Homes.com Puts RESO Standards to the Test: A RESO Case Study
Released: 2018
What is the real business value of RESO data standards? A Homes.com initiative shed light on the improved outcomes that businesses see through standards. By moving to standardized data and the RESO Web API, Homes.com is saving massive hours in development time, allowing the organization to redeploy that energy to more innovative endeavors.
Homes.com achieved two major goals in just a few months:
- Time to build new MLS feeds – 92% reduction in development time
- Time to convert existing MLS feeds to new vendors – 92% reduction in development time
The proof of these improved business outcomes are covered in this case study to help organizations see the potential for moving away from legacy systems and into a standards-fueled future.
Candles Still Work for Creating Light…
Candles create a romantic image of light in people’s minds, but few in modern societies rely on them as primary sources of illumination. Just as candles have become more ornamental than critical resources, MLS books and older technologies have a nostalgia for the real estate industry that doesn’t translate to a high performing modern business resource.
The invention of the electric light bulb in 1880 changed our entire world. Electricity shed light on a whole new world and paved the way for the Industrial Revolution. The Real Estate Transaction Standard (RETS), was the real estate industry’s version of the first electric light bulb. RETS was invented in the early 2000s by a consortium of technology specialists supported by the National Association of REALTORS®.
Early light bulbs led to more efficient incandescent, fluorescent and LED bulbs that offer clean, controllable and efficient light. LEDs are far more durable and 90% more efficient than traditional incandescent light bulbs. Likewise, the RESO Data Dictionary and RESO Web API have greatly improved on data standardization and transportation since RETS, saving 90% of the cost of transmitting real estate information.
How Does RESO Help Companies by Transitioning to New Standards?
Many companies have RETS-based infrastructure already in place. They have taken the time and laborious effort to map data from more than 700 disparate markets and sources around the country, including brokerages, broker franchises, multiple listing services (MLSs) and listing syndication companies. Each of these data sources have different data fields, making the process of normalizing MLS data across hundreds of markets very labor intensive and inefficient. These well-established real estate technology companies have done the thankless work to make real estate data available nationwide.
Many have used their years of experience of delivering a nationwide “quilt” of RETS-based data feeds as a competitive advantage. Some legacy companies have been reluctant to adopt RESO standards for fear they may be fueling competition and a loss of a competitive advantage.
Smart companies are still moving to the RESO Web API and taking the time to re-engineer their systems to work with the most contemporary method of data transport, because they can see that the future will reward organizations with a technology foundation built to capitalize on standardized data.
RESO Data Dictionary Eliminates Inconsistencies
RESO has been hard at work to address the data inconsistencies between MLS markets. The organization created the RESO Data Dictionary which provides a consistent way to describe and technically define data fields that are used for IDX feeds, back office broker feeds, listing syndication, all types of broker technologies, and nationwide real estate sites from franchises and third-party sites like Homes.com.
The latest version of the RESO Data Dictionary includes thousands of standardized fields and values that make it much easier for brokers to compete in multiple markets and to normalize data feeds from all over the country.
More than 95% of all brokers and agents participate in MLSs that offer standardized RESO data. | VIEW A LIST
So, what’s the incentive for a well-established data-dependent technology company to move away from RETS and on to the RESO Web API and Data Dictionary?
Homes.com Proves RESO Has a Strong ROI
RESO solicited the help of Homes.com to answer this important question. The breadth of fields included in the RESO Data Dictionary have allowed Homes.com to add new features to its listing detail pages, and the RESO Web API transport method creates a more efficient data operation.
Throughout its history, Homes.com has provided advertising and marketing services to help real estate professionals connect with homeowners, buyers and sellers. The company offers a suite of products to help increase broker and agent productivity, and it has built strong industry partnerships with MLSs, agents, brokerages and nationwide franchise real estate brands.
Today, Homes.com aggregates and normalizes data from more than 700 real estate markets through hundreds of individual data feeds, often with inconsistent descriptions and data fields.
Undertaking a change to the foundation of a product is labor intensive and risky. The challenges of making a fundamental change to a data structure is magnified as a first adopter of new data technologies and protocols. So why did Homes.com agree to participate in this case study with RESO?
1. Vested interest in supporting RESO’s mission as a charter member
Homes.com has been involved with RESO since its inception. As one of the largest aggregators of real estate data in the nation, the company has a vested interest in finding the most efficient and effective ways of collecting and displaying real estate information to help brokers generate significant listing exposure and leads.
2. Value in consistency across both the transport and format of real estate data
Homes.com works with many of the nation’s largest brokers who often operate in multiple MLS regions. The company proactively searches for ways to make it easier to populate Homes.com with the most robust and engaging information to attract potential home buyers and sellers on behalf of broker customers.
Implementing RESO standards is the foundation of creating consistency across both the format and transport of real estate information. Homes.com is always looking for ways to make its business more efficient to focus more energy on providing innovative solutions to agents, brokers and real estate consumers.
3. Reduced maintenance and management
Homes.com recognized that trying to maintain more than 700 data feeds from around the country dictated by ever-changing and disparate business rules is a very costly and complicated endeavor. The company was looking for a smarter and less expensive way to manage and maintain a consistent high quality flow of data across the country.
4. Change is inevitable
Most importantly, Homes.com recognizes that change is inevitable and the company wants to stay at the forefront of the industry. So executive-level technology resources were dedicated to leading the change and being early at providing cutting-edge solutions for customers.
The Goal
The goal of this case study was to validate the effectiveness of implementing RESO standards, both the RESO Data Dictionary and RESO Web API, in relation to Homes.com’s current listing data operations. The organization wanted to know if it would realize a return on investment by evolving its data infrastructure to RESO data standards.
Homes.com structured the study to evaluate whether they could justify a move to RESO data standards by measuring cost and time savings across four specific development themes:
- Time to build new MLS feeds
- Time to convert existing MLS feeds to new vendors
- Time to update established MLS feeds
- Time to troubleshoot listing issues
Historically, these data challenges have been time-consuming and require custom programming to address individual business rules, data displays and transport methods in 700 individual markets.
Development Expectations
Homes.com believed that the first two to three MLSs would require the largest effort. In the first few installations, the company learned which components of the local RESO-compliant feeds were consistent from MLS to MLS. Its technical team chose to work with a variety of MLSs, some with their own development resources.
Homes.com was hopeful that RESO standards would help reduce the complexity of consuming real estate data feeds across markets and within their products and services.
Participants
To quantify the potential savings in cost and time that deploying RESO standards could afford Homes.com, the company created a comprehensive study with several variables.
The technical team worked with six MLS partners with three different MLS system providers to test the new approach in several different environments that were all RESO certified.
Homes.com worked with RESO Data Dictionary versions 1.5- and 1.6-certified RESO installations and RESO Web API version 1.0.2 to better understand how to deploy RESO standards in a variety of levels and versions of RESO certifications. The development time required to deploy a new feed using the standard RETS approach was compared to the new RESO Web API approach.
Resources
Homes.com drew on several sources of training and expertise to understand the scope of the evolution to RESO standardized data before beginning the process.
RESO Workgroup Involvement
Homes.com regularly participates and contributes to the Data Dictionary Workgroup and the Transport Workgroup. Both of these core workgroups were vital to the education and awareness about best practices related to making the move.
Clareity Developer Workshop
In addition to active participation in RESO workgroups, Homes.com also participated in the Clareity Developer Workshop held in June 2017. This well attended event included some of the best and brightest real estate technology leaders sharing ideas about how to continue to create a more efficient and profitable technology marketplace.
RESO Staff, Peer to Peer Support and Conference Attendance
Homes.com staff also relied heavily on peers that are also engaged in aggregating and normalizing real estate data from around the country. Attending RESO conferences helped Homes.com brainstorm ideas and troubleshoot challenges.
At the RESO spring and fall conferences, hundreds of the most progressive technology leaders get together to share success stories and brainstorm ways to continue to make RESO standards more powerful.
Documentation Utilized
Documentation is key to success with the migration from one data process to another. Recognizing the need for written guidance, insight and support, RESO has developed several documents and resources available for free to developers, brokers, technology companies and MLS organizations.
Homes.com accessed the RESO Data Dictionary Wiki that provides definitions of a variety of RESO concepts and documentation for the RESO Web API. They tapped into the bright and helpful minds of RESO members with RESO’s Confluence Collaboration System.
Shaun York from Homes.com said, “RESO has made a ton of resources available to us to make the job of evolving to the RESO Web API a lot easier. In addition, the staff of RESO has been extremely helpful at answering questions to keep our transition to the RESO Web API moving along very quickly.”
What’s the Verdict?
Homes.com tested the potential time and cost-savings of using both the Data Dictionary on RETS servers as well as the RESO Web API to measure the potential advantages of both of these solutions.
Early results suggest that it makes financial sense for well-established companies to pursue RESO implementations as much as it does for start-ups.
Development Effort (Data Dictionary on RETS)
To measure the impact of evolving their platform to be consistent with the more than 300 fields and values now available in the RESO Data Dictionary, Homes.com engaged with three listing sources to see how much savings they could realize as they reached scale.
It took Homes.com 228 hours to build the framework to be consistent with the RESO Data Dictionary. This was a planned, one-time effort to prepare the company to make it much easier to map to feed sources in other markets. Once this framework was built, significant time savings were realized to map data in subsequent markets.
Homes.com was able to reduce the time of launching a RETS market from 25 to 16 hours by using the new Data Dictionary offering.
At the time, it was estimated to cost $150 per hour for a developer. If just one developer was involved with the project (likely more), the first installation would have cost $3,750 per market to normalize the data. In the second market, the cost was reduced by 35% to just $2,400.
Multiplied by 700 MLSs, that could be a savings of nearly $1,000,000 by moving to RESO standards over time. It’s not hard to sell that type of savings to even the most conservative CFOs.
Development Time with the RESO Web API
As dramatic as the cost-savings are with the RESO Data Dictionary, the story gets even more exciting with the RESO Web API.
The simplicity of using the RESO Web API built on top of OData and other global data standards helped Homes.com simplify the data ingestion and distribution process even further.
With two RESO Web API data providers implemented on Homes.com, the development team was able to realize a reduction in implementation time from 24 hours on legacy RETS to just 2 hours on RESO Web API with Data Dictionary.
In the second instance, the cost to deploy a feed using the RESO Web API was just $300. Using the previous estimates to measure the cost of deploying feeds across 700 MLS markets, that reduced the cost by more than 90% to just $210,000 to map the entire country.
For a new technology company operating in just two or three markets, the RESO Web API can be leveraged for less than $1,000. These savings create opportunities for smart technology companies across the country to enter the marketplace, and it is even easier for well-established companies to justify the move to RESO standards.
The move to RESO standards will help brokers launch seamlessly integrated technologies, find exciting new ways to differentiate their brands and attract new prospects and clients to their company.
Amazing Results to Date
Many are still reluctant to believe that the investment in time to evolve to RESO standards makes sense. Homes.com is clearly demonstrating that becoming part of the future of real estate technology is well worth it.
About
RESO
RESO provides the foundation for streamlined real estate technology through the creation and certification of standards. Our member organizations include MLSs, brokerages, REALTOR® associations and technology partners serving more than one million real estate professionals. RESO’s Data Dictionary and Web API are the preeminent real estate industry standards for data structure and transport.
RESO creates open standards that drive innovation in real estate technology. RESO’s member organizations collaboratively develop and implement these standards to create efficiency: faster software development and integrations, scalable tools that cross marketplaces, and more accurate, robust and informative data.
Homes.com
Homes.com is a top real estate search destination, visited by more than 14 million consumers each month. Homes.com leverages search visibility to connect this in-market audience with real estate professionals in their local areas of interest. Homes.com offers the following real estate marketing and media services: brand advertising, property listing branding and exposure, search engine marketing and instant response lead generation to help real estate agents and other real estate related partners succeed online. For more information, visit https://www.homes.com.
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