The "Spirit" of RETS

I have been involved with RETS for 5 years and have watched it develop over that time period from a vendor driven wish list to an interoperable real estate language. I spent the first 4 years heading up technology for First Multiple Listing Service (FMLS) in Atlanta, one of the top 5 largest MLSs in the country. While there, we created one of the first RETS based add/edit systems called 1st Addition (MRIS developed another RETS update system called Keystone). We also used the RETS standard to develop an automated way for our listing system (1st Connection) to interact with our new transaction management system (1st Transaction) so that when you make a listing pending, it autocreates the transaction and prepopulates all the possible data.

Last year I took a position managing all of the real estate data systems and teams at eNeighborhoods. Going from one of the largest suppliers of real estate listing data to arguably the largest consumer of real estate listing data has been exciting and challenging. At eNeighborhoods, we now process over 575 MLS IDX feeds to power sites such as remax.com, century21.com, coldwellbanker.com, era.com, etc. Here is a visual representation of those feeds:

Even though we are very proud of this large data set, the majority of the feeds are still FTP. We have about 180 that are RETS feeds. Every week we are working on conversions, so the MLS community is opening up... slowly.

We still encounter some systems where RETS is not available for IDX, and that is the main area I want to assist the RESO Education & Outreach workgroup in reaching out to find out what are some of the remaining issues they have with RETS. I think the effort to "get the word out" about RETS is largely complete. We now need to understand the issues behind decisions both for and against adopting RETS as their primary means of data distribution.

If you are interested in assisting with this effort, please sign up to begin communicating with our workgroup team!

Welcome to Education and Outreach!

The RESO Education and Outreach Workgroup is starting a blog. The purpose of this blog is to let the real estate industry know what's going on within the business community of RETS, including Upcoming Events, progress with RETS, documentation, etc. There are quite a few folks who will be blogging on this site. I've asked them to comment on this post and tell us a little bit about themselves. So who am I?

My name is Kristen Carr. I chair the RESO Education and Outreach Workgroup, I'm a member of the RESO Business Committee as well as an original member of the RESO Board of Directors. I played a large part in getting the Business Group of RETS focused prior to the formation of RESO. I've been an active member of the RETS community for more than 7 years. I have 12 years of experience as an MLS operator and have worked for Bridge Interactive Group for 1.5 years. Bridge's core focus - RETS IQ - is a suite of RETS utilities and RETS management tools. I live and breath RETS. I love real estate, love real estate information. I think we work in an exciting industry full of opportunities, challenges and some awesome people! You can follow me on Twitter for more personal and professional information.