MLS Aligned Acquires Agent Inbox to Create the Future of the MLS Showing Experience
“With this acquisition, MLS Aligned will build upon the Agent Inbox tools to bring messaging and showings together in a straightforward place for agents and brokers. The system will bring tremendous benefits to consumers due to the platform’s speed and enhanced showing system capabilities.
To better facilitate the showing process, MLS Aligned will integrate the showings and messaging systems within the platforms of their members to provide for seamless agent-to-agent and agent-to-client communications.”
Nature abhors a vacuum. While it seems that new showing software solutions are popping up everywhere, they still represented a problem to many MLS organizations. Mainly, “acquisition anxiety”.
That’s why an “MLS Owned” could have some legs. Many MLS members and their board of directors have given MLS staff the mandate to get off of Zillow’s ShowingTime. But many MLS organizations struggled as they faced the “devil you know is better than the devil you don’t” syndrome and good adoption.
This is somewhat of a travesty since I feel (and the vast majority of MLS execs I talk to) that ShowingTime has been unfairly treated. But some MLS execs find themselves in a bind because of angry member feedback or their MLS policies state that participants can’t be vendors.
Still, not all MLS organizations are suited for this type of acquisition. Just because you run an MLS, doesn’t mean you can run a software company. But many MLS Aligned members have deep experience in creating and supporting software solutions.
These MLS organizations represent about 100,000 agents, but the press release clearly states, “MLS Aligned will be making this software available to organizations that are not MLS Aligned members in the near future.”
I think this is a big story and “MLS Owned” represents a new type of disruption in the industry. I gotta give a lot of credit to the stakeholders at MLS Aligned. This is really a bold move. Now they have to match that with good execution.
“Just because you run an MLS, doesn’t mean you can run a software company,” should be bold, italicized, and underlined.
This is awesome. I’m excited to see what MLSAligned does with this step forward. Bravo!
Man this is great stuff, awesome organization acquiring an awesome tool that has been just sitting there waiting to be acquired for quite awhile. I always liked the Agent Inbox system and thought it was a terrific software, their problem was monetizing it – they were giving the milk away for free, so nobody wanted to buy the cow. Becoming an “MLS Owned” product is the ideal spot for the software.
When Agent Inbox was presented to CRMLS years ago it made complete sense. It was well received by the tech focus group. I recall it could be incorporated into MLS providers – Matrix, CloudMLX, etc.
If it maintains the previous communication format, Agent Inbox will great leap forward for agent-to-agent communication. It’s ridiculous that we still communicate by text instead of using a product like Agent Inbox.