MARIS and NorthstarMLS understand that data is one of the most coveted resources on the planet. Today, data is the water in real estate’s ecosystem. Without water, there would be no life, just as data is essential to making real estate markets function.
These two mega-MLSs are working to provide agents friction-free access to data. And that ultimately benefits consumers.
How? MARIS and NorthstarMLS are working together, using NorthstarMLS’s Common Data Platform, to make real estate markets in the Greater Midwest work better by unifying the marketplace around shared listing data. This effort removes the toll gate that currently forces many agents across the country to pay multiple MLSs simply to help consumers buy and sell real estate.
Most uniquely, the CDP is a powerful way to fix a nagging (and massive) problem without a merger: making it easier for agents to gain access to listing data in the areas they serve. Importantly, agents get to use the same MLS vendor they are used to using.
The CDP breaks more than just the impediments of jurisdictional and geographical boundaries – it removes the challenges of the cultural boundaries that a merger often causes. It creates a win-win versus taking a merger path that can be littered with “winners & losers.”
John Mosey, one of our industry’s most thoughtful, innovative – and candid – leaders, is heading this charge, and you can expect other proven leaders, like David Price and his team at MARIS, to jump on this CDP bandwagon.
Read the full news release here:
MARIS Adopts NorthstarMLS’s Common Data Platform
Minneapolis – July 13, 2021 – NorthstarMLS and MARIS announced today their agreement to cooperate on the Common Data Platform (CDP) created to make the real estate markets in the Greater Midwest work better by unifying the marketplace around shared listing data. MARIS joins current CDP partners in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Iowa to make it easier for real estate brokers and agents to serve consumers without the impediments of the jurisdictional boundaries that separate them.
The addition of MARIS to the CDP collaborative vastly increases the exposure of real estate listings belonging to more than 36,000 members of 32 REALTOR® associations in five states with no change to how the originating association operates other than where listings are entered and maintained.
CDP was born out of necessity as the slow pace of efforts to consolidate or share data between neighboring MLS operations was causing brokers and agents to incur additional expenses in areas of market overlap as well as where their businesses were growing. Consumer confusion as to who was best positioned to guide their buying and selling needs was amplified, and third parties moved in to fill the spaces left untended.
CDP overcomes the obstacles and resistance that have historically kept real estate professionals from working together in more efficient and coherent markets. Listings are entered into one repository and are then pulled by the respective MLS technology vendors to deliver search and report results locally, as usual and expected.
“Today, over 93% of Minnesota REALTORS® are able to belong to just one association, pay one MLS fee and use their preferred front-end technology to do business with each other without some border somewhere acting like a toll booth,” said John Mosey, CEO of NorthstarMLS. “Just three years ago, it wasn’t uncommon, in most of Minnesota, for many agents to belong to at least two and as many as five or six different MLSs.”
MARIS and NorthstarMLS do not share any borders; however, the CDP footprint that includes MARIS will extend from the Canadian border to Arkansas.
“There’s always another border,” said Mosey. “As soon as you’ve solved the problem in one place, there’s another market at some stage or another of reckoning with the dysfunction of overlapping market disorder.”
“The MARIS Board of Directors observed the progress that NorthstarMLS was making in Minnesota and Iowa and made a strategic investment in CDP technology with the goal of accelerating the rationalization of markets where our members operate today in Missouri and Southern Illinois,” said David Price, President & CEO of MARIS.
“CDP partner organizations can work with technology providers toward collective pricing because the tech providers only need to interface once with one database in order to deliver their solutions to all or some of the CDP partner organizations,” added Mosey.
Recently, MARIS and NorthstarMLS concluded a contract renewal with Corelogic, Inc. for their widely used products, Matrix® and Realist®, where the two CDP partners combined to negotiate as a single account representing a combined user count of over 35,000.
MARIS and NorthstarMLS aim to complete work on MARIS’ transition to the CDP in early 2022.
About MARIS
MARIS (Mid-America Regional Information Systems) is a regional MLS in the heart of the Midwest with a mission of providing an orderly marketplace of cooperation and compensation for participants through a common database of real estate information. Founded in 1995, MARIS supports approximately 14,000 REALTORS in 14 Associations covering 62 counties in Missouri and Southern Illinois.
About NorthstarMLS
NorthstarMLS® supports over 21,900 real estate professionals in Minnesota and Western Wisconsin. We provide participating brokers and agents with fast and reliable access to the property information, services and resources that help them make our property markets function efficiently and effectively for both buyers and sellers. NorthstarMLS and its Common Data Platform facilitated more than 106,000 real estate transactions valued over $32.4 billion in 2020.
About Common Data Platform (CDP)
The CDP is a MLS listings database (including a state-of-the art Add/Edit function) developed and operated by NorthstarMLS to increase access to listing inventory and opportunity for brokers and agents. All participants who share the CDP platform have access to the listing inventories of each other. CDP-partner MLSs benefit from extended cooperation, increased purchasing power, shared costs, and participation in an industry coalition of common interests based on common data.
Wonder how that CDP (Core Data Platform) “relates/fits in” to the Corelogic Matrix system which is used by other MLSs to enter and maintain listing info by member agents.
Forgot to mention/ask … is that CDP custom/proprietary to the mentioned MLSs?
Hi Ron, here’s what John Mosey, NorthstarMLS leader, shared:
The CDP is owned and operated by NorthstarMLS. It is a database and Add/Edit service that enables cooperation between MLS’s based on the concept of listing data residing and being maintained in one place. NorthstarMLS licenses its technology to other MLS organizations that have the IT capability to manage it themselves in a quasi-Open Source arrangement. Alternatively, for organizations that don’t have IT resources, CDP can be provided as a service.
Hi Ron – we shared your question with NorthstarMLS’s John Mosey. His reply:
The CDP works with Matrix. Both MARIS and NorthstarMLS are Matrix accounts; however, the Matrix Listing Maintenance function is not used. All Add/Edit activity is done directly into the CDP. This allows for different CDP-partner MLS’s to collaborate without regard for the front-end technology.
The 6 Iowa Association MLS’s on CDP are all on Paragon. Two CDP partners in Minnesota are FlexMLS accounts.
NorthstarMLS gives its subscribers the choice of using Matrix, Paragon, FlexMLS and ReminePro.
When a new MLS joins the CDP, their data is converted to the common database. If they are on Paragon for instance, they stay on Paragon.