A couple of years ago, two of our most progressive clients came to RPR with a new vision about how MLS systems could work. They strongly believed that MLS systems should be offered in modules to make it easier and more practical for brokers and agents to be able to choose the MLS interface that works best for them.
Tim Dain from the Austin Board of REALTORS® and Walt Baczkowski from the San Francisco Association of REALTORS® both saw the opportunity to de-couple the listing input, search and reporting functions from the database that houses all of the MLS information and listing data. When they proposed the idea a couple of years ago, the idea was just a vision. In fact, the same vision was outlined nearly 15 years ago by my former WAV Group partner, Mike Audet. The idea is not new, but until now nobody took the initiative to actually build it.
It is very exciting for me to see that one of the industry’s long-standing MLS system and association management software providers has stepped up to help make Tim and Walt’s vision a reality in partnership with RPR. While the release does not outline specific deliverable dates for the program yet, it does suggest to me that leaders in our industry are committed to trying new things that will help evolve the MLS industry and hopefully continue to make it relevant.
Here’s the official word from the press release:
Rapattoni Corporation and Realtors Property Resource® (RPR®) have jointly announced that Rapattoni customers may be among the first real estate professionals with instant access to live listing data and other MLS resources through RPR’s Advanced Multi-List Platform™ (AMP™).
“We’re looking to the future of the MLS business, anticipating the needs of our customers as well as the industry at large,” said Brian Tepfer, Chief Technology Officer at Rapattoni. “Our MLS is architected to facilitate integration with a broad spectrum of emerging technologies, allowing MLSs to pull listing data from multiple sources and present it in a single interface. The new AMP™ integration is a dynamic example of how our MLS software uses listing information from multiple databases.”
This is a good first step toward a much more flexible and user-centric MLS experience in my view. It would be great if every broker could define their own unique blend of MLS modules that work best for the needs of their company. Ideally, many of them can be branded to the broker and can be seamlessly integrated with other broker tools to make the MLS system the center of a REALTOR®’s entire technology solution. Now that we have RESO standards in place in MLSs that represent 1.1 million real estate professionals, this job is going to become easier.
Great work Rapattoni! I just love it when I see our industry challenging itself with new ideas. They may not all play out exactly as planned, but trying new approaches is the only way to continue to become stronger. They may challenge traditional thinking, but sometimes our thinking DOES need to be challenged. I am so happy when I see the industry pushing itself and not just letting third parties take the lead.
