It is RESO week. The week when CIO and CTO types gather together in Austin, TX for the Annual Real Estate Standards Organization meeting. This year’s conference was sold out for the first time with a rumored count of more than 700 participants.
Kevin Hawkins of WAV Group Communications says that the environment and buzz at the conference is amazing. You can follow Kevin’s RESO updates on Twitter @RESO_RETS or follow the RESO hashtag at #reso15 to listen to the conference chatter.
One of the astonishing calls that I got today was from an MLS asking me if CoreLogic was providing their new RESO compliant/certified Trestle solution to non-corelogic MLSs for free. The Answer is YES! We verified that Black Knight Paragon customer Coastal Carolina MLS is going through the certification process on the Trestle RETS platform from Corelogic.
WAV Group’s understanding is that Black Knight and other MLS system vendors may be charging a reasonable one time fee for their customers to update their RETS servers and go through the certification process. We did not check with every MLS vendor to find out the policy. We have learned over time that these types of fees are often calculated on a market by market basis anyway. CoreLogic is not charging any fees for compliance at this time.
Brokers and technology vendors who rely on RETS have long been frustrated by the lack of a single standard and a RESTful API for too long. The National Association of REALTORS MLS policy committee made the RESO standard a requirement for NAR-affiliated MLSs over 16 months ago. The deadline for meeting that requirement is December 31st of this year. The requirement to provide the RESTful API is July. This is a huge endeavor for every one of the 770 MLS in America today. RESO has not announced how many are certified. WAV Group has watched for the announcements and it seems like about 50 to 100 have gone through the process.
There are only 60 days left for MLSs to get certified!
In truth, every vendor of MLS services is involved in RESO and it is not unreasonable for a vendor to charge a fee for the service. It is a major undertaking. The biggest challenge is that the MLS must fill out the paperwork and pay the RESO application fee before the vendor can do anything to update the system in time for the deadline. Too many MLSs – mostly small ones – have their head in the sand on this issue.
RESO is preparing for an onslaught of certification submissions to come in at the last minute. It is somewhat disgusting that our industry has waited over a year when everyone was clearly notified that this was coming. The big markets have it covered – 300,000 agents. There are applications in for covering another 50,000 agents. That leaves about a million agents in the lurch by my math.
What will the NAR do?
A few MLSs have been emboldened enough to say – what will the NAR do about it? There has been no clear statement from NAR about the penalties for not being RESO certified by the end of the year, but in this environment of “Raising the Bar” in real estate, I would expect that the call from NAR to the MLS will not be a friendly one.
Reminder – DO IT NOW
If you are a broker, call every one of your MLSs and find out about the status of RESO certification and conversion in your market and let your vendors know. They need to prepare too!
If you are an MLS – notify your brokers, agents, and the data feed vendors of where you are with the conversion.
