MLS Update's Blog: All Categories

The Realtors' (R) Association of Greater Fort Myers and the Beach are implementing a new picture upload rule this month. With a 10 day grace period, people who don't upload an appropriate picture of a property for its respective listing have to pay the Board $50. For each addition 7 days, another $25 will be charged to delinquent listing agents.

This measure has been put in place because "(RAGFMB) no longer offer the services of a photographer..."

As REW knows the importance of a well done photograph to help draw attention to a listing, this is a great move by the Board to make all of their listings as rich as possible. Read Full Post

As the countdown to Real Estate InfoLink's (REIL) IDX switchover approaches, we would like to warn clients and RE Infolink members about the impact of the upcoming changes. Our programmers have estimated that the average switchover could take as long as 10 person-hours of labor to correct and test. Please make sure you budget for this much time in order to ensure minimal to no downtime in your IDX solution. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact us at (250) 753-9893. Read Full Post

Starting on Thursday, April 12th, all IDX participants will have access to new data in their data exports. The following changes have been made:

"1) We will be adding the following 5 Area Numbers and Municipalities to the respective fields in all property categories

• Area: (69) Municipality: (DART – Dartmouth)
• Area: (70) Municipality: (NBED - New Bedford)
• Area: (71) Municipality: (FAIR - Fairhaven)
• Area: (72) Municipality: (FREE - Freetown)
• Area: (73) Municipality: (ACSH - Acushnet)

2) New field "Neighborhood/Subdivision" in Condo property category will be added to the end of the export"

If you have any questions on this or any other IDX related issue, please feel free to contact us at (250) 753-9893 or via our… Read Full Post

MLS Boards have some of the strictest rules to govern the storage and display of their listings. We understand the reasoning behind this: control of the MLS data is power in real estate. They will require specific verbiage on their listing pages. They will only allow approved, licensed brokers access to the raw data (in a lot of cases). They will insist that your download of listing data be done religiously every day.

It seems funny then when an MLS Board doesn't update their data. Someone in their technology department doesn't transfer the files, or they just forget. A technology company like ourselves, who provides custom IDX solutions to hundreds of Realtors (R) across North America, starts pulling out our proverbial hair trying to figure out if our… Read Full Post

Real Estate Webmasters is proud to announce a multiple image IDX feed available in the Ft. Myers, Florida area. Provided by the Realtor (R) Association of Greater Fort Myers and the Beach, this feed can be integrated into a custom IDX technology solution alone or in combination with the Florida Association of Realtors (R) (FAR) IDX raw data feed.

As photographs help showcase a home for sale, to have the ability to display a multitude of images increases a Realtor's (R) ability to promote and ultimately sell a home. Our own in house analysis has shown that lead conversion on listings with a single or no image is a fraction of listings with more than one relevant image.

If you have any questions regarding a feed in your area or getting an IDX solution… Read Full Post

The following additions have been made to the Rhode Island Association of Realtors (R) State-Wide MLS data feed:

Single Family changes:
1) Water Amenities
• M = walk to Salt Water
• N = walk to Fresh Water
2) Rooms
• U = MBR on 1st Floor
3) Interior
• J = Indoor Pool
4) Exterior
• R = Guest House

Multi Family
1) Water Amenities
• M = Walk to Salt Water
• N = Walk to Fresh Water

Condo
1) Water Amenities
• M = Walk to Salt Water
• N = Walk to Fresh Water
2) Type
• G = Loft

New Fields

SG = Sign on Property was added to Single/Multi/Condo property
categories

NB = Neighborhood/Subdivision was added to the Condo property category.

All of these changes went into the feed as of March 22nd, 2007. All updates on or after this date should reflect these changes.

If you would like… Read Full Post

Because of upcoming changes to their new listing input system, RE InfoLink is making significant changes to how they deliver IDX data. They are supporting redeployment very well with beta servers for testing in a pre-production environment. All testing on beta servers must be complete by April 6th, and the final cutover to the new system is April 30th.

Included in their changes are new School, SchoolDistrict Resources, the Area Resource and the City Resource. These will allow much more content-rich listing searches for people using their listings. Performance upgrades to their servers will be rolled out as well.

The scope of the changes to their service is quite broad, so make sure you contact your technology partner for details on how this will… Read Full Post

In an effort to help accommodate the ever-increasing number of people listing their properties through MLS's, Multiple Regional Multiple Listing Service is increasing the size of their MLS numbers (the unique number used to identify properties) from 7 to 10 digits long. This will take them from one million possible listings to one billion potential unique properties.

For those concerned about how this might impact your display of listing information in this area, please contact your technology partner or Real Estate Webmasters at (250) 753-9893. Read Full Post