RESO Monthly – August 2021
This is the second RESO Monthly newsletter, and if the first issue is an indicator of success, this compact collection of RESO activity is resonating with you. On with the show!
New Members
Offerpad
Offerpad was founded in 2015 with the objective of pairing real estate technology with the fundamentals of the real estate industry to create a platform where sellers could receive a strong purchase offer for their home, close quickly and avoid the hassles associated with traditional real estate selling.
Showingly
Showingly empowers agents in the face of a changing technology landscape by working hard to enhance agent and brokerage value offerings via a platform that integrates applications to create a seamless experience at every level of the real estate industry.
Showcase Support
Showcase Support provides photography, video, drone footage, three-dimensional floorplans and additional options in the art of visual storytelling that is frequently responsible for generating initial interest in real estate listings.
Tangilla
Tangilla provides an association management platform developed specifically and exclusively for REALTOR® associations that is built using ubiquitous and proven modern software that allows them to hide complexity, automate and eliminate tedious processes, and improve overall productivity.
We’re glad to have them all as RESO members!
New Certifications
During July 2021, certifications for Data Dictionary 1.7 and Web API Core 1.0.2 were issued to the following organizations:
Information and Real Estate Services (IRES)- San Francisco Association of REALTORS® MLS
- Sunflower Association of REALTORS®
Certification is open! We expect to have big months in August and September. MLSs that are not certified on the latest standards should contact their MLS vendors. MLS vendors and other technology companies should contact certification@reso.org for more information or visit RESO’s Certification page, especially the portion about the simplified certification process.
RESO Retreat
Please join us October 18–21, 2021, for the RESO Retreat at Kiawah Island Golf Resort in South Carolina, which will be an onsite and livestream event. Simply choose which option works best for you.
Registration is open now through September 10, 2021 at $450 for members & $550 for non-members.
The call for RESO Retreat speakers is open. | COMPLETE THE PRESENTATION REQUEST
Interested in becoming a conference sponsor? Contact suzanne@reso.org for more info.
RESO Swag Unboxing Video
As a teaser and reminder that we are less than three months away from RESO Retreat, Kevin Hawkins from WAV Group put some extra effort into an unboxing video of the most popular wearable in real estate. | WATCH VIDEO
RESO Workgroup Calendar Invite Revamp
We know that most of you manage your meeting schedules with an online calendar. RESO uses Google Calendar plus reminders from its Confluence collaboration system to bolster workgroup attendance.
In an effort to align our calendar invites with workgroup membership lists, all workgroup invitations were deleted and recreated.
Fresh invites went out in July, and we hope this solves some of the “phantom meeting” invitations we hear about. If it did not, please do not hesitate to contact us at support@reso.org.
If you are ever in doubt about when your workgroup is meeting, check the far right column of our Confluence home page.
Oh, and if you are so inclined, join a workgroup today!
Confluence is for RESO Workgroups
Many of you receive this newsletter because you are part of RESO’s workgroup collaboration system, Confluence. While participation in RESO workgroups is not required, it is a great place to stay up to date and to contribute on the real estate technology topics you are interested in. If you have not been to RESO’s Confluence space in a while, have a look.
Since we switched from Confluence Server to Confluence Cloud at the beginning of 2021, some of you have gone dormant. In order to keep our records current, we will be removing access to those who have not logged into Confluence for a full year at the end of the year.
The best way for us to assure an engaged (and unannoyed) workgroup user base is to keep the base strong. We understand that priorities and job responsibilities change over time. If you get removed, you can always request access again, and we’ll get you right back into the system.
Available Now: Working With Real Estate Data – Business Module
Sign your team up to elevate their real estate industry technology knowledge by earning the RED-B designation!
RESO’s Working With Real Estate Data (WWRED) Business Module is designed for both nontechnical and technical data stakeholders to learn how real estate information flows through the industry.
More than 140 of your peers are taking or have completed this course. RED-B provides an ideal opportunity to onboard new staff members and prep volunteer leaders for serving on boards and committees.
RESO’s course content is designed for learners to actively help move the industry forward with knowledge and efficient partnerships. Work at your own pace, on your own schedule for your own learning style.
Contact support@reso.org with questions or to inquire about bulk pricing.
Register for Working With Real Estate Data – Business Module
Data Consumers Subgroup
A new RESO Data Consumers Subgroup, living under the umbrella of the Transport Workgroup, met for the first time on July 19.
Some goals of this group include:
- Surface issues with current Data Dictionary, Transport or Payloads standards and suggest where they, or their documentation, may be improved in production.
- Discuss best practices, beyond standards, to help address data issues.
- Explore and enumerate variations in implementations and how they create issues for data consumers.
- Make recommendations and create documentation to help make RESO standards easier to use.
- Discover barriers to Web API and Data Dictionary adoption. Are you still using RETS and don’t want to make the change? Why?
The first meeting unearthed some terrific items for RESO and its collection of workgroups to explore and mend. If you would like to join the next meeting, please write to gsax@reso.org.
Bright MLS On/Off MLS Study
Bright MLS has published the results of a two-year On/Off MLS Study. | VIEW STUDY
The study shows that homes shared cooperatively on the MLS sell for a median price of 16.98% higher compared to those that did not make it onto the MLS. Also, on-MLS listings sell 20 days faster than off-MLS office exclusive transactions.
Bright MLS believes that the On/Off MLS Study highlights some of the pro-consumer, pro-competitive benefits of the MLS and organized real estate. | READ MORE
A New Association-to-MLS Affiliation and a New MLS
The New England Real Estate Network (NEREN), formed in 1994, has added Greater Newburyport REALTORS® as a new shareholder owner. This is their second Massachusetts shareholder among 25 local REALTOR® associations within New Hampshire, Vermont and Massachusetts. NEREN currently provides MLS service in New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut and portions of New York.
Also of note, Gulf South Real Estate Information Network (GSREIN) from the New Orleans Metropolitan Association of REALTORS®, the Greater Baton Rouge Association of REALTORS®, the Greater Central Louisiana Association of REALTORS® and the Bayou Board of REALTORS® will merge to create Roam MLS sometime this summer. | READ MORE
Notifications of new association and MLS affiliations and merged data feeds continue to cross the RESO desk at a record pace. It is our duty to track them all for certification purposes and entry into RESO’s Unique Organization Identifier (UOI) product, and we appreciate receiving notice of industry changes. Please send news items of this nature to gsax@reso.org.
CMLS “In the Know” Campaign
CMLS has relaunched the In the Know® campaign with a focus on the value of the MLS to the consumer.
With the help of 1000watt, the campaign has a sharp website and great videos full of excellent content.
Several real estate technology vendors are promoting the campaign, and RESO is happy to support the efforts of one of our industry partners to help spread the message of organized real estate.
On the RESO Blog
LEAP
Two years ago, the Broker Advisory Workgroup coalesced around a big idea: What if MLSs could take all of the different data feeds they send to brokers and combine them into one feed? And what if this new singular data feed had just one set of rules? With RESO’s mission to drive streamlined efficiency through standards, the vision of a single standard for these data relationships struck a nerve and sparked a new hope for a more efficient data landscape. Enter the Listing Exchange and Access Policy or LEAP. | READ MORE
Broker Spotlight
For Nina Dosanjh, Director of Strategic Alliances and Technology with Vanguard Properties, the pursuit of streamlined, efficient real estate technology is laden with hurdles, and she’s driven to overcome them for her company. Dosanjh led a recent Broker Spotlight Session for RESO’s Broker Advisory Workgroup. These sessions are intended to give brokers insights into one company’s pain points and lessons learned in the never-ending journey of upgrading brokerage technology. | READ MORE
Extensibility & Omissibility in the RESO Data Dictionary
The RESO Data Dictionary is a living reference source meant to standardize MLS data. Two core assumptions of the dictionary include extensibility, the ability to extend the dictionary with your own local fields, and omissibility, the expectation that everything from the dictionary should not be in your data just because it’s in the dictionary. Some other rules are, however, more stringent – but in a good way. | READ MORE
RESO Workgroup Meetings
Unique Licensee Identifier (ULI) Subgroup | July 9, 2021
The group discussed next steps regarding the ULI project and decided to continue working on deploying and testing the proof of concept in order to determine the feasibility of the methodologies presented so far, after which point a case study will be prepared summarizing the findings from the pilot. The work includes both the backend API and data store as well as a UI for those working in membership to test the matching logic with. | VIEW CALL NOTES
Board Liaison Committee | July 9, 2021
This meeting is held once per month in order to give workgroup chairs an opportunity to converse about their top agenda items, request help from each other and provide summary reports to the RESO Board of Directors. The reports are collected and shared as part of the meeting’s official call notes. | VIEW CALL NOTES
Transport Workgroup | July 12, 2021
The workgroup voted to adopt the Payloads Testing Specification, which includes the IDX Payload Endorsement, as well as a proposal allowing Web API providers to reject requests that do not have the User-Agent header present. The remainder of the discussion focused on the Field resource for conveying metadata about fields, and an announcement was made regarding the upcoming Data Consumers Subgroup meeting on Monday, July 19, at 4:00 pm ET / 1:00 pm PT. | VIEW CALL NOTES
Interoperability Workgroup | July 13, 2021
The workgroup talked about the new Showings Subgroup that is forming, touched on what to do with ContactType lookups in the Data Dictionary for categories like CRM, TM, etc., and discussed the next steps for the interoperability of documents. | VIEW CALL NOTES
UPI Registry Subgroup | July 14, 2021
The group spent the majority of the meeting looking at the current Universal Property Identifier Builder with a critical eye on labeling, instructions, Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) Code correctness and visual design. The general feeling is that it’s time to buff up what was whipped together for a conference presentation into a more eloquent product. | VIEW CALL NOTES
Data Dictionary Workgroup | July 15, 2021
The group discussed alternative label options for display name usage and the plan to enrich label support in the Data Dictionary in the future, brought forth by how to treat the labeling of “His and Hers Closets,” which is receiving some of the same kind of discussion that occurred around “Master Bedroom” and “Master Bathroom.” Then there was some discussion around the Schools pick list, deprecating “[Type]” fields and lookups in the dictionary, and the formation of two new subgroups about appraisals and showings. | VIEW CALL NOTES
Certification Subgroup | July 15, 2021
The workgroup concluded the discussion of Add/Edit testing rules and is looking for implementations to advance the work further. The Expand endorsement was discussed, as well as the Lookup and Field resources, which are both moving forward and gaining adoption in the community. A Certification and RESO Development update was also provided. | VIEW CALL NOTES
Payloads Workgroup | July 22, 2021
Instead of breaking out a spreadsheet and tagging fields for a payload, the group took a step back to examine the purpose of the workgroup in general. Is it really about tagging fields for a specific category like IDX, BBO or appraisal, or should the group be more philosophical about unmet business needs in the real estate technology industry and work with other workgroups to solve them. The current task of creating an Appraisal Payload was put on hold, but the concepts that have been worked on are going to be quite valuable going forward, no matter the outcome of the payload itself. | VIEW CALL NOTES
Distributed Ledger Workgroup
The July Distributed Ledger Workgroup meeting was canceled, but there are three items of note that are in the works. 1) ADOPTION: A container that can be donated to the UPI group has been created. It creates and validates UPIs. Additionally, it has a “discover” option to help find FIPS numbers. 2) PUBLISHING: The group publishes guides, chaincode, smart contracts, an API server and containers. Thus, there will be a discussion of layouts for work with the RESO GitHub repository, and the group will examine the advantages of the “monorep” approach. 3) REGISTRY PROOF OF CONCEPT (POC): Preparations are being made to input data donated by the San Francisco Association of REALTORS® MLS into the Registry POC thanks to Teresa Grobecker of Real Estate Consortia.
Upcoming August 2021 RESO Workgroup Meetings
Week 1
- Wednesday, August 4: Showings (Subgroup of Data Dictionary)
- Thursday, August 5: Research & Development
- Friday, August 6: Unique Licensee Identifier (ULI) (Subgroup of Research and Development)
- Friday, August 6: Board Liaison Committee
Week 2
- Monday, August 9: Transport
- Tuesday, August 10: Cross-Platform Interoperability
- Wednesday, August 11: Showings (Subgroup of Data Dictionary)
- Wednesday, August 11: UPI Registry (Subgroup of Universal Property Identifier (UPI))
Week 3
- Wednesday, August 18: Internet Tracking
- Thursday, August 19: Certification (Subgroup of Transport)
Week 4
- Tuesday, August 24: Distributed Ledger
- Wednesday, August 25: Universal Property Identifier (UPI)
- Thursday, August 26: Data Dictionary
- Thursday, August 26: Payloads
