CAR responds to criticism from Inman News

This week, Inman News Ran a story about the challenges that calREDD is facing with their new installation in Lake County California.  For those of you not familiar with the California, this is the county north of Sonoma County, about 1.5 hours north of San Francisco (depending on traffic).  The color chosen of the Inman news article did not paint calREDD in a very favorable light.  As some of you are aware, calREDD is not an MLS system, they are a new Statewide MLS – with their own rules, regulations and MLS system.  Conversions of this magnitude are never easy or smooth – as the good folks in Lake County have learned.  At the center of the challenge is combining data across custom regional MLS systems in a way that allows local data points and statewide listing search.  As reported in Inman News, Lake County does not support the statewide listing search today, but it appears that June will be the launch date for that functionality.

Republished from the California Association of REALTORS website – See original post here

http://www.car.org/newsstand/newsreleases/calreddinman/

In reference to Matt Carter’s Inman News article today, we’d like to reiterate the following:

calREDD’s commitment to fix Lake County’s list of 23 items is on track and will be delivered as promised this coming Monday, with most of the items already in place. Some of the difficulties we’ve encountered in Lake County were related to the amount of customization to the calREDD^TM system, which we’re implementing at the request of the association.

No two associations are identical in their wants and needs, and Lake County is no exception. As association President Anita McKee notes, “calREDD^TM “has bent over backwards to make these customized changes for us and has been incredible in their support of this association.” Customizations also have complicated the issue of data-sharing between participating associations. However, members in general are pleased with the progress we’ve made, and as McKee states, the board has no plans to pull out of the system.

calREDD^TM has a CMA reporting capability, but based on user feedback, we’ve installed a CMA software package from an outside vendor.

calREDD^TM’s transparency since the beginning – posting our customer issues log, detailed reports on software updates and the like – has been used by detractors against us, usually by those with a monetary interest (often undisclosed) in other systems. The truth is that the calREDD^TM system is being tailored to make the switch from BAREIS to calREDD^TM easy for neighboring counties.

The reality is that the statewide MLS effort is proceeding in an orderly fashion, with additional associations scheduled to come online in the next few months. All told, associations and MLSs representing more than 120,000 California REALTORS® have signed nonbinding statements of intent to participate in calREDD^TM. We’re here for the long haul.