by G. Sax, Head of Communications, RESO
This week’s interview is with Kyle Murphy, MLS Manager at Canopy MLS. We talked about the importance of adding your voice to the RESO Data Dictionary, putting your foot down as an MLS serving all customers equally and the uniqueness of self. Enjoy!
Q1: You are a regular and enthusiastic contributor to the RESO Data Dictionary Workgroup. Why is it important for you to support this group, and what advice would you give to others who might feel trepidation about speaking up in RESO’s Confluence workgroup collaboration space or during live meetings?
Kyle: In terms of enthusiastically participating, it’s just the way my brain works. I see systems end to end and how it all works together. RESO is one end of real estate that has a direct line to homeowners, buyers, agents, etc.
It can also be a lot of inside baseball for technicians such as myself – 1s and 0s – but getting homes to come through right at all levels is what makes this all work.
Back in the “before RESO” times, when HGTV was getting very popular, they would use any number of terms to describe a space. They would work within terms like In-Law Suite, Mother-in-Law Suite or Guest House, so everything was this unique diamond in the rough.
What they were really describing has largely become known as ADUs, or Accessory Dwelling Units. However, ADUs often have a legal definition, and these other terms didn’t always match that, even if they were similar spaces. Like how every square is a rectangle, but not every rectangle is a square.
But if you can standardize that, make it readable and recognizable, you’re helping everybody interested in that form of build. The reason I picked ADUs as an example here is because RESO created a standard for “Additional Living Quarters” to recognize these spaces, whether they are legally defined ADUs or not.
I also picked the ADU example because I ran that subgroup. We were talking about it in the Data Dictionary Workgroup, then, next thing you know (RESO Board and R&D Workgroup Vice-Chair) John Breault immediately stated, “Kyle’s in charge of it.” It was as simple as that.
It’s not like electrical codes, where if you make a mistake someone’s house is going to burn down. But millions of eyeballs are on this stuff. If you don’t have it, it doesn’t work. The work we do here at RESO makes everyone’s job easier.
I just like to talk. Any group you put me into, I’ll take a half hour to gauge the mood and then start talking.
I’m not afraid of looking foolish either – I’ve stuck my foot in my mouth plenty of times. There is this fear of speaking out in public and looking foolish. What helps is to remember that everybody else is just a regular human. It can be intimidating, you can feel outclassed, but providing input and different perspectives is important.
You just have to pipe up. The first time you speak up, it can be a little nerve-racking, but then you get help from veterans, and you figure it out. RESO workgroups are like doing a group project in school that everyone actually wants to work on. That really helps make the anxiousness go away. I don’t know how to help anyone else get over that, but if you put yourself out there one time, everything after that comes easy.
Q2: Delving into some of the inner workings of MLS support, let’s examine four items that Canopy MLS has said will not be supported at this time. Why would anyone want the following four items and why has Canopy MLS said no?
Kyle: Let’s do it.
Not Allowing Square Footage Ranges: We experimented with ranges. The real estate commission defines how to measure a home in North Carolina, and their definitions allow for some variance.
We found that some agents were trying to use that to their advantage, which could affect price per square foot. Nobody is really searching 998 square feet, so they might massage a listing up to 1,000 square feet. Then there might be a dispute after the sale.
We were trying to get people to stay away from specific numbers by telling them to please consider the size and the layout of the house. We intentionally introduced ambiguity into the ranges – they were dynamically generated but not able to be reverse engineered.
We wanted to help people think more broadly about a property, but that just never took hold. So we went back to asking for specific numbers, even when we merged with other MLSs that were using ranges.
It was a great concept with a flawed execution. We could not find a good way to make it work.
Not Allowing Value Range Pricing: This is for the same reason as square footage ranges. If there was a range of $400,000–$450,000 for a sale price, invariably the offer would come in at $395,000. Ranges are only going to hurt the seller. I don’t know the business reasons why anyone would do that. All of our forms are built on specific numbers. Providing a range in the data isn’t going to make anything easier on anybody.
Reinstating MLS Areas/Subareas: Our area and subarea numbers go back to the 1950s and 1960s. Charlotte was much smaller back then. Everything was focused on Charlotte and Mecklenburg County. As our service area grew, we started to see two things:
First, duplicate data. New counties added to our service would be assigned a new area number. But if an entire county is assigned an area number, then the area number is a redundant version of County.
Second, on the business end, people were placing value on the numbers. These are decades-old lines that were drawn, and towns within counties didn’t grow in respect to the MLS areas. The year 2010 is very different from 1960.
So we’d see someone had a listing in, for example, “Area 11” that was a half a block away from “Area 12,” but Area 12 was the more desirable number. That listing would end up in Area 12, and that became our number one compliance complaint.
Agents didn’t seem to understand that they were hurting themselves in two different ways – people who wanted to be in Area 11 wouldn’t see the listing, and people who wanted to be in Area 12 would ignore it because the map would show them the property wasn’t actually in the area.
The Internet grew up enough so that map searches became user friendly and easier to work with. Now you can do more than rectangles, like detailed searches, drive-time searches and so on. Like with square footage, we wanted agents and their clients to consider where a property actually was rather than the area number it had been assigned.
Meanwhile, our service area grew and our tech grew. But older agents just couldn’t get beyond how they thought of the town. To them, we tied their hands behind their backs. We messed with their mental map, when, in fact, we made the map more accurate.
Ending the Use of “Coming Soon-No Show” Status: This is a brand new and hot topic. It simply means the listing is not on the market yet. The idea is as the status name suggests. In really hot markets with cash and corporate buyers, they don’t even look at the property. Agents and sellers flooded with cash offers create a disadvantage to the 30-year fixed mortgage type of buyer.
We have to remain agnostic to buyers and sellers. We can’t just let market forces dictate policy shifts. Another reason for this change is that our subscribers don’t want out-of-market agents to get access to listings before they do. We have a duty to those who cooperate to allow Canopy MLS to exist.
Q3: There are 800+ Kyle Murphy profiles on LinkedIn. In a world of Kyle Murphys, how would you like to stand out amongst the masses?
Kyle: I didn’t meet another Kyle until I was 12, and I didn’t hit double digits until my 30s.
There was a gathering of Kyles in Kyle, Texas, a couple years ago. I always felt unique, because I wasn’t a Matthew, Michael or Jonathan. My name made me feel just different enough. Recently, I have run across other Kyle Murphys in North Carolina that even share my middle name! I am much less unique than I thought.
But decades of spending time in my own skin has made me feel unique enough. I’ve always been me, and I’m always going to be me. For better or worse, that’s the only way I know how to be.
Three Questions is a lighthearted interview series that features real estate industry professionals, their businesses and how they interact with real estate standards.
