The Council of MLS held their annual conference in California last week. It was most well-attended show in its history. They did a great job of blending outside perspectives from leading technology firms with MLS-to-MLS sharing. Kudos to the CMLS board of directors and the California Regional MLS led by Art Carter and their staff who were the hosts. It may be the most well-run conference in real estate. Even the vendors were happy, especially those on the innovation track. My understanding is that the legal meetings went really well. SourceMLS is off to a great start. And, the message this year from The Realty Alliance was that MLSs are doing a much better job at engaging brokers but there are miles to go. Still no public statements on project Upstream.
The conference buzz was focused around RESO – the Real Estate Standard Organization. MLSs like MRIS and MLSListings are way out in front of the industry with the adoption of RESO standards and the Certification of RESO standards. They have set the mark with both and other MLSs are fast on their heals to get in line. It is insane that all real estate information in America is not on a standard in 2014.
MLS technology giant CoreLogic is rolling through successful conversions to their Matrix system to the delight of agents, brokers, and MLS executives alike. Conversions are never without pain, but it is manageable. BlackKnight financial is on a roll with their Paragon 5 MLS system and so is FlexMLS and Rapattoni. Everyone seems pretty healthy.
On the vendor alley, there were lots of stars including the man who gave Vendor Alley its name – Mr. Greg Robertson. He is contenting to expand his CloudCMA offering across more and more MLSs with his only competitor being TouchCMA. Listtrac, a new company that provides a free reporting solution to MLSs, Agents, and Brokers that tracks online marketing hits, leads, etc seemed to have a great show, so did Virtual Tour Cafe. Mobile is still a super hot topic and MSOffice, Mobile Realty Apps, GoMLS, Goomzee, and Smarter Agent were all in attendance. Full data seems to be the next hot trend in Mobile. HomeSnap is a recent entry into space and everyone loves their User Interface.
Tying it all together for MLSs was Clareity Security – offering SSO services and Clareity Store. Look for a big announcement from Clareity at the upcoming NAR Annual meetings.
I seriously doubt that the MOVE executives at the conference knew about the bomb. If they did, they sure were cool about it. Listhub was busy reinforcing their MLS relationships while Zillow and Trulia were fully focused on direct data feeds. Homes.com and Real Estate Digital were there in full force offering two of the widest product lines available to MLSs outside of CoreLogic. They are talented groups that keep on innovating.
I am also really impressed with ShowingSuite’s offerings. They are doing a great job supporting mobile and their home feedback feature is outstanding. Instant and ZipLogix rule the forms world together separately. They are both excellent. Teradatum is killing it with their reporting suite and everyone was raving over the professionalism of data to video products. New vendor, Nest 4 Less has a really cool product that replaces the dreary “resources” link on broker and MLS websites with something that looks attractive and drives revenue back to the broker and MLS. It begs the question – why not?
RE Technology signed up a number of new MLSs. WAV Group founders started RE Technology as a free service for technology information. We are knocking on the door of reaching 100 MLS markets, somehow managing a pace of 2 or more MLSs each month since the founding of the company in May of 2010. Free is a great price and agents love it. Technology moves so fast in real estate today and RE Technology is the only services that help agents keep up.
I could go on – but my fingers are tired. If I missed something, I am not surprised. Leave a comment below about what I missed. Our comments are moderated, so it will not appear on the site – but I will add you to the post.
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