June meeting, the RMLS™ Board of Directors voted to replace the current GeoJet mapping for RMLSweb with a new solution. We will continue to utilize Bing Maps, but will include layers for parcels, zip codes, schools, counties, etc. from Digital Map Products. Neighborhood boundaries will be a new addition.

Our contract with GeoJet ends at the end of this year, so it was an opportune time to review that part of the system. Bottom line pricing for the two solutions is very similar, but we are looking to reap benefits of increased functionality and reliability. Developers will be working on integration of the replacement solution during the later months of this year.

The next post will focus on our Training Department. 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.

WANTED: Pending or Sold

The RMLS™ Spring Education Summit and Trade Fair will be held on Thursday, March 19, 2015, from 8:30am-4:30pm at the World Forestry Center in Portland.

FREE CE hours are available for both Oregon and Washington REALTORS®, but classes are filling quickly. Register ASAP to ensure a seat.

Plan your day:
• View a complete schedule of classes
• Read class description and instructor bios

Sprinkled throughout the World Forestry Center campus, trade fair exhibitors will be on hand to offer the best in services, technology, and tools for your business needs. Subscribers are encouraged to bring business cards for easy entry into door prize drawings.

Thanks to our generous sponsors!

DIAMOND

PLATINUM

SILVER

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.