A poll of 242 executives at multiple listing services by Clareity Consulting shows most are undecided about whether to participate in a national property database being constructed by the National Association of Realtors.
Nearly one in five (17.4 percent) MLS executives said they would very likely or definitely participate in the Realtors Property Resource (RPR) database, while 25.2 percent said it was very likely or definite that they would not participate. The remaining 57.4 percent said they were unsure or undecided.
Only five MLSs responding to the Clareity Consulting survey said they were definitely on board.
The survey, taken in February, was part of a larger MLS vendor customer satisfaction study, allowing Clareity Consulting to cross-tabulate attitudes toward RPR with MLS characteristics.
Surprisingly, there was no correlation between the size of an MLS and its interest or lack of interest in participating in RPR.
Some industry observers have speculated that large MLSs might be less willing to participate in RPR, because they are more likely to be providing their members with services like access to public property records promised by RPR in exchange for active and sold MLS listing data.
MLSs that host their own system hardware were much less likely to express a willingness to participate in RPR, Clareity Consulting reported on the company’s blog.
RPR has said it hoped to launch Beta tests in March at a dozen MLSs, with 25 to 50 users at each MLS. Depending on how the initial launch goes, all members of those MLSs could get access in May, with additional MLSs coming on board in the second quarter, the company has said.
At the Real Estate Connect conference in New York City in January, RPR President Marty Frame said the startup hoped to sign up half of the nation’s roughly 900 MLSs by the end of the year (see story).
Since then, First American Corp. has announced that it, too, wants to license listings data from MLSs — and is offering to share revenue with them — while Realtor.com operator Move Inc. has offered to provide MLSs that share their sold listings data with access to a Move database that includes public property records and information on neighborhoods and schools (see story).
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