Where Real Estate Gets Its Dirt

A land war in Asia

Screen Shot 2015-12-01 at 10.13.55 PMKudos 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.

Robertson interviews Frame

This Friday I’ll be interviewing Marty Frame from RPR at the MLS Executives Session. I’ll be asking Marty a few questions about RPR, Upstream, AMP and maybe get some weight loss tips. I hope you’ll join me.

P.S. If you have any questions you would like me to ask just send them to me via email.

RPR inks deal with Upstream

RIS Media got the scoop yesterday…

NAR’s Realtors Property Resource Executes Definitive Agreement with UPSTREAM, Begins Development

“The National Association of Realtors® and its wholly owned subsidiary, Realtors Property Resource®, have signed a technology agreement with UPSTREAM™, a revolutionary industry-owned and controlled data management company, to develop UPSTREAM™’s cross-industry, state-of-the-art platform for real estate data entry, collection and distribution for real estate brokers.

A win’s a win.

Is NorthstarMLS’ implementation of “RPR View™” a peak at AMP?

NorthstarMLS announced a data share solution powered by RPR, dubbed “RPR View™“.

MN State Data Sharing

“RPR View™, consolidated into RPR, is already available to you through your NorthstarMLS subscription. You may now access listings in RPR (including offers of compensation) from these Minnesota State MLS’s:

Duluth Area Association of Realtors
Greater Alexandria Area Association of Realtors
Lake Region Association of Realtors (Fergus Falls)
Northwest Minnesota Association of Realtors (Bemidji)
Realtor Association of Southern MN (Mankato)
Southeast Minnesota Association of Realtors (Rochester/Winona)
West Central Association of Realtors (Willmar)

A couple things:

1. I guess this could count as part of the “alternative front end” trend we are seeing.

2. A clever way to using RPR data, and a proof of concept for its backend services (which is what they are pushing for with AMP)

RPR pivots

I’ve been on a bunch of airplanes since NAR Midyear, have I missed anything? ; )

Oh yeah, NAR Board of Directors approved RPR’s new initiative, “RPR Upstream/AMP”. And the world went batshit crazy.

I found the video above and I think it does an excellent job of outlining what RPR is trying to accomplish, so lets start with that. So here’s a few comments and advice.

1. It’s all about the listing input module. Everyone I talk to says this is extremely difficult. You need to nail it. Seems like this type of tech (like most) benefits from years of iteration. Consider looking at existing solutions.

2. Find a way to partner with MLS providers. RPR got a rough start out of the gate because they didn’t want to do any revenue share with MLS providers. That caused some bad blood and brought in a new entrant (Corelogic) to the mix. (I’m not talking about sharing revenue here per se, just the perception of not coming up with any sort of compromise.) Don’t make the same mistake again. Your goal is to aggregate property data from brokers, they’ve (MLS Providers) been doing that successfully for decades already. This is not about “reaching out” to them, your job should be to get them onboard and excited about this new effort. Easy? No. Necessary? Yes. Like it or not, you need their support and expertise.

3. Cut something. What you trying to accomplish is hugely ambitious on its own. Consider either cutting an existing product line or feature set. You are going to need all the bandwidth you can get.

4. Be humble.

An attorney, a pair of consultants, and an MLS exec walk in to a bar….

Interesting, if not a little bizarre, read from The Notorious R.O.B. on the much rumored RPR pivot (I think) ….

Project Trim Tab: From Dream to Reality

“The dream of fundamentally improving the MLS technology platform has been one that the industry has talked about for years. We have seen a surge in credit-taking amongst the “thought leaders” within the industry in recent weeks, as RPR has started to shed light on their Advanced Multi-List Platform, aka AMP™. But the concept of a flexible MLS, powered by modern API’s (Application Programming Interface), which allows for flexibility and innovation has been around since at least the mid 2000’s when technology companies like Google, Facebook, and Salesforce debuted the concept of API’s and “mashups”.

As is said, success has many fathers. But in this case, many of those were absentee dads at best. The real story of what is possibly the biggest advance in the MLS industry since the advent of the Internet itself cannot be told without mentioning the central role of SIRMLS.

As I was the author and architect of this overall effort, I know better than most just how valuable SIRMLS and its leadership have been, and remain.”

NAR double downs on RPR.

burning_money
NAR will dip into reserves as RPR funding boosted to $22 million per year

Andrea Brambila for Inman News:

“Since 2009, NAR has spent $85 million on RPR, including $19 million in expenditures last year alone, according to NAR Finance Committee reports. By the end of 2014, the trade group will have spent $98.9 million on RPR, an amount that is projected to rise to $120.8 million by the end of 2015 and $142.7 million by the end of 2016.”

Almost 100 million dollars? What happens when you login to RPR, do you shit gold?

“RPR provides property information and data tools to all Realtors, but its business model originally assumed that the venture would become self-sustaining by 2012 by selling analytics products such as property valuations to lenders and government agencies. In the four years since its launch, RPR has struggled to make money, generating a total of $586,270 in revenue from analytics as of December 2013.”

$586,270 – $100,000,000 is a loss of -$994,137,730. Yup, sounds about right.

“The NAR Finance Committee approved net reductions to reserves in order to provide members with “exciting new and enhanced programming.”

Someone famous once said, if you are in a hole and want to get out, the first thing you do is stop digging.

“She said RPR will also use the funding “to add additional data sources, such as walkability scores, support the release of RPR’s mobile application for iPhone and Android (currently being tested), and enhance the RPR platform to include new user-requested features and advanced functionality.”

Just of the record, I pay less than $400 per month for Walkability scores in Cloud CMA. The fact they even mention this speaks volumes.

“NAR expects its 2015 operating budget will consist of $154.8 million in gross revenue and program expenses of $158.9 million. RPR is by far the program with the biggest budget.”

The National Association of REALTORS is not a technology company, but RPR has the biggest budget? Someone is getting rich here.

Nationstar acquires Real Estate Digital (RED) for 18 million in cash.

NATIONSTAR REPORTS FIRST QUARTER 2014 FINANCIAL RESULTS & STRATEGIC ACQUISITION

“Nationstar Mortgage Holdings Inc. (NYSE: NSM) (“Nationstar”), a leading residential mortgage services company, today announced that its fee-based real estate services business, Solutionstar entered into a definitive agreement to acquire substantially all of the assets of Real Estate Digital and its affiliate for USD 18m in cash in May.”

This is the HUGE news. Back in 2011 Jay Gaskill structured a management buy out of the franchise/broker and agent division of LPS. A mere 3 years later they flip for 18 million.

For those who don’t know, RED basically powers online real estate. They have one of the largest pools of IDX feeds in the industry, powering many large brokerages, including HomeServices brokerages along with Berkshire Hathaway and also Real Living. They act as a data provider for many other 3rd party software companies. And of course they are the data aggregator for NAR’s Realtor Property Resource (RPR). This brings about many questions.

My congrats go out to the entire team at RED.

Kristen

Kristen Carr A little birdy told me that Kristen Carr has a new role at RPR! She’s now Manager, Partner Integrations. I’ve seen some of the stuff that RPR is making available to developers and I have to say I’m pretty impressed. Congrats to Kristen and RPR!

Mona Steen leaving RPR?

The end is nigh…

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