Real estate search – New MLS rules

The whole landscape of online real estate searches has changed

… with the outcome of the Dept of Justice investigation and settlement with The NAR into the rules governing Virtual Office Websites (VOW's).

These rules went into effect on the 15th of February 2008 and may positively impact the choices you have for property searches on your site.

The rules have changed for A VOW - a Virtual Office Website, usually operated by a Broker as opposed to and Agent. The rules have not changed for IDX, or Internet Data Exchange which is the method by which most agents are able to display listings on their personal websites and or blogs.

Here is the difference between the two:

More about VOW's

These are the VOW Policies that MLSs must follow as of February 2009 (Rules 19.1 – 19.14).

Failure of MLS's to comply: NAR must report the MLS to the Dept of Justice.

MLS cannot prohibit brokers or agents (subject to the consent of their Principal Broker) from operating VOWs.

• MLS's must provide basic downloading of listing content.
• MLS's may provide VOW-specific feed.

A VOW operator is entitled to receive a "download" and may be required to enter into a license agreement. Data provided by the MLS may be used only to establish and operate a VOW on behalf of the Participant and not for any other purpose.

Brokers are no longer allowed to opt out of VOW's (with the exception of a State Law which if existence will take p residence). The VOW operator however, is allowed to exclude some listing, either by Broker or by geographical location and price amongst other criteria.

Now the only Opt Outs allowed are for sellers who wish to withhold their listing or property address from display on the Internet and who have executed a Seller Opt Out. The seller also has a right to request that a VOW's comments, blogs or automated market value estimate about its listing be disabled or discontinued (although the VOW can state that those features have been disabled) "at the request of the seller."

Another interesting point is that unless MLS participants are required to name the Broker and or Agent on hard copy listing information and hot sheets available in brick and mortar offices, this information is not required to be displayed on VOW's either.

Prior to providing data to a consumer who has entered into a "lawful consumer-broker relationship" with the VOW broker, the consumer has to register and provide a valid email address to the site. The VOW operator has to verify the validity of the email address, confirm receipt of a Terms of Use and supply the Registrant with a unique user name and password before the consumer can access the database.

It still requires that the site contain a privacy policy, data to be refreshed at least every 3 days, be open to monitoring by the MLS and erect certain safeguards against scraping.

About IDX

The new NAR policy does not affect the previous IDX policy. An IDX site is still considered advertising. In other words, advertising other brokers’ listings with their permission on Brokers’ websites which give the public the ability to conduct searches of listings, not the MLS, displaying data fields agreed upon by the MLS. A website that offers online MLS searching capability that does not conform to the new VOW rules will be considered an IDX site.

It's important to understand that if a Broker opts out of the IDX program they cannot participate in it. In other words if they won't allow their listings to appear in other brokers IDX searches they can't play at all.

There are numerous vendors who offer IDX solutions as either full blown websites or as "frameable" modules that can easily be inserted into any website or blog. We offer more advice and suggestions for real estate IDX here.

Conclusion

The offline and online world is blurring as we speak. The NAR makes it clear that if you do not allow sold listings (not the property or sold history) to be displayed on VOW's this information is not to be given to consumers in Participants physical offices either! The only exception to this rule is if the State prohibits sold information from being publicly available.

Our opinion is that you will start to see more vendors offering VOW's to agents, as once the consumer registers they are able to access a greater depth of information and probably many more listing than are available on a comparable IDX program.

Some MLS's and Real Estate Boards are dinosaurs who just don't get the new internet reality. I spoke with an agent recently from Kentucky who's Board won't allow agents to display IDX listings on their sites – it's restricted to Brokers   We hope you don't belong to one of these because it will be harder to achieve the results that you we can teach you here.

We have suggestions for you for IDX providers here and as software companies develop VOW solutions we will keep you in the loop on those options too.

If you really do not have the time and would rather pay to have someone else do all the work for you we can take care of that for you too.

Premium members receive step by step lessons with screen shots showing each and every step to take in setting up your blog - signup or upgrade today and let’s get started!

Inman News has some comments about the changes. Here are NAR's faq's. This guy Victor Lund knows what he's talking about as does Brian Larson. Finally here is a spirited debate on the new VOW changes on Agent Genius.

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Tagged as: blogs, consumers, doj investigation, IDX, internet data exchange, nar, real estate brokerage services, virtual office, VOW