Kudos to Andrea Brambila at Inman News on a great article, MLSs anxious about their role in Upstream, about the MLS communities concerns regarding Upstream. It’s a great article and you should go read it now.
I think David summed it up best.
“MLSs are the default information exchange that facilitates tens of millions of dollars of residential real estate every minute. So it stands to reason we have questions,” David Charron, CEO of Metropolitan Regional Information Systems Inc. (MRIS), told Inman in an email. [W]e surely support the aspirational intentions of Upstream. But we will not sit quietly when the proposed solution places so much of the broker and agent business at risk.”
But, to me, it’s a bit more complicated. Who do MLSs want answers from? RPR? Upstream (the organization)? To me RPR is simply the vendor in this equation. Upstream is the client. And it turns out that Upstream (the client) doesn’t even know what they want. Here’s Cary Sylvester, from KW, one of Upstream’s Board members.
“Upstream is new and different and we don’t have all the answers yet; and this keeps us agile to create the best solution to meet those goals. What we do have is a structured discovery process we’ll work through with each MLS.”
W—T—F?
We don’t have a plan, but that’s great, because it means we are wide open to having a plan?
If Upstream is going to happen it is going to be about making the right choices. Any vendor, including RPR, might have the right partners, tech, and experience to pull this off, but they are going to have to help their clients understand what’s possible and what’s not.
I’m hoping that the people behind Upstream begin to realize that MLS providers provide a service that makes their most valuable asset, listings, even more valuable. And that they can start to think more inclusively about MLS providers being part of the over all solution, instead of just an arrow pointing out to a box on a diagram.
Well put. Glad to see that you are still on top of your game!