I’m guessing that the main purpose of BHB is not to spread the news – especially NAR news. Being the resident NAR insider on BHB, I promise I will not use this site to spread NAR propaganda…er…news. But this quiet piece of information is actually VERY big and I doubt it will get much attention outside the hallowed halls (or ivory towers, if you prefer) of the REALTOR® organization.
On Friday, April 11th, NAR announced that the Real Estate Standards Organization (RESO) had unanimously approved a “draft standardized data format for distributing real estate listing information.” Okay, I expect that most of you NAR skeptics are not particularly impressed by that bit of news, but let me try to explain why I think this is important.
First, you should understand this was not a group of NAR leaders in a back room filled with cigar smoke that agreed to this draft. Yes, NAR helped organize this group, but check out this list of organizations/companies that UNANIMOUSLY agreed to a set standard:
The standard was drafted and unanimously approved by a RESO working group composed of NAR’s Center for REALTOR® Technology and many of the real estate industry’s leading publishers and consumers of real estate listing data. They include MLS Assistant, MLS Listings Inc., MLSPIN, New Jersey MLS, TREND MLS, Move Inc. (operator of Realtor.com®), Bridge Interactive, Bainbridge, Cevado Technologies, CLRsearch, eNeighborhoods, eShowings, FBS Data Systems, Google, Homescape, Marketlinx, Oodle, Point2, PropBot, Prudential Preferred CRE, RealEstate.com, Realtracs, ThreeWide, Trulia, Vast, Yahoo! and Zillow.
Now approving a “draft” means there is likely more work to do, but this is an important first step in making listing data seamless on the Internet and between MLS systems. What’s the next step? According to the news release:
The draft standard will be implemented immediately by several of the partner organizations. Following their feedback, a final draft will be presented and voted on during a meeting of the partners in August.
This agreement has far-reaching and mind-boggling implications for listing data on the Internet, but there is more to the story. This whole process was in danger of imploding recently when a couple of the BIG NON-MLS PLAYERS headed off to form their own standards because they were tired of the petty bickering of MLS’s over unimportant field names (you say vegetable sink, I say utility sink). NAR was able to talk Google…er…the BIG NON-MLS PLAYERS off the ledge and back to the table. It is likely that this re-integration avoided having competing standards and a Blue Ray vs. HD type of shake-out (a battle the MLS’s and NAR would have lost quickly).
One of the BIG road blocks to fixing the OMD (overlapping market disorder) with MLS’s and the local associations/brokers that control them is a lack of standards. The petty bickering at the RESO level plays out in almost every local market around the country. This keeps MLS’s from merging and keeps REALTORS® paying multiple MLS fees just to do business in ONE marketplace. I think the RESO standards will go a long way to putting these silly little issue to bed and letting us focus on real issues – like figuring out if Barry is really full of crap.
Cathleen Collins says:
This is indeed great news, David. We’re lucky to have you here as or “resident NAR insider.” Thank you.
April 12, 2008 — 9:38 am
Ann Cummings says:
David – this is really good news for sure. Now let’s hope the draft works out to be something real that all can work with. I cringe whenever I think of the directions things could have gone had this group not gotten together and come up with this draft. Great news!
April 12, 2008 — 11:03 am
Dave Barnes says:
Useless article WITHOUT A LINK to the actual standards document.
April 12, 2008 — 1:54 pm
Dave Phillips says:
Dave B,
Sorry for the incredible lack of service. I’ll have our accounting department refund your monthly access fee right away. As soon as we have access to the standards, we will post them.
April 12, 2008 — 2:43 pm
Steven Leung says:
It sounds like there’s evidence of a cultural divide between the tech players and the MLS reps. To a Silicon Valley techie, an argument over field names would be like having to plan a subdivision, get electricity and running water, budget construction, but first arguing over what the street signs are going to say. It almost seems better to know what the legal definition of each parcel is going to look like then let the post office deliver to each one based on a few different names.
April 12, 2008 — 3:54 pm
nilo says:
all this has to do is syndication. It has nothing to do with MLS to MLS data exchange. The specification is very small and really is only for things like advertising
April 12, 2008 — 5:31 pm
Matthew Hardy says:
Uh… isn’t this rather old news?
RETS has been around for quite some time.
Here are the specification documents:
http://www.rets.org/documentation
April 12, 2008 — 11:01 pm
Dave Phillips says:
Actually, this is NOT RETS. Technology speaking, this is over my head, so I would urge you to see this for what it is…a head’s up that something positive and significant has happened. I’ll check with NAR’s Chief Techy – Mark Lesswing – and see if he can help with the exact technology geekspeak.
April 13, 2008 — 6:25 am
Matthew Hardy says:
> Actually, this is NOT RETS.
If you look at the link you provided in your 2nd paragraph above, you’ll note that it begins with http://www.rets.org/
Quoting from the document in your link :
(Note: below “RETS-WG” is RETS workgroup)
“2. RESO Governance Policies and Procedures
These policies and procedures (Policies and Procedures) are being proposed to the RETS-WG for consideration to formally create the Real Estate Standards Organization (RESO) to govern the standards development, promotion, and maintenance activities of Real Estate Transaction Standard (RETS) and any other Standard that RESO deems appropriate.”
Of further interest, quoting from page 4:
“Principal shareholder will be NAR.”
And from page 5:
“Board of Directors… elected by NAR”
From page 6:
“2. RESO Governance 2.1. Purpose
… RESO shall develop, promote and maintain… electronic commerce procedures and standards for the real estate industry to enable real estate information to be securely exchanged between real estate brokerages, practitioners, mortgage lenders, investors, service providers, vendors, borrowers, and other parties…”
From page 8:
“The Board will have oversight on strategic issues that impact the standards RESO is responsible for.
From page 10:
“2.4.5. Board of Directors Standards Committee 2.4.5.1. Responsibility
The Board of Directors Standards Committee shall provide overall direction and support for all standards efforts including but not limited to data standards, interchange mechanisms that leverage the data standards, compliance, marketing, training and support.”
The data standards part they’re talking about are here:
http://www.rets.org/documentation
RESO is like most standards processes as it begins by (sometime real, sometimes only apparently) technical independents who then relinquish control to some other governing body; in this case RESO/NAR.
April 13, 2008 — 9:00 am