I’ve been a little skeptical about RPR‘s prospects. Other pundits have made the statement that RPR was dead. But, the deals signed with CRMLS, and now MRIS signify a major turning point. The critisims used to be that RPR had a lot of MLS providers but the coverage had a lot of holes.  Slowly but surely that’s changing.

I think RPR is doing a decent job of implementing on their vision.  As I’ve said I’m sure they would like things to move faster, but this is the MLS business and things tend to take their time.

Major challenges still remain:

1. They still need to get the coverage up. CRMLS and MRIS are HUGE wins but, they need to take advantage of this momentum and keep signing larger MLS Providers.

2. I don’t hear of many agents/brokers using any of the RPR tools. Granted a lot of these tools are new in my area but I just don’t hear about them. Of course their revenue model doesn’t need this to happen.

3. “60 million to 80 million in annual revenue”. And when, and only when, they get their coverage up they have to accomplish this lofty revenue goal.  Ouch.

4. Runway. In the Inman article I caught something that I hadn’t heard before. “NAR must first recover roughly $21 million in RPR startup costs before it will discuss a revenue split, company officials have said.” You gotta wonder if/when RPR is going to have to go back to mommy (NAR) for more money.

Things that make me go hmmmmmmm: Does anyone think (despite what the Inman article stated) that Dave Charron/MRIS signed a deal with RPR that didn’t have a revenue share component?

 

Not me.