Metrolist MLS updates

Guest speakers for today's Davis MLS meeting were Bill Miller, Vice President of MetroList and Dave Howe, Regional MLS Coordinator.  Davis agents who aren't attending the Friday meetings are missing out on some good speakers.

Dave and Bill spoke about changes coming to MetroList, CalMLS and handheld technology.

MetroList has been working hard for the past couple of years to form alliances with other surrounding area MLS's. Within the next month, the remainder of the San Francisco Bay Area will be incorporated into the combined, Quattro database.  This means that Real Estate Agents can access data from Mendocino County to the north and west, to parts of Merced County to the south and east. It will include all of the data for the entire San Francisco Bay Area, Santa Cruz and Monterey and all of the Sacramento region.  According to Bill and Dave this data will be up and running by mid December.  Also Bill indicated that all of this data will be available in one IDX data feed.  Prior to this agents had to get separate feeds for different regions even though much of the area is under a marketing agreement.

Other exciting news is that the secure token is going away early in 2009.  For the past two years, MetroList member have needed to type in a secure code to access the MLS. In place of a token, Metrolist will move to a system where it authenticates the user by a series of questions.  I have never liked the token so looking forward to next year.  Anything has to be an improvement.

CalMLS the project spearheaded by the California Association of Realtors (CAR)  to create a statewide MLS system, controlled by CAR appears to have stalled.  MetroList a private MLS has been against CAR's proposal from the start and most members regionally have stood together to support MetroList.

The SUPRA/ blackberry device that will allow blackberry users to use their phone to open SUPRA lockboxes is supposed to be released in January 2009.  While SUPRA/ Metrolist keeps talking about a device to use with the blackberry, they indicated that SUPRA is also  working on making this compatible with the iphone.

Bill and Dave indicated that they believe that the iphone will be the real estate phone of choice in the future. 

I had a chance to speak with Bill after the meeting and learned that when the database is complete for the region,  that all of this Northern California data should be available in individual agent's IDX feeds. This is very exciting news for agents in Northern California, it does not cover everything in NorCal but it is a significant portion. 

I asked Bill about the Sarasota MLS situation, he said what happened to Marc  wouldn't happen here.  They aren't going after domains with MLS in the name.

Looking forward to a productive 2009. While it is not yet official, I'm likely to be a regional committee member for MetroList next year.

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