Marketing New Construction Real Estate

There has been a discussion in the Inman forums about NAR mandating June 2009 of RETS. Please click here to view that post.

One of the services of our company is providing MLS/IDX solutions for Realtor’s and brokerages’ websites. We deal first hand with the data feeds. My opinion is from a software developer’s viewpoint.

Some of the comments talked about providing data to 3rd party companies. That boat has already left the dock and will never come back. The reality is that the listing data (with or without RETS) is already being provided to 3rd party companies.

Our subject at hand is the mandating of RETS and how that would effect Realtors. IMHO, there should be very little change in today’s landscape and business processes for Realtors. The listing data feeds are already out there. The biggest impact will be for 3rd party companies.

The current lack of a data standard creates a huge issue for 3rd party companies. Each board’s data feed contains a different data schema (if you’ve ever wonder why the information about your listing is wrong on your website, this is usually the main cause). Because we pull the listing data from multiple boards; what we get is a jumbled mess of listing data. Our system then has to sort through this mess and turn it into something useful. The mandating of RETS will make life much simpler for 3rd party companies. Instead of having to account for a thousand different data schemas we only have to account for one.

Mandating RETS will provide a lot of positive impact for Realtors. In my humble opinion, I don’t think the mandating of RETS will increase the Realtor’s cost (marketing dollars spent, keywords, etc) of doing business. In actually, it should lower the costs. Software companies can redirect the resources and personnel that was being used to manage and sort data feeds into R&D. I think there will be an acceleration of new tools and features for Realtors to benefit from.

I’m personally very excited about the mandating of RETS.