Imagine car shopping with no way to compare data across vehicles. How would you choose without knowing each vehicle’s miles per gallon, towing rating or top speed, as measured by an objective third party?
You could view individual models and features, but making data-driven decisions about what to purchase would be nearly impossible. That was the experience for consumers of real estate data systems…until now.
RESO Analytics brings transparency to real estate information. This new reporting platform provides insights into industrywide data trends and tools. Real estate data is the foundation for brokers and agents to provide guidance to their clients, and RESO Analytics shows them the state of their marketplaces at an unprecedented level of detail through standardized data reports.
Dan Troup, the Director of Data Operations and Strategy for RE/MAX, one of the world’s largest brokerage companies, has had a front-row seat in the development of this platform. “The RESO Analytics platform is the final piece of the puzzle in validating RESO standards,” said Troup. “This platform will be the lens we look through to make informed data decisions for our company and for our industry.”
RESO Analytics doesn’t just benefit brokerages and Multiple Listing Services (MLSs). It also fuels the capabilities of consumer-facing technology companies to drive innovation.
“As one of the most-visited real estate sites in the U.S., Realtor.com helps millions of people put homes for sale or rent into context with features that are personalized to their needs,” said Bob Evans, SVP of Industry Relations for Realtor.com. “In that regard, RESO Analytics is a game changer. It will help sites like Realtor.com and others develop and evolve online search experiences that empower consumers with the information they need to succeed in today’s marketplace.”
Big Data from the MLS, Broad Insights from Analytics
MLSs are the primary focal points for big data in the real estate industry. They aggregate broker listings into central locations and make them accessible for the technology tools that brokers, agents and consumers use.
RESO Analytics paints two completely new pictures of that MLS information. The first is a telescope view, showing how real estate’s data looks across the entire industry. This will create opportunities for better information analysis tools that cross marketplaces and borders.
The second is a microscope view, detailing the intricacies of each system’s data sets. This allows each individual technology provider to better understand how customers of their service see the information output.
With comprehensive metrics about the data that real estate technology systems can deliver, RESO Analytics shines sunlight on the industry’s data capabilities.
RESO Analytics: Microscope Reports for Individual Analysis
Joshua Darnell, RESO’s CTO, and Dan Troup of RE/MAX unveiled the RESO Analytics platform at RESO’s 2022 Spring Conference in Tucson, Arizona. They highlighted the new RESO Certification Analytics Subgroup that dives into certification analytics to find ways to help data consumers better understand their technology through expansive reporting. | WATCH VIDEO (25:58 minutes)
Certification Summary
Consumers of real estate technology systems – MLSs, brokers, agents, and home buyers and sellers – now have a platform to compare the different data capabilities of information systems. These reports deliver insights about technology alignment across MLSs, markets and vendor software platforms.
Access to the trove of available RESO Analytics industry data will empower real estate business leaders to make informed, data-driven decisions about the technology they consume and share with customers.
RESO Analytics is not a grading system. It is not Consumer Reports, with good/medium/bad scores. It’s a platform of information and insights to help the real estate industry ask better questions.
- How much of the RESO Data Dictionary is being used in current MLS systems?
- Which fields are aligned across the many MLSs that a broker works in?
- How well can this technology system service my company’s technology needs?
The reports on data fields (e.g., List Price and Lot Size) and pick list lookups (e.g., Status and Condition) will allow technology developers to build new, competitive, innovative products that scale more quickly across the industry. And they will help current technology providers tune their systems and provide even greater value for their customers.
Technology System Performance
Certification Summary
The early outcomes speak for themselves: providers of certified RESO Web API services to MLSs are able to see their performance statistics on RESO Analytics compared to industry averages.
In just a few weeks, one Web API service improved the speed of its service tenfold. A second Web API service amped its speed up 100 times faster.
Current Status of RESO Analytics MLS Reports
In early 2022, the RESO Analytics platform began delivering reports to MLS software vendors based on certification testing. The vendors are approving these reports in the RESO Analytics platform, and the reports are being sent to their MLS customers for approval.
The MLS-published reports are displayed at certification.reso.org for individual analysis. At the same time, RESO is running meta-analyses on this data. The outcome will be industrywide aggregate reporting and visualizations that will guide technology providers toward data-driven decision making.
Where Does Certified Data Come From?
RESO only certifies Data Dictionary-compliant information coming from Web API services. This is where the industry alignment tools, aggregates and visualizations come from. It’s critical that the industry’s data insights come from certified, standardized data sets that show a true picture of the information surrounding the real property of consumers.
There are other MLS data sources in the industry, including older deprecated systems like RETS, that are not certified and generally unstandardized. These data sources will not be reported upon through RESO Analytics. Data integrity is key to delivering the best information to professionals and consumers.
Percentages of All MLS Subscribers Converted to Web API
For data consumers to reap the benefits of standards and these new analytics insights, they must use certified data systems. Almost every MLS has a RESO Web API-certified service. Not all have converted all of their customers away from legacy services over to this Web API service. Many MLSs are making great strides recently in that transition, however, and RESO is tracking the progress.
The leading MLSs are moving 100 percent of their customers to Web API. They are closing out their old RETS servers, and RESO is documenting the demise of this “dinosaur technology” with our T-RETS Extinction Countdown. Both large and small MLSs are filling out the leaderboard.
RESO Analytics: Telescope Reports for Broader Insights
RESO Analytics promises to provide all kinds of new insights that the industry has never seen before. RESO membership has already asked for specific reporting features in the future, including:
- Provider Alignment Tool: Alignment of MLS data across multiple API vendors.
- Market Alignment Tool: Alignment of multiple MLS data sets in overlapping markets.
- Consumer Alignment Tool: Alignment of multiple MLS data sets across different markets for data consumers, particularly brokers.
- Aggregate Service: Information about how many MLSs are using specific data elements from the Data Dictionary in order to gauge popularity/need.
What can RESO do to help the industry become more efficient and transparent through RESO Analytics? Join us at RESO and guide the next generation of tools that empower consumers and professionals to make informed decisions about real estate data.
