REALTORS® working in the City of Portland should be aware that as of January 1, 2018, all homes listed for sale in the City of Portland will require a home energy score report to be obtained and made accessible to any potential homebuyer.

RMLS™ has been working with Earth Advantage® to facilitate populating this important information to listings on RMLSweb. On December 6th, RMLS™ will release a “Load from Green Building Registry” button in the Green/Energy Supplement on RMLSweb. All homes with a listing address in the City of Portland will have this supplement automatically included in Listing Load. While we are introducing the ability to populate this information in a listing, the fields will remain unrequired.

When this button is selected, the listing address will be sent to the Green Building Registry database. If an address match occurs and the address has a home energy report on file, the score and report URL will autopopulate into the Green/Energy Supplement form. In addition, the home energy report and report URL will be added to the end of the Public Remarks field in data feeds, including IDX sites that get listing information from RMLS™.

RMLS™ is aware that some properties may have Portland addresses that do not fall within the jurisdiction of the City of Portland. The Administrative Rules of the Residential Energy Performance Rating and Disclosures, Part 3.3.1, provide guidelines to determine if a property must have a Home Energy Score. If a property has received a Home Energy Score but the “Load from Green Building Registry” button did not find a match, contact RMLS™ so we can make improvements to this process. This situation could occur if the address entered in Listing Load does not match the address recorded in the Green Building Registry. REALTORS® are encouraged to use PortlandMaps as a reference to find the correct listing address.

Read more about the City of Portland Home Energy Score program.

UPDATE (December 6, 2017):

The Home Energy Score button is now live on RMLSweb. Earth Advantage has produced a short demonstration of how the feature works, below. RMLS™ will produce a similar tutorial in the coming weeks.

This post is part of MLS Insight, a series about governance issues at RMLS™.

Every so often, RMLS™ gets a request for data or service from Central Oregon or Klamath Falls, for example. We’re not the primary multiple listing service (MLS) in all parts of Oregon—we are happy to list properties in those areas, but our data is not comprehensive enough to provide as an accurate resource for the area.

What areas then, does RMLS™ cover?

In our primary service areas, RMLS™ represents 17 Associations/Boards of REALTORS® and approximately 10,700 real estate professionals in over 2,300 offices.

We are the primary provider of multiple listing services in 20 of Oregon’s 36 counties (Baker, Clackamas, Columbia, Coos, Curry, Douglas, Gilliam, Grant, Hood River, Lane, Morrow, Multnomah, Sherman, Umatilla, Union, Wallowa, Wasco, Wheeler, Washington, and Yamhill) and Clark, Klickitat, Pacific, and Skamania Counties in Washington.

In addition we provide supplementary MLS services in five more Oregon counties (Clatsop, Tillamook, Lincoln, Polk, and Marion). We are not the only MLS in those counties, but we have many subscribers and listings in those areas. In the remaining eleven Oregon counties, we provide tax data and have a small listing inventory.

RMLS^™ was created when representatives from four Boards of REALTORS® in the Portland metro area decided to form a service that was an alternative to a broker-owned multiple listing service in business since the 1970s. The first RMLS^™ listings went live in the spring of 1991.

From the original service area covering Clackamas, Multnomah, Washington, Yamhill, and Columbia Counties in Oregon, RMLS^™ had successful expansion opportunities after adopting an internet-based system that could be responsive to a broad based subscriber group. The timeline below shows the inclusion of various REALTOR® associations in our service area.

We continue to discuss opportunities to serve more Oregon and Washington REALTORS®, wherever they may be located!

Next month we will talk about the RMLS™ Service Advisory Committee. If you have any questions you would like to have answered about RMLS™ governance or operation, I encourage you to post a comment to this blog.

The archive of RMLS™ Market Action statistical summaries on RMLSweb has a fresh new look, thanks to RMLS™ Business Analyst/Policy Manager Christina Smestad.

If you have never seen them, statistical summaries compile many years of data from our Market Action newsletter for most areas in the RMLS™ region so readers can compare long-term market movements in key areas.

In order to improve the statistical summaries we standardized the data, added a few numbers not previously compiled, and reworked the layout to be more readable and printer-friendly. Our revised versions combine average and median sales price into one report and add inventory counts to the summary report. We think you’ll like what you see!

Available reports include average sales price, average and median sales price by area, closed sales, market percent and time by price, median sales price, new listings, pending listings, and a summary report. Affordability summaries are available for the Portland metro area, Clark County, and Lane County. Statistical summaries are currently available for those areas as well as Baker County, Columbia Basin, Coos County, Curry County, Douglas County, Mid-Columbia, Union County, and Wallowa County.

The treasury of statistical summaries may be accessed online two ways. Currently, subscribers logged in to RMLSweb may navigate to Toolkit->All Documents, then expand the folder titled “Market Action Statistical Summaries” on the left sidebar to find subgroups of specific geographic regions (see image at left).

As of March 28, a shortcut will be available allowing users to access quick links to statistical summaries directly from the RMLSweb menu. Subscribers logged in to RMLSweb may navigate to Statistics->Statistical Summaries for a more navigable list of geographic areas.

Moving forward, RMLS™ will update the statistical summaries more frequently than the annual updates of the past. We’re also working to expand the reports into other areas: Polk and Marion Counties, Grant County, North Coastal Communities, and Cowlitz County are planned additions for the future!

The Pacific Northwest gets a lot of rain, and stormwater runoff can be challenging to manage. Many cities in the region are starting to build green street facilities in residential areas to reduce the risk of flooding and provide other benefits.

The City of Portland recently released a guide for REALTORS® and homeowners called “Buying or Selling a House with a Green Street Facility.” The guide outlines basic information about these facilities, including how to report a need for maintenance.

Additionally, the caretakers of these facilities remind REALTORS® and homeowners of the following:

• Place “for sale” signs in yards rather than green street facilties or between curbs and sidewalks.
• Inform clients that green streets are publicly owned stormwater management facilities.
• If a green street facility near a property on the market needs maintenance, contact the City of Portland.

Facilities like these exist outside of Portland as well—REALTORS® in other areas may equally benefit from reviewing these materials.

Florence sits at the mouth of the Siuslaw River on the central Oregon coast midway between Newport and Coos Bay.  The area offers an amazing array of outdoor recreation opportunities. There are sparkling lakes, a river, evergreen forests, the Pacific Ocean and sand dunes. Just north of town 40 miles of wind-sculpted dunes are part of the Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area. This region offers everything from dune buggy tours, kayaking the river or ocean, riding horses on the beach, bird watching to hiking.

Old town Florence is located immediately east of Highway 101 and the historic Siuslaw River Bridge. Here visitors can find various shops including art galleries, restaurants, antiques, gifts, ice cream and other specialty foods.

RMLS™ is proud to have subscribers in Florence, Oregon and Lane County. Subscribers can contact Andrea Milbrett our Subscriber Relations Representative in the Florence RMLS™ office at 541-902-2560.

Insider’s tip:  Andrea recommends Ixtapa Mexican Restaurant in Florence directly north of the main intersection on Highway 101.

Photos courtesy of the Florence Chamber of Commerce.

Real estate activity in Oregon and SW Washington up in most RMLS areas