By Jeremy Crawford
RESO Workgroups thrive the most when they are tackling some of our industry’s biggest challenges or addressing a missing need. The creation of the RESO Data Dictionary and the launching of new versions with huge leaps in improvements comes to mind. Then there’s the creation and launch of the RESO Web API with more significant enhancements coming on that front right around the corner.
Now we have a brand new RESO Workgroup, the newly chartered Distributed Ledger Workgroup. Their focus is on providing Business Intelligence that’s highly important to our entire industry: to identify and document each event during the entire lifecycle of a property.
Once these events are recorded in a distributed ledger, they would provide our industry many benefits, from giving participants a record of lasting accountability to triggering instant notifications as events occur, as well as providing data that identifies patterns or rules that can be highly valuable to real estate professionals.
For example, brokerages rely heavily on third-party software products to help manage the transaction process. Often multiple real estate software providers play different roles during the transaction process. These technology companies need access to data from the broker’s backend system. It’s typically a challenge for the parties to coordinate effectively and securely and that slows down the process. Distributed ledgers can eliminate this bottleneck by providing a trusted communication channel for signaling and triggering various workflows in a secure and timely manner.
The mandate of the Workgroup is to be sure that when events are cataloged within the ledger, that they will use RESO Data Dictionary fields wherever possible and utilizes the RESO Web API wherever possible to transmit the information.
Top leadership
Two of the real estate industry’s brightest tech minds co-chair the Distributed Ledger Workgroup: Mark Lesswing, a RESO Board member and the Chief Technology Officer for the National Association of REALTORS® National Association of Realtors®, and Ashish Antal, an active contributor to the RESO Transport Workgroup and Director of Architecture at MLSListings, Inc.
In 2013, it was Lesswing who gave the original presentation to the RESO community on how RESO could implement a distributed ledger to identify and document events in a catalog. He noted that the RESO Data Dictionary focuses on “what” data is being moved. The RESO Web API is focused on “how” the data is being moved. He suggested that a distributed ledger could focus on “when” moving is needed, looking at the events during the lifecycle of a property.
Identifying Events
The initial work of the group currently is proposing five event categories (PLOTS) to identify and document events, and these include:
Property – Events related to a property whether it is for sale or not
Listing – Events related to the listing as entered in the MLS
Offer – Events related to receiving and accepting an offer that has been listed in the MLS
Transfer – Events related to ownership transfer of real property between
Showing – Events related to showing listed property to prospective buyers
Lesswing and Antal have provided the Workgroups sample Excel Worksheet (available to RESO members in the Collaboration section of the members-only website) that offers examples of the kind of events for each of these categories.
For example, under the “Listing” event category, sample events listed include an Advertisement, Entered into the MLS, Price Established, Price Change, Agency Establishes, Staging Ordered, and Staging Completed. For the “Property” events category, sample events listed include Improvement, property taxes paid, property taxes levied, property loan received, a natural event (such as a Hurricane, windstorm, flood or other natural event causing damage), Insurance Claim submitted, Insurance Claim paid, Assessment, Survey, and Foreclosure.
Clearly, there will be many others, but these are to get the conversations started on identifying the events and how they can be documented.
Benefits of the outcome
Once MLSs can identify and document this event data with a distributed ledger, there’s likely to be a wide range of benefits that go well beyond what even Lesswing, Antal and the current members of the Workgroup initially are envisioning. The key is how the data collected is leveraged by the brokerage industry.
Lesswing pointed out early on that the data could show how users are consuming MLS data as it shows resource activity, which gives direction to new products and services, as well as improvements. Data collected also can show resource activity, and a new kind of heat map could be created (illustrated example below) that shows “where” a service is being used.
This information could be used to discover where consumers search for homes geographically over time, and then used in a CMA, for example, to show sellers in those geographic areas that why they are more likely to have the strong search activity when they list.
Predictive Analytics also could use the data, as the information collected may indicate which event is likely to happen next — and when — in the property lifecycle.
“One of the biggest challenges in providing accurate analytics is the inadequacy of the source data,” said L.D. Salmanson, Workgroup member and CEO and founder of Cherre. “A snapshot of a property is just the latest state of events played out to this very moment.”
He explains, “A building permit was issued for a certain lot, a building was built on a certain date, a unit with certain characteristics was offered for sale, a unit was sold by corporation A to owner B, the annual tax was paid by owner B to County C, and so on and so forth. A property is a living organism of events that have been recorded in a haphazard and non-uniform manner. Standardizing such events, and recording them in an immutable and decentralized manner, is a giant step in the right direction, and will surely be the building blocks for a huge leap in descriptive, predictive, and hopefully, prescriptive analytics applications.”
Most importantly, Antal notes, is how well this all fits with the current efforts for implementing update in the RESO Web API. Antal prepared a presentation available in the RESO Collaboration members website, that details how the addition of a distributed ledger will help increase the efficiency and accuracy of listing management.
He notes that the majority of property listings have between 3-10 updates in his red-hot housing markets in the Silicon Valley, such as a listing is created, a showing is requested, the listing is updated with a price change, an offer is made, the property is taken off the market, etc. Some have as many as 25 or more. By managing the updates through the RESO Web API, all the key audience benefit: MLSs, publishers, technology partners, brokers, agents, and of course, consumers. Data accuracy and efficiency is assured.
The result will be the creation of a RESO ecosystem for collaboration that allows information management through multiple platforms.
Call for members!
The good news is the Distributed Ledger Workgroup is just beginning its efforts and is recruiting new members to join its efforts. This is going to be an exciting Workgroup to be a part of and open to all RESO members who want to participate. Conference call meetings are the last Tuesday of the month. The next one is July 24th, and you can reach out with an email to info@reso.org, and we’ll provide you with the information you need. If you are not a member of RESO, this is another excellent reason to join, and details are at reso.org/join.
