ALL MLS Feeds - Renaissance

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Is there any plan to start adding more MLS feeds to the base product of Renaissance?

For 5 years I have been with REW. Every single time my prospects will end up choosing a different website tool for their search because my website is missing around 10% of the listings for sale.

Recently, all of the websites I am competing with, including other realtors using (boomtown, and other websites) offer other MLS feeds on their site.

YES, REW is amazing at a lot of things, but at the end of the day, this fundamental problem has all of my prospects leaving to use a different website.

When I speak to support they tell me I can pay $100 per MLS feed. There are at least 5 different MLS feeds that I can think of here in California.

Why can’t REW add this feature to their base product and improve fundamentally without asking me to pay and upgrade? Why can other providers offer this, but not REW?

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MLS feed issues are really problematic. Where are you located. The CRMLS feed is pretty good, but I’ve found that it’s necessary to define each subdivision using the polygon panel in the IDX snippets to get all listings. I think sometimes subdivision fields don’t parse correctly from various reciprocal MLS feeds and defining the area you want listings for is the only way to get all of them to display.

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We’re not talking about a “feature” here, moreso a business decision.

And certainly not all vendors provide access to unlimited data feeds (in fact I am 1000% sure that’s not the case).

Last I checked competitors like CINC charge a whole additional “market center” for feeds (so 2x base cost) Sierra charges for extra feeds. As do many others.

Does boomtown do include unlimited feeds? I don’t actually think so (though California might be an exception or they may have changed since being acquired). But even if they did, boomtown’s fees are much higher than REW’s, so you’re likely not saving any $ by not having to pay for them “unless” you need them.

There are so many other differences between all these companies (they are not the same) so asking why one company doesn’t do what a very different company does isn’t really a fair comparison.

Is $100 a fair price to access an MLS feed? Considering it costs 10x that per month to host the feed yourself (not including access costs, maintenance, updates etc), I would argue that it is.

Also, the issue you describe is VERY rare. Most customers work just a few cities and all of those cities are exclusively covered by one MLS. So it’s not even an obvious business case.

At the end of the day, providing unlimited data feeds (we have like 300) for only $500 a month is not a viable option (we’d go bankrupt) - so we have to charge for data access, because it costs a lot to access and maintain data feeds.

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Also, the issue you describe is VERY rare. Most customers work just a few cities and all of those cities are exclusively covered by one MLS. So it’s not even an obvious business case.

This is not true. We are the onsite realtors at Trilogy La Quinta and at all times there is around 10% of the homes for sale missing. Additionally, any homes for sale in the same city listed with an agent from OC or SD (Common) will not populate. You created a firebreathing, SEO-optimized website, but unless I spend an additional $500-$1000 per month to get all properties on my website, I can’t even encourage my prospects to use my own website because they will be missing 10% of the properties and will not have pending/sold data.

And certainly not all vendors provide access to unlimited data feeds (in fact I am 1000% sure that’s not the case).

I said all the properties I am competing with (Redfin, Ziilow, Boomtown (most of their websites), ETC). With the other websites providing a full home search experience, I do not blame prospects for going elsewhere to search. To be clear, nowadays, the majority of realtor websites I test have all MLS feeds plugged in. Example. Are they paying $1,000-$1,500 a month? I’m not sure. That is something I am going to be investigating before I decide to renew with REW in March. I have not investigated the pricing of competitors because I am a loyal REW of 5 years, but it is in my best interest to know what I am competing with because I want to win.

There are so many other differences between all these companies (they are not the same) so asking why one company doesn’t do what a very different company does isn’t really a fair comparison.

Yeah, you are right, which is why I am at REW. But I feel it is fair to compare who I am competing with and push for you to find a more affordable solution. I do not agree that the companies I am referring to are “very different”. SEO and lead generation are my jam, but we also need to use this tool for our buyers, and can not promote it due to inefficiencies “as is”. I’m stuck using my MLS which is ugly and not sexy REW.

Is $100 a fair price to access an MLS feed? Considering it costs 10x that per month to host the feed yourself (not including access costs, maintenance, updates etc), I would argue that it is.

Not true. My FLEX MLS software allows me to embed listings into my website for free. Click Here for an example. I bypass paying REW additional monthly fees for pending and sold listings by embedding into a WordPress landing page. I use a WordPress landing page so that I can control the cache and use additional features. I haven’t seen it affect my SEO negatively. Is my Flex MLS as sexy as REW? No, not even close. Do I want to spend $1,000 more a month to have my REW embed pending/sold and outside MLS listings? No. I feel like this is something that has to happen, with time, and I have been waiting for time to figure this out. 5 years later, and now speaking with you, I understand I am going to need to fork up the additional $500-$1000 per month to have a website that can be at par with the competition.

At the end of the day, providing unlimited data feeds (we have like 300) for only $500 a month is not a viable option (we’d go bankrupt) - so we have to charge for data access because it costs a lot to access and maintain data feeds.

Understood. I am grateful I was able to speak to you directly today. Thank you for giving me your time and doing your very best with REW. I am grateful for REW.

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I meant it’s a rare use case in the 300+ MLS feeds we service (not specific to your MLS feed, I am sure it is an issue in your MLS (I believe you). My point was when we build the product (and decide on what’s included for free, fees etc) we look at all markets and code / run our business to the 90-95% not outlier markets (there will always be outliers)

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Flex isn’t free :wink: You just pay for it in different ways through membership dues etc

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FWIW that website bradysandahl.com doesn’t seem to have its MLS listings integrated into the website. Check their list of cached pages in Google and there isn’t a single property details page - mostly just blog pages (they are prolific!).
So in some ways, the discussion is about “do you want your users to have something really useful to go to?” (in which case you can do what they are doing, cheaply it seems) VS “do you want your website to get relevant search traffic?” which does cost more money if you are integrating multiple feeds – but I’m guessing it would pay for itself quickly if everything else is primed.

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Chiming in here as well. I can understand not giving away a ton of feeds for free but some of the integrated platforms that I have used offer at least 2 feeds in their base packages. I know Lofty does for sure. In my case, I hold a license in Georgia and in Florida. I’m right on the border. It would be nice to target the Georgia buyers but I haven’t gone that direction because my site isn’t really tailored to that area so I don’t want to confuse anyone. On the other hand, we do have 2 MLS’s that work this area. It would be nice to have that separate MLS added. Still thinking about that one but I’m not a fan of the added fee for just one extra feed. I already have to pay to be a member of that association as well. $100 month for the feed on my site is actually about 3 times more expensive than just being a member of the association itself. It’s $380/year for me to be an MLS only member and it would be $1200/year to add the feed. Not to mention any custom work that I would like to provide, etc. Woof.

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Everyone charges for the feeds (Lofty included) it just depends on if it’s baked into the price or separated.

Example - last I read, Lofty is $449 base + $15 per user

So a 10-user platform (to make it apples to apples with REW) is $600 USD (and you say there are 2 feeds, I’ll go with that for this example)

REW with 2 feeds and 10 users? $600

Same/same

As for the cost, you can’t compare it to your dues as a member of the MLS, it’s not the same service, revenue model, costs etc. Besides your MLS gets 100% participation fees, and so even if it’s only $380 per year, if there are 10,000 of you, then that’s $3,800,000 in revenue to cover the feed hosting costs (of a single feed).

For us, if we have 5 members in a board paying $100 per month that’s $6,000 per year in revenue. That does not even cover the cost of hosting and supporting the data.

Big difference.

We’re a business. For us to offer a product or service, it needs to be profitable to us. Otherwise, what’s the point? At $100 per extra feed, we lose $ in most markets (on the feed part) which is why we now have a $500 per month minimum to go into a market.

It’s got to be a win/win