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!
We are discussing the different options for an IDX website when we move to RETS. Now we have a very basic template framed search available to our membership. When we move to RETS what can we offer that is similarly plug and play for our membership, with maybe the extra features? We understand RETS opens up many options. What about the agent that was using a framed IDX site? Sorry #RETS101.
ReplyDeleteMarsha,
ReplyDeleteSorry for the delay in my response. RETS is more beneficial from a backend integration stand point. Framed IDX sites can still be powered from RETS. If your framed IDX was populated via an FTP file which are usually only updated once per day, then switching to RETS allows you to provide updated data throughout the day (even hourly).
RETS also provides all of the lookup information you need to do an easy search in a set of data called "metadata". A good example is a list of schools or cities. If your search integrates that data, then new schools are available to search by as soon as they are provided in the metadata.
FTP by nature is usually provided as a one size fits all IDX data set. With a proper RETS implementation, you can provide brokers a feed with just their listings that they can use to distribute as they wish to many other sites.
I can go on for much longer, but I just want to touch on some basic benefits, if you have additional questions, please let me know.
David
Thank you for the tip on providing Brokers a feed with just their listings to distribute as they wish. Its going to be much easier to set these ‘roles’ or ‘filters’ up to provide more flexibility on what an MLS can offer to its membership.
ReplyDeleteLike you mentioned the FTP file is not updated as often as RETS. Our FTP requests are primarily companies that customize that data feed and are experienced with web development to put that all together. While some vendors have asked about RETS, we hope we can transition all of them to RETS.
Our link requests are primarily agents that want an affordable option, which is live data, with little website maintenance.
When we move their link to RETS, we can approach by:
1. Creating a new template website using RETS that we can supply as an MLS.
2. Provide IDX RETS along with a list of possible vendors that they can shop from.
3. Provide both options above.
How are other MLS’s approaching? What have they done that maybe they would have done different if able to do over? What to avoid? Benefits one way or the other? Other options? Any feedback welcome.