Trestle by CoreLogic has been a sprint for the nation’s largest technology provider. On the heals of migrating more than 50 MLSs over to Matrix over the past 30 months, they had the added CoreLogic Logochallenge of getting all of their MLS clients to be RESO certified (RESO = Real Estate Standards Organization). CoreLogic got them there, but at the Silver level of certification (Booooooo!). In a press release today, RESO has upgraded their certification on Trestle to Gold (Yeaaaaaa!)

WHY TRESTLE?

Every MLS system vendor offers a server for publishing IDX and VOW data to enable brokers to hydrate their applications with MLS data. 100% of MLSs have these servers in place today and that is how vendors access MLS data.

Application vendors who only serve customers in a single market tie to a single MLS live a peaceful life. However, when a broker or a vendor is connecting to more than one market, things get more complicated. Data Structure is different; field names are different; business rules for listing display are different; and so on. To compensate for the differences, major data aggregators like Wolfnet, Homes.com, and Xome have developed processes for pulling data from all 700 or so MLSs, normalizing it to a single standard, and supplying it to their broker and agent clients. These companies are the big guys with over 90% of MLS coverage. All other vendors do smaller groups of MLSs that varies from 2 to more than a few hundred.

Guess what. Pulling data from over 700 servers with more than 2 million listing updates is not the only hard part in this system. The other hard part is the IDX agreements. The big companies like Wolfnet, Homes.com, and Xome have automated their IDX application process whereby the vendor, the broker, and the agent need to complete and sign a form. Xome’s RE Data Vault™ solution is also available to MLSs who are challenged with the document management headaches of managing all of the agreements. Imagine the paperwork of a large MLS with 30,000 subscribers, 500 vendors, and each subscriber having 3 data driven software applications. Yup – over 100,000 documents that need to be managed and signed.

Trestle Does a Lot of Things to Fix All of This

  1. Vendors have a single place to access data from over 60 MLSs. Over 40 more have signed agreements eclipsing the market coverage area beyond 100. (Way ahead of Zillow’s RETS.ly and Bridge products). Its normalized right out of the box.
  2. Both the vendor license agreement with the MLS and all of the hundreds of thousands of data license agreements are handled with Trestle electronically.
  3. MLSs participating in Trestle are RESO Data Dictionary Compliant ( but they still need to fill out the RESO application for certification each year).
  4. MLSs participating in Trestle are compliant with the RESO API requirements (again, you need to get RESO certified each year).
  5. Any MLS may join Trestle – they support FBS, Rapattoni, Black Knight, homegrown MLS systems, etc.
  6. Vendors can also access Realist™ Tax Data (for a fee of course).

Why RESO Gold Certification is Important

There are four levels of certification for RESO. I am happy to be politically incorrect and state that having 4 standards is absurd. It is a cop-out that lets MLSs off the hook. The lowest standard is Bronze, followed by Silver, Gold, and Platinum. I believe that only a few MLSs are Platinum – MLSListings.com in the Silicon Valley market of California (They are the first at everything), California Regional MLS (who is not only Platinum but also converted the fields in the MLS to the RESO data dictionary making them “native” with their standard adoption), Chicago’s MRED, and I am not sure about the others. Platinium is a rare bird. Good is great. Below Gold is really not useful.

Below Gold is really not useful because vendors need the Gold level data at a minimum to operate most websites, CMAs, mobile apps, etc. Right now, every vendor is connected to the old systems and they usually get full data feeds. They are required to normalize the data and map it to insert into their product, but the big vendors like Wolfnet, Homes.com, and Xome have been doing that since the 90s. They are experts. Until every MLS is Platinum or they are forced to move off of the servers that they are drawing data from now, those companies will not switch.

Trestle was silver. So existing vendors were not really interested. Now that they are Gold, Trestle is a workable solution for most vendors. Lets face it. If a vendor can sell into 100 of the largest MLS markets in the county with a single data feed – that takes a lot of the heavy lifting out of the go to market strategy.

In truth, I am waiting for the next press release from CoreLogic that tells the story of vendors who are using the system. Vendors can sign up for Trestle access online at https://trestle.corelogic.com/Home/Providers