Real estate information and analytics provider CoreLogic says more than a dozen multiple listing services joined its Partner InfoNet data licensing program over the summer, bringing the total number of MLSs providing active and historical listings to 62.
Most of the MLSs — which represent more than 300,000 real estate professionals and handle more than 1 million listings — are providing listings data to CoreLogic on an exclusive basis, the company said today.
In markets where CoreLogic has exclusive agreements, that could mean coverage gaps for listings in the parcel-based property database built by National Association of Realtors subsidiary Realtors Property Resource LLC (RPR).
RPR announced in May that participation in that project — launched in November 2009 — had grown to include 274 MLSs with more than 500,000 Realtor members. RPR has since signed up an additional 48 MLSs and now has licensing agreements with 322 MLSs representing 528,036 Realtors.
Both CoreLogic and RPR are using the listings data to generate analytics reports that are intended to give mortgage lenders, investors, and government agencies up-to-date insight into local housing market trends.
CoreLogic is sharing a percentage of the revenue it generates from the sale of analytics with Partner InfoNet members. MLSs that provide data on an exclusive basis get a bigger cut of revenue.
"The consistent growth that brought us to this milestone reflects the market’s appetite for MLS-enhanced data as well as the desire of MLSs to see their data used in new ways that facilitate the lending process," said Ben Graboske, CEO of CoreLogic MarketLinx, in a statement. "We began distributing royalty checks to MLS partners six months ago, and the market for our class-leading risk management products continues to expand."
The 13 MLSs added to Partner InfoNet this summer include My Florida Regional MLS, the Naples Area Association of Realtors, and St. Louis-based Mid American Regional Information Systems (MARIS).
When RPR launched, company officials said analytics products based in part on sold listing data could generate $60 million to $80 million in annual revenue. Instead of a revenue share, RPR is offering participating MLSs access to public property records and tools that allow their subscribers to generate analytics reports for clients.
All Realtors will be able to log in to RPR by the end of this year using their NRDS (National Realtors Database System) identification. But if their MLS is not providing listings to RPR, Realtors will not have access to historical listing data in their market through RPR.
In March, RPR signed up Rockville, Md.-based Metropolitan Regional Information Systems Inc. (MRIS) — at the time, the largest MLS in the nation by members — filling a coverage gap on the Eastern Seaboard. Three months later, CoreLogic signed Lisle, Ill.-based Midwest Real Estate Data LLC (MRED) — which claimed to be the largest MLS by listings count — to what CoreLogic claimed was an exclusive licensing deal.
Although RPR has agreements with five times as many MLSs as CoreLogic, many have only a few hundred members. RPR still has little or no listing data in 14 of 20 markets in the Standard & Poor’s Case-Shiller 20-city composite: Atlanta, Charlotte, Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, Detroit, Las Vegas, Minneapolis, New York City, Portland, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle and Tampa, Fla.
RPR has better coverage in the six remaining Case-Shiller markets — Boston, Denver, Los Angeles, Miami, Phoenix, and Washington, D.C. In California, RPR is already receiving listings from Anaheim-based SoCalMLS, which is planning a merger with Pomona-based California Regional MLS Inc. (CRMLS).
When the merger is completed, CRMLS — which the California Association of Realtors is backing as a statewide MLS — will be the nation’s largest, with 68,000 participants and subscribers. CRMLS announced it would provide listings to RPR in March but is not yet live on the system.
RPR is also receiving listings data from Tempe-based Arizona MLS, which the Arizona Association of Realtors last month voted to acquire with the goal of expanding it into a statewide MLS.
