The largest Multiple Listing Service system, MRIS, covers real estate listings from 60,000 professionals in the mid-Atlantic region of the U.S. (Maryland, Washington DC, Northern Virginia, and parts of West Virginia and Pennsylvania). Like their sister MLS organizations, they hate services like Zillow, Redfin and Trulia which give everday consumers access to real estate information.
But they don’t hate it so much that they won’t compete.
MRIS is launching a beta version of a service called HomesDatabase that shows MLS listings. For now only homes covered in their region are shown, but they hope to partner with the other MLS systems to create a complete database covering the U.S.
They say they’ll compete with better and more up to date information. They can ensure this by simply restricting the data they release to third parties. Since they’re a geographic monopoly, that’s trivial.
MRIS CEO David Charron says “if you listen to the consumer, everybody wins.” But one thing they’ve left off the site are for-sale-by-owner listings, which cannot be mixed with MLS listings. Until that rule is abandoned, brokers and agents still have a ridiculous advantage over people who sell their homes directly.
Don’t forget http://www.beatyouthere.com. We are a competitor as well and have over two million listings. Our site is different from all of those above listed sites in that we offer agent listings, fsbo, pre-foreclosures, bank owned listings and auctions.
In todays market, the consumer needs to see data from ALL of these sources!.
Thanks
Mark
CEO, BeatYouThere.com
noted.
Thanks for wasting my time Sean or Mark or whoever you are. If all you do is scrape Zillow (and not very well), you serve no purpose. You should be ashamed.
Don’t forget http://www.beatyouthere.com. We are a competitor as well and have over two million listings. Our site is different from all of those above listed sites in that we offer agent listings, fsbo, pre-foreclosures, bank owned listings and auctions.
In todays market, the consumer needs to see data from ALL of these sources!.
Thanks
Mark
CEO, BeatYouThere.com
Considering the market right now, boy a tough time to be pushing this out for beta release.
Why? The real estate market in the US is huge and although it is in turmoil, to say the least, everyday, thousands of transactions are initiated and completed across the country in residential as well as commercial real estate: sales, purchases, pre-foreclosures, foreclosure sales, fsbo, etc.
Maybe traffic on all the mentioned sites have decreased, but it is still a very active market – And, if the sites are supported by advertising, they will still be profitable.
If we remember that the RE market is cyclical, it will bounce back. Home sales are up now due to many foreclosed homes being purchased by either investors and/or first time buyers.
In a buyers market, real data for buyers is still necessary. I don’t think whether it is an up or down market really makes a difference.
If stock prices are going up or down you still need access to data, in fact when going down you need more data.
the online real estate space is crowded. if HomesDatabase starts trying to work with other MLS systems, they will run into problems. MLS systems are very territorial, political and difficult to work with. to reach an actual agreement between multiple MLS systems would be something of a miracle, since most of these guys only see what is best in the short term.
Amen to that. I worked with several different MLS systems with a product that we sold to a few hundred brokers around the country. In my market there was no one with any web chops whatsoever, so the product we were creating was orders of magnitude better than anything else around had. Yet despite this, a large percentage realtors would regularly dismiss our opinion on design, usability or even technical issues they had no clue about. Something about all the money they were making made them think they were experts at everything.
To add injury to insult, I saw a mass migration of MLS systems from an incompetent local provider to an even more incompetent California provider, Rapattoni. I say incompetent because when notified of an injection vulnerability their response was to give me instructions of how to hack around the particular instance of the quoting error that revealed the vulnerability. When I showed them how the vulnerability could be used for one broker to OVERWRITE another broker’s listings, they pretended like I didn’t exist. This is to say nothing of frequent breakages as they added and removed fields willy nilly, without notifying anyone, and often failing to keep headers and fields in sync.
Local associations when notified still bulldozed ahead with their migration plans. I’m telling you, it’s no wonder Zillow Redfin and Trulia are getting death threats. They are utterly clueless at anything except how to string along a cash-cow monopoly.
“They say they’ll compete with better and more up to date information. They can ensure this by simply restricting the data they release to third parties. Since they’re a geographic monopoly, that’s trivial.”
Scum. Total scum. I’d like to see the MLS knocked out by a more open competitor, or better yet, regulated. As someone who bought his home recently through redfin and loved every minute of it, I would like the MLS to take their anti-competitive practices and shove them.
Good post Mike.
One note: Unlike Zillow and Trulia, Redfin is a broker with direct imports of all broker listings from MRIS, every 15 minutes. Zillow and Trulia rely on individual relationships with brokers for most of their listings. So Redfin has every listing that HomesDatabase has, and more.
Also of note: Redfin gets more data from MRIS than MRIS displays on its own site. Compare the data we have for a typical listing on Redfin:
http://tinyurl.com/5bu27s
To what is available on MRIS’s HomesDatabase for the same listing:
http://tinyurl.com/58lfke
We show many, many more details from MRIS about a property. We also show information that we track ourselves or obtain from other sources:
1. the days on market
2. the history of price reductions
3. Google Street View & Microsoft Bird’s Eye imagery
4. the listing’s history of being listed and re-listed to make it seem new
5. price estimates from Zillow & eppraisal
6. in most counties, tax records showing what a property last sold for
7. the parcel outline, showing the exact shape of the lot
8. neighborhood pricing trends
9. a list of comparable properties, on the market & recently sold
Finally, as you recognize, we are one of the only sites to show MLS-listed properties, for-sale-by-owner properties and bank-owned properties not listed in the MLS, so there are significantly more Washington DC homes for sale on Redfin than on HomesDatabase or any of the other sites you mention. This is true of every market in which we compete.
PS, thanks Zainy for the shout-out about Redfin… we’re glad you liked the service.
It has taken MRIS a while to respond to the disintermediation in real estate industry led by Zillow and Trulia. These two sites are great but the accuracy of data on their site is iffy while MRIS has control over significant chunk of real-time data. What was missing until now was a consumer facing site. If they manage to get the site even half-right, they could be giving these other sites a run for their money.
What happened in the 70’s with stock brokerages NEEDS to happen in the real estate industry. These companies make too much money from their proprietary data and closed systems. They have a monopoly on data.
While many like to sling arrows at the MLS, most do it out of fashion with no real sense of what the MLS is really all about. Such as the only place in the entire real estate listing world that actually insures the quality of the listing info. The minute you deregulate the MLS you will end up with an listing anarchy where no buyer will ever be able to trust if the listing content they read is accurate or even timely. The MLS may have issues but those of you who bash them would choke on those words the minute you actually try buying a home without them. Who would then stop sellers from writing anything they want about their home? All of sudden 1800 square feet home will be listed as 2500. Pictures won’t be accurate. I could go on.
I applaud MRIS. They are trying to fix a very broken system that is still the best one real estate has going.
Speak for yourself. I bash MLS out of years of trying to work within that system and repeatedly being beaten down by utter incompetence. I hear where you’re coming from, but these real estate brokerages are dinosaurs that need to be killed. It will be much easier to grow the reliability you’re talking about in a new system than it will be for the bloated slugs of real estate to magically become competent.
I’d like to second Gabe. On all accounts. Not only is it tough to work with the MLS as a third party, but what about Realtors and brokers? They pay mandatory dues and fees to these boards, for what often amounts to a jumbled mess. Information may be regulated but it is a far cry from being scrubbed. In most cases it needs to go through a vendor (which the broker has to pay for) before it even resembles anything of value. Then they wake to up to find them competing for the same internet space they set out to for in the first place.
RealEstate.com, a consumer focused portal and brokerage, has over 2,000,000 MLS listings live today that anyone can see without a registration (not like Zip Realty who requires a login to see all the information). RealEstate.com also has foreclosures, and new construction from builders’ sites making it one of the most comphrehensive listing sources on the web.
RealEstate.com can do this because it is an active member of hundreds of MLS’ nationwide and a broker in every state in the country. More importantly, RealEstate.com has a mission to empower consumers with actionable and local information so they can make informed decisions and so makes the information free and easy to get.
MRIS cannot restrict data from RealEstate.com without restricting data from it’s own members. Simple marketing services like Trulia, Zillow, and Roost will never be able to get the MLS data because they don’t belong to any MLS’. More importantly, their models don’t depend on having all the inventory, they just depend on ad revenues from partners who actually would prefer they don’t have all the inventory – just theirown.
I could care less about how these sites brag about the millions of homes they list… I care about the 5 that fit my needs and the best way to find them is to use a realtor.
The more the better..Zillow et al has a good idea but 18 months later even an industry trade org can copy them…Zillow, Trulia, whats next your gig is almost up!
mcdonalds and subway will soon have mls wifi offerings.
HomelessLocator.com
It’s great to see how MRIS has evolved HomesDatabase.com – the new site looks like a huge step forward. It’s also important to note that not all of the national real estate sites are necessarily “hated” – Cyberhomes has partnered with MRIS to provide access to our content on HomesDatabase.com, as well as school and neighborhood information to the MLS. See here:
http://rismedia...ons-largest-mls
In return, Cyberhomes is also partnered with the MLS to display listing content on Cyberhomes.com, alongside the tens of thousands of listings directly aggregated from MRIS’s member brokers.
Umm – I’m sorry but this story is complete and utter nonsense.
Homesdatabase.com has been around for at least two years. I know because I used it to find my condo in Maryland back in 2006.
They probably put some lipstick on it and made it all jazzy but it still does the same thing. It give you listing data.
I suppose their happy since they were able to get some press.
Being an Arizona resident (we are generally obsessed with our real estate) I wasn’t that impressed by the site. Well…to be honest…it didn’t work at all for my zip code! Going to be a long climb to compete against Trulia and Zillow, both of which I use often.
Something isn’t right in this announcement. I was using Homesdatabase.com when I lived in Virginia and Washington, DC, to search for homes when I bought there in 2002–and I have checked on occasion ever since then. How is a site that’s been running a Trulia-like direct-to-consumer website giving full information to the MLS for more than five years anything new?
The beta is a new, “Web 2.0″ish design, but otherwise it’s the same data, same site, same access…
A couple of points if I may:
#1. While the providing of a consumer-facing interface like MRIS might be a big deal in many parts of the country, others like our own Ventura County area MLS have allowed public access to all active MLS listings for some time now [cvar.com] ; including every information field the brokers/ agents see except for the personal field where often private/ delicate information like hours the owners are home, any special family/ occupant needs/ requirements, etc.
#2. While various companies provide a “you must register first to see the good stuff” interface for the realty companies which choose this constricted route, our MLS also has no problem with anyone linking directly to the cvar.com site from their own site; as we have done with our own community website http://www.conejovalley.com.
#3. Realtor.com has supplied for some years now a virtually complete, publicly-accessible site for all the country’s MLS systems. And while the “per listing” information the MLSs upload to them is not as comprehensive as that offered by forward-thinking MLSs like ours, it is nonetheless the most accurate, most current, most used home database in the nation.
#4. Though I personally chose to leave the Realtor associations many years ago due to their too-often anti-public interest policies, an experienced (at least 5 full-time years, 10+ is better), knowledgeable (at least 3 years in the community they’re working in; 5+ is better) realty professional who cares only about their clients best interests and not how much they’ll earn for any particular sale is invaluable to home sellers and buyers.
Even when a home a client wants is for sale by owner, it’s still a good idea to hire your own agent to negotiate the purchase and get it through the often difficult and confusing loan/ closing process.
Many professionals provide such a service for just 1-2% of the sales price; a bargain for what they provide.
Hi Mike,
This is Sami from Trulia. Thanks for covering the online real estate space. Despite the market conditions, there is no shortage of innovation and news in this vertical!
Consumers have had access to complete MLS listing compilations online for years through thousands of local brokerage sites (e.g., http://www.apr.com here in the bay area) as well as through public facing MLS web sites. MRIS is one of the most forward looking MLSes, but there are also dozens of other MLSes across the country who have a public facing search site (e.g., http://www.har.com and http://www.themls.com). Access to real estate listings online is ubiquitous today – far from monopolizing listing access.
You mentioned MLSes “hate” national online real estate sites, like Trulia. Trulia has no interest in being in the MLS business and most MLSes have no interest or aspirations in being a consumer focused online media company like Trulia. Promoting real estate listings online is about maximizing buyer and seller exposure: many MLSes (as well as the brokerage firms individually who are the members of an MLS) syndicate all their listings to sites like Trulia, as well as have their own consumer facing site. There is no conflict between those two. It is about maximum exposure, not about monopolizing listing data today. This is in the best interest of both consumers and real estate professionals. David Charron at MRIS is a very sharp executive and a friend of ours and he recognizes that too.
Hi Michael & others,
Spencer from Zillow here.
I have to agree with Sami — the fact that MRIS is launching a public facing website is not an indication that they “hate” Zillow or Trulia. Some MLSs choose to have public facing websites because they view it to be a service to their member brokerages, their agents, and consumers. The Houston MLS (”HAR”) has had a public website for a long time, and they’re one of Zillow’s biggest fans. (http://www.zill...altors/2008/11/) In fact, I was on a panel with Bob Hale (the head of HAR) just last week at the National Association of Realtors conference in Orlando in which he described in detail how supportive they are of broad listings syndication to sites like Zillow. Bob, one of the most influential MLS executives in the country, describes himself as one of Zillow’s biggest fans.
Zillow receives listings from many MLSs, including Houston, Long Island and Boston (MLS_PIN). In the case of MLSs which have public websites (like HAR), we’re an important traffic source for their websites. You’ll notice that the HAR’s listings on Zillow send traffic (and followed links for SEO) to HAR.com.
Whether or not to have a public facing website is an ongoing debate in the world of MLSs. Only a handful currently have them, but I do expect that more will launch them in the future. It’s part of the natural evolution that the Internet has brought us, which opens up all databases to public view. It’s not an indication of any hatred of Zillow or anyone else.
I’m happy to talk to you (or anyone else) about this if you’d like. Feel free to email me at spencer AT zillow DOT com.
Interesting news. We saw this coming for a while. Although I love my fellow peers at Zillow & Trulia I think its a great move for MRIS and an example well set for other large MLS carriers. Although it will be tough to keep up with the RE:Tech leaders on the west coast as far as speed, site design and usability its agreat value-add for its paying members (agents & brokers).
On side note: We just announced our leap into D.C. today! The site is live (http://DC.CondoDomain.com) although we are about a week behind with our MLS feed implementation, but you can search all new developments, foreclosure, auction listings.
If a house is priced right it will sell. Unfortunately, many people who are upside down on their mortgage might not be willing to accept a lower price. Its about time for the MLS to get in the game.
Show me where I can get foreclosure info for free, then I’ll be impressed!
Sure, right now the MLS is really the place you need to be listed if you’re serious about selling a property. I sold a house myself this year though, and easily got it listed on the MLS via entryonly.com for a couple hundred dollars. Worked great, and I saved thousands in broker fees.
Uhh, i just tried it where i live (north of Philly) and it has no results…great service
Hello,
Mark from BeatYouThere.com here.
Sorry about the “Kyle Seaver” post. I was traveling and on a public computer and the auto-fill placed that in the fields. I did not notice until now.
Thanks for visiting.
Mark
Hi folks. Good to see/hear/learn there is so much energy around MLS’ that are being leveraged differently than in the past. Channeling that energy is what we are attempting to do here.
We are not at all “tired” of the large, commercial sites. Initially some of us may have been abit jealous as they appeared to more easily ride the waves of innovation and consumer preferences. Well lets face it, some of them did move very quickly. And to be certain, each has contributed enormous innovation.
The fact that our HDB effort has their attention is quite a compliment. True, there are probably a few we like better than others, that have done a better job of making entities like MRIS (and more importantly our brokers) feel appreciated. But whatever we felt, mattered little if the consumer felt better. So HDB is our reponse to the dynamics in the market as opposed to any single site or our “weariness”.
HDB has been available to consumers in the metro DC and Baltimore market since 1999. However, since implementation, we have done very little to broadcast/market HDB. Its quiet but very definite success has been accomplished via word of mouth among our brokers, agents and interested consumers.
We recently decided to build a new site with a far more contemporary look and feel. We are devoting far more marketing and communication resources to HDB once we muscle through beta. Our primary goal is to augment and reduce the expense that our customers incur by drawing more attention to their inventory. If we can do this and interest the visitor at the same time, then we are truly on to something.
We do not claim to be a destination site. We are not “all things to all people”. We are only in the mid-atlantic. We adhere to the principle that real estate is local. We certainly are the primary, collective source of all listing information. Nothing is more current than the inventory we assemble for our brokers. We do not plan to sell ads to anyone, even our own customers. We are self-funding this effort and believe it is sustainable. Our “payday” will come when our customers get better aligned with more buyers and sellers. Plain and simple, we think we can do a better job of driving unencumbered traffic to them. Time will tell.
We know there are other MLS markets that have consumer sites. A few are mentioned in earlier posts. Many others are contemplating developing one. We applaud all of them. We think the big kids on the block are going to be tough to unseat. We also know that several of them filled a void several years ago. Now it’s our turn.
Thanks everyone for weighing in!
From Michael Stark, Broker Realtor,
President of PostYourProperty.com, NeoRealEstate.com, and LookForProperty.com
It is estimated that approximately 15% of all property for sale in the US is FSBO (for sale by owner). Online real estate in 2008 is like travel in 1998 – and FSBO is the stepchild of online real estate. Everybody knows that real estate is one of the largest industries on the planet in the offline world. As long as more gurus and dollars are invested in online music, video, travel, and job search, it should be no surprise that online real estate will continue as a dwarf vertical.
From Lloyd Graves, President, RealAlliance Consulting
I find it interesting so many MLSs and vendors assume one size fits all and that there should only be one site for consumers to search for real estate on.
If the internet is the new market place, and I think it is, then we need to understand that consumers are not all looking for the same “shopping” experience. For example, if I want to buy a shirt, there are a variety of options available to me as a consumer ranging from Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom and Kmart. My budget and desired shopping experience will dictate which store I finally buy my shirt at. Sure, I might browse through the higher end stores but my economic realities will have more influence on my final purchase than my ability to browse through a store.
Real estate search portals are no different. The chances are very slim that any search portal provider, whether a private company or an MLS, can develop a site that meets every consumer’s real estate shopping need. My point is that there is not only room for a variety of search portals but an absolute need to provide consumers with choices as to how they shop for real estate.
Just as in the physical shopping world, the “winners” in the Internet market will be decided by consumers. The challenge is to provide the most consumers with the best products and services possible. It doesn’t matter what you are selling, if a company can do that, they will never have to worry about staying in business.
MLSs and private vendors have unique strengths that allow them to do certain things better than the other. I have yet to see an example of a company that takes its focus off their core product and/or service to enter or expand into something they have very little previous experience, without it having a negative impact on their primary business. Invariably, this only results in mediocrity in all of their products.
I would suggest another option is to work cooperatively, allowing each provider to maximize their strengths with the end result being that consumers have a wider array of choices and the quality of the choices will be exponentially better.
Lloyd
I think the MLS may be a little late getting into this game. There are many others who are already tying to imitate what zillow and others has done.
Graham Davis
http://www.ARTIS-USA.com
Syndication direct from your listings datbase
The war between third party solutions and MLS’s is certainly an interesting one. We understand that controlling data is a source of real power for the leading brokers in each market. We also understand why some players, like Zillow, Redfin and Trulia want to change the rules and break-down the evil MLS closed systems. But the fact is, these systems are ingrained and the brokerage community has reason to try and hang-on to control of their markets. We wish access to MLS data for wonderful tools like our BestHomePro were easier. Quite frankly it appears the rules may be loosening, partly because MLSs are being forced to loosen rules with threats of government intervention; but also we also believe that brokers and consumers are looking for cool tools that bridge the information barrier and help speed consumers to transaction.
Zillow and Trulia have been amazing break-throughs to gain exposure for listings, but my bet is they will never have ALL THE DATA, and until they do, consumers will find them sorely lacking. The Internet needs to serve the consumer, satisfy the consumer; and only then can it perform the services that real estate professional need to be successful. Fool consumers once on The Internet and they remember that you are disingenuous and they will look for alternatives.
Brokers and agents need to make money in order to survive. The good ones perform very worthwhile service and I believe – no matter how much automation is available – that truly helpful brokers and agents will always have a place in the transaction.
Jeff.Johnston@besthomepro.com
MLSs do what their broker/association members request them to do.
MLSPIN is among a variety of MLSs that push listings to Trulia and others. Moreover, if you look at the adoption of Listhub (more than 100 MLSs) brokers in their markets are enabled with the functionality to opt in to more than 30 public sites for listing syndication.