Real estate lives in a world filled with acronyms and perhaps nowhere is that more true than in the business of real estate property data. Dozens, if not hundreds of MLSs, for example, frequently refer to themselves simply by their acronyms. That means we have duplicates. Did you know we have had as many as a half-dozen RMLSs in the U.S.? The same is true for real estate brokerage firms and for even technology providers, as many firms share similar names.
This has caused an ongoing problem in the real estate industry: how do those dealing with multiple property data feeds – coming from multiple states and involving different data providers, firms and technology partners – trace their data accurately? And the problem has become exacerbated as more and more brokerages, MLS technology providers and other firms expand their reach, dealing with more property data feeds than ever before.
RESO Helps Solve the Problem
We tapped two industry experts and RESO members – Bill Kellogg, CIO of ShowingTime, and Greg Moore, VP of Technical Systems of RMLS in Portland, Oregon, who also heads the RESO R&D Workgroup where this all began – to help create the RESO Unique Organization Identifier (UOI) – to help fix this problem.
Said Moore, “When you start gathering and blending data, it is really the source, where that data truly was sourced, that becomes vitally important.”
Their work is now complete with the new RESO UOI – another acronym! – which is now available as an API. It provides every organization within the real estate industry with a unique ID. This includes an exhaustive list of associations, Multiple Listing Services (MLSs), system technology partners, technology partners and other affiliated businesses and data providers.
“It is a simplistic solution, but it also is a strong solution,” said Moore.
How the New API Works
The RESO UOI API provides the ability for anyone to query the API, and it will return basic organization information, including the organization’s name, city, state and ZIP code, as well as its own unique ID number. The goal is to get everyone in real estate to use the same unique identifiers, emphasized Kellogg and Moore.
Business Cases
For MLSs and other data providers, using the RESO UOI can help them better protect their data that is distributed to licensed technology partners. For MLS technology partners, the UOI helps them to better manage multiple feeds, especially in overlapping service areas, as the UOI gives the exact source of the data originator. It will also help improve their ability to deduplicate content in the data and will know the source to make sure they are keeping the correct data.
Moore adds, “Too often you can get triplicate listings and more,” and the new API should go a long way to helping reduce this.”
Moreover, MLS tech partners can utilize the UOI to lookup the MLS(s) that serve as a data provider for an association. Believe it or not, this can be a complex and time-consuming process. With the UOI, it’s now fast and easy.
The UOI has some very practical applications, notes Kellogg, who offers the following real world example.
“We work with associations that provide their members with lockbox services, but the underlying data must be linked to the association lockbox system. So while lockbox and showing systems often are association-provided services, they typically require MLS data to serve the membership. So having a lookup method to say ‘This association matches this MLS and matches this data feed’ just makes the whole process of working with large streams of data so much easier.”
Pushing for Adoption of the UOI
From protecting data concerning copyright issues, to reducing the time spent matching up data, Kellogg and Moore believe adoption will be compelling.
“Matching data has been an ongoing problem in the industry, especially when you are dealing with lots of data and then have to figure out after the fact where it came from,” said Kellogg. “Many vendors work with feeds from dozens, if not hundreds, of MLSs, and it becomes very hard to establish the source, and it’s time consuming to reconcile everything.”
Moore believes that knowing the source will aid with copyright protection. “Think of the upstream and when those listings get to the marketplace. They are directly sourced from a brokerage or somewhere else, so it just becomes more and more important regarding ownership of copyright,” he explained.
Looking Ahead to What’s Next
Kellogg wants everyone to know that the new UOI is not just for RESO members. “It’s a service provided by RESO to anybody working with data and the real estate industry,” he said. And if your firm is not listed, or the information provided needs updating, just email your information to info@reso.org.
Kellogg notes that the next phase is the most important one. “Our work doesn’t mean anything until it is implemented into everyone’s data feeds,” he said. RESO has added the OUID to the Data Dictionary, and this will help fuel adoption.
“Everybody wants to be standards compliant over the next year,” Bill said “Those IDs should start appearing in everyone’s data, and it should be a very trivial process to put them in place,” he added.
Kellogg sees more work coming to better identifying sources in the industry.
“I see this as a step down the road to getting a Unique Licensee Identifier for each agent nationwide and a step forward towards a Universal Parcel Identifier, because it is a step toward simplifying 750 MLSs and 2,000 associations. And if you get records for all of them, you probably end up with three times as many properties and agents as actually exist.” said Kellogg.
