Two multiple listing services collectively representing about 7,400 members have recently signed agreements to feed their listing data to a national property database owned and operated by the National Association of Realtors.
NAR subsidiary Realtors Property Resource collects national, regional and local data that allows all NAR members to access property and market trend information for more than 160 million U.S. properties. In markets where RPR has partnered with MLSs, users also have access to active and sold listing data through RPR that can be used to generate reports and property valuations for clients.
The latest data licensing agreements RPR has announced are with Pittsburgh-based West Penn Multi-List, which has about 4,400 members, and Little Rock, Ark.-based Cooperative Arkansas Realtors MLS (CARMLS), which has 3,000 members.
“This is an unparalleled opportunity for the agent and consumer to tap into the vast resource of data from Realtors throughout the country. RPR will provide tools to our associates to help their clients with up-to-date information. This is a win-win for everyone,” said Helen Hanna Casey, president of Howard Hanna Real Estate Services, in a statement. Howard Hanna is the largest real estate brokerage in the Pittsburgh area by both transaction sides and sales volume, according to Real Trends.
As of the end of July, a total of 550 MLSs, associations and commercial information exchanges representing 75 percent of Realtors had licensed their data to RPR. By the end of this year, NAR will have spent $76.5 million on RPR, and the trade group has earmarked $18.5 million a year in support of the venture for the next three years.
RPR has struggled to generate revenue, in part because some major MLSs had not agreed to feed their listing data to RPR. In July, RPR signed up one of the biggest MLSs in the country as a partner, Lisle, Ill.-based Midwest Real Estate Data LLC (MRED), plugging a major gap in RPR’s coverage and potentially boosting its ability to generate revenue.
That announcement came just days after RPR announced it had acquired a powerful ally in real estate franchise giant Coldwell Banker, which committed to launching an internal campaign to promote RPR adoption by agents and to encourage its brokerages to get their MLSs to share listings with the database if they were not yet on board.
