RESO Monthly, March 2022: Important 2022 RESO Spring Conference Info, New Workgroup Chairs, Appraisal Subgroup Spotlight and More!

RESO 2022 Spring Conference: Important Dates

The 2022 RESO Spring Conference will be held April 25–28 in Tucson, Arizona, and we’re excited to see you there!

REGISTER FOR ON-SITE | REGISTER FOR LIVESTREAM | VISIT EVENT SITE

Register by March 11 to ensure that you get the regular registration price, conference t-shirt and other fun swag before the start of the conference. Register your whole team soon!

The hotel block rate for the venue ends March 24 and is already more than halfway sold out | BOOK NOW

Door Prize and Sponsor Slots Still Open for RESO 2022 Spring Conference

Sponsor slots are filling up remarkably fast, but opportunities to get your name in lights are still available.

Providing a door prize gives your company a fantastic, low-cost marketing opportunity that gets your brand on center stage.

If you would like to contribute, please contact claire@reso.org with the following information:

the prize(s) your company will be providing
if you will bring the prizes(s) in person or ship directly to the venue

We will release the list of door prize providers in upcoming conference promotions and hope to include your organization on the list!

All attendees are eligible for conference door prizes, and winners will be chosen at random.

If you are interested in becoming a RESO conference sponsor, contact suzanne@reso.org for more information on our incredible sponsorship opportunities.

Thank you to our sponsors!

12 Reasons to Attend the RESO Spring Conference in Tucson, Arizona

Still undecided about whether to attend? We put together a list of 12 reasons that RESO conferences are worth your time. Why 12? The number 12 has made its mark on society: 12 months, 12 numbers on a clock face, 12 jury members, etc. So we chose to let the magnificent number 12 serve as a device for expressing the expected excellence of the RESO 2022 Spring Conference. | SEE THE 12 REASONS TO ATTEND

Thank You for Your Membership!

We recently wrapped another annual membership campaign, and we’re continually thankful for your financial and time contributions to the RESO cause. We are a stronger industry when we can assure that the underlying technologies of our businesses work seamlessly together.

Crypto, NFT and Web3 in Real Estate

Are crypto, NFT and Web3 overhyped topics like VR and Google Glass from years past, or are they a harbinger of what’s to come in real estate and beyond? Before answering, ask yourself if you ever expected to carry a supercomputer with a high-resolution filmless camera, newsstand, arcade, encyclopedia, mailbox, phone, television, travel agent, library and shopping mall around in your pocket at all times.

The Distributed Ledger Workgroup has been discussing these topics in recent meetings, and your membership gives you a front-row seat to the proceedings. The February 22, 2022, meeting dug into non-fungible tokens (NFTs) with a brush up on the basics, methods, standards, transfer of ownership and other considerations.

And the topic is spreading throughout real estate.

Elm Street Academy covered cryptocurrency, blockchain, NFT, bitcoin and the metaverse from a real estate angle in a one-hour video conversation entitled “Blockchain & Its Impact on Real Estate.” The discussion was moderated by Matt Fagioli (Xplode, BKG – Brokerage Atlanta) and featured Rob Hahn (7DS Associates), Chris Haran (MRED and RESO Interoperability Workgroup Chair), Nobu Hata (Denver Metro Association of REALTORS®) and Liz Sturrock (Miami Association of REALTORS®). They discussed the current state of cryptocurrency in real estate, challenges and hurdles that we face in adoption and how the real estate transaction could be forever changed. | WATCH IT

Speaking of Rob Hahn, you can get even deeper into the topic by watching his Notorious POD, Episode 39: Musings – Answering Questions on Crypto, Blockchain, NFT, Metaverse and Real Estate. | WATCH IT

There were people who never thought that MLS books would go away. As these new technologies challenge our assumptions, RESO’s subject matter experts will keep us aware and informed on what changes might be coming next.

New Workgroup Chairs

Teresa Grobecker, CEO at Real Estate Consortia, will be stepping into the role of Distributed Ledger Workgroup Vice-Chair, and Dan Troup, Director of Data Operations & Strategy at RE/MAX, has been announced as the Certification Analytics Focus Group Chair.

Congratulations to both! We thank them and all of our workgroup chairs and vice-chairs for their hard work on behalf of RESO and the entire real estate industry.

New Members

BatchService
BatchService has created BatchLeads, a one-stop solution for real estate needs enabling users to find more sellers, close more deals and maximize revenue.

Great North MLS
The Great North MLS supports more than 750 REALTORS®, including appraisers, throughout North Dakota.

Insidr Consulting
Bill Fowler has 20+ years of real estate industry experience, and it has made him a sought-after expert on the topic. As the CEO of Insidr Consulting, he partners with industry veterans and newcomers alike to make the most of the current environment and prepare strategies for what’s next in real estate tech.

Landis
Landis is a program for renters who want to become homeowners but need help with preparing for a mortgage.

Modex
Modex is a mortgage recruiting and research platform dedicated to empowering both loan officers and employers with technology and data transparency to create better employer-employee connections. Users of Modex can filter and search, research, and connect with each other in real time.

Multi List Platform Limited Partnership
This joint venture between Teranet, Canada’s leader in land registry data and platform modernization, and Stratus Data Systems, specialists in technology, is delivering an end-to-end, front-end multi-list platform (MLP) called REALM.

RentBase
RentBase streamlines an agent’s rental workflow and discovers sales opportunities within their rentals.

Xome
Xome brings together real estate professionals and services to offer consumers more choices, empowering buyers and sellers to feel more confident, in control and more informed throughout the entire process.

We’re glad to have these organizations as RESO members!

Three Questions

Three Questions is an interview series that introduces you to real estate industry professionals, their businesses and how they interact with real estate standards with a goal of humanizing the tech side of the industry, fun included.

New interviews are released on Fridays. Here’s what you may have missed since the last RESO Monthly:

SEE ALL THREE QUESTIONS INTERVIEWS ON THE RESO WEBSITE

Meeting Spotlight – Appraisal Subgroup

The topic of appraisals has been heating up with the Fannie Mae announcement that appraisers will be required to use the Square Footage-Method for Calculating: ANSI® Z765-2021 (American National Standards Institute®) Measuring Standard for measuring, calculating and reporting gross living area (GLA) and non-GLA areas of subject properties for appraisals requiring interior and exterior inspections with effective dates of April 1, 20022, or later on loans sold to Fannie Mae.

There is also the matter of the “desktop appraisal” coming March 19, 2022. In its Desktop Appraisals Fact Sheet, Fannie Mae states:

Leveraging the wealth of big data, the power of advanced analytics and the speed of technology, appraisers can perform desktop appraisals without physically inspecting the property.

Thus far, we at RESO have looked at the relationship between the appraisal and the listing, but there is also the relationship between the appraisal and lending, where the new desktop system is largely based. This is an area that the Mortgage Industry Standards Maintenance Organization (MISMO) works in, and we are rekindling discussions with that group.

If you are interested in participating in the new subgroup discussions, please post in the Appraisal Subgroup Discussion Forum topic, and we’ll make certain that you receive updates.

Fannie Mae Resources:
Standardized Property Measuring Guidelines
Desktop Appraisals Fact Sheet
Desktop Underwriter/Desktop Originator Release Notes

RESO Workgroup Meetings

Research & Development Workgroup | February 3, 2022
The meeting involved an update, demonstration and discussion about the Unique Organization Identifier (UOI) product. Additionally, the group discussed the process and policies around implementing new RESO standards. | CALL NOTES

Transport Workgroup | February 7, 2022
The workgroup continued the discussion on the use of the OData Expand functionality. Data elements available via Web API could be accessed at the “top level” by a Core Web API query, through Expand or both. The discussion focused on a consistent way for Web API data consumers to access data across services and MLSs. Local extension of Data Dictionary fields was another primary topic. The Data Consumers Subgroup has scheduled a meeting for March 10, and Dan Troup volunteered to be the chair of the new Certification Analytics Focus Group. | CALL NOTES

Interoperability Workgroup | February 8, 2022
The meeting included a discussion on expanding interoperability outside of Transaction Management and identified sources to gather the needs to achieve that goal. Additionally, the group viewed an updated industry map and discussed commonalities among public CRM APIs. | CALL NOTES

Tax Subgroup | February 15, 2022
The first meeting of the Tax Subgroup since August 2020 covered the goals of the group and outlined a plan to obtain and analyze tax metadata from several sources. | CALL NOTES

Internet Tracking Workgroup | February 16, 2022
The group discussed fields and enumerations of the Tracking Specification and how they relate to real-world business cases. Additionally, the group touched on data privacy laws and how they affect business operations. | CALL NOTES

Certification Subgroup | February 17, 2022
The group continued the discussion about resources that are only available to consumers via Expand (not yet in the RESO Core specification) and how they should be recognized in reporting when not available as a top-level resource; the topic will be discussed further in the March 7 Transport Workgroup meeting and March 10 Data Consumers Subgroup meetings. There was also a conversation around replication, related to testing the Lookup Resource, and the best way to consume large amounts of data ensuring that 100% of the data is fetched successfully. | CALL NOTES

Distributed Ledger Workgroup | February 22, 2022
The meeting covered the expanding relevance of NFTs in the real estate industry, including being used in transactions and mortgages. Additionally, there was discussion about the findings of the Universal Property Identifier (UPI) Proof of Concept (POC) completed in 2021 and the next steps in collaboration with the UPI Workgroup. | CALL NOTES

Universal Property Identifier (UPI) Workgroup | February 23, 2022
The UPI is continuing to gain traction, and several volunteers are stepping forward to offer assistance with building the UPI registry in both the U.S. and Canadian markets. The group discussed the potential uses of the UPI registry as well as ongoing pain points it could solve. | CALL NOTES

Data Dictionary Workgroup | February 24, 2022
The workgroup reviewed and approved a Transaction Management proposal from the Interoperability Workgroup, approved a PetsAllowed definition update and discussed items related to NAR’s broker attribution requirement, Fannie’s Mae’s “desktop” appraisal changes, time zones, power storage and “year round” water in areas controlled by dams. | AGENDA (CALL NOTES POSTED SOON)

Broker Advisory Workgroup | February 24, 2022
The workgroup introduced themselves and recapped the work done by the group in 2021. They discussed how to engage with brokers about the benefits of RESO and new business concerns. | CALL NOTES

Upcoming RESO Workgroup Meetings

Thursday, March 3: Research & Development
Monday, March 7: Transport
Tuesday, March 8: Interoperability
Thursday, March 10: Data Consumers (Subgroup of Transport)
Wednesday, March 16: Internet Tracking
Thursday, March 17: Data Dictionary
Thursday, March 17: Certification (Subgroup of Transport)
Tuesday, March 22: Distributed Ledger
Wednesday, March 23: Universal Property Identifier (UPI)