This week all the elected and paid leaders of the REALTOR® organization will be headed to Washington DC for organizational meetings and visits with Congress. For all of you NAR malcontents, this would be a perfect time to carry out the hostile take-over of your local and state association of REALTORS®.
The agenda for the NAR Mid-Year Meeting features two items that I have written about in the past – the announced Upgrade to REALTOR.com’s standard services and the project formerly known as “the gateway.” Here are a couple of quick updates:
Last week, REALTOR.com released a beta site (http://beta.realtor.com) and the following statement:
The new “Beta” REALTOR.com® website will continue to be enhanced over the next several months. Early this summer, the new site will replace the current site and will include many new free benefits for your members. One important FREE benefit on the new REALTOR.com® site is the ability to display up to 4 photos on all basic listings. Since we already receive multiple photos in the data that you currently provide to REALTOR.com®, there is no action required on your part to provide this new and exciting benefit for your members. Property photos will continue to be updated as long as the listing remains on the market and is on REALTOR.com®.
The Gateway…Real Estate Channel…or Library/Archive
The project that is so big and far reaching that NAR is having trouble finding a name to fit will be a major topic of discussion in DC. For those who have not heard of this, the project originally used the working title “Gateway” and was basically a mash-up all property data in the country. Then, just a little over a month ago, the name was changed to the “Real Estate Channel” and now it is being referred to as a library or archive of data. More importantly, NAR has issued a white paper on the..ah…whatchamacallit program that clearly outlines the intent. A few key points for those who do not wish to click thru to read the white paper: 1) it is NOT an MLS and there will be no offer of compensation or cooperation in the system; 2) there will be no public access to the data – members only; 3) NAR sees “this entity as broker controlled and MLS and Association-advised.”
I’ll be posting any updates to these issues while in DC if anything new comes about.
Jay says:
I would love to be able to explore other MLSs around country….
May 11, 2008 — 6:59 pm