Multi-listing enthusiast Trevor Mealham is arranging a meeting in central London on December 17 which will feature a US specialist.
Rob Larson is a leading figure in American real estate technology.
On January 1, property data flow from realtors to consumers across the whole of the USA will change as around 900 multi-listing associations under the National Association of Realtors adopt an upgraded schema.
This project has been led by Larson, who is chief information officer at the US’s biggest multi-listing association, the Californian Regional Multiple Listing Service.
In the US, the property market works very differently from that of the UK. Sellers typically choose (and pay for) a listing agent, who then distributes the listing across a number of selling agents. The seller then pays a second commission to the successful selling agent. The overall commission paid by the vendor is far higher than in the UK.
Mealham, of the Independent Network of Estate Agents, said of Larson’s visit to London: “We see this as a great opportunity for those interested in bringing greater innovation to the UK, be they technologist, agent or investor.
“They will have the opportunity to meet others in the property industry to discuss how multi-listing could innovate the UK to a better business-to-business, or agent-to-agent, platform.
“I have been fortunate enough to have known Rob for some years now and his time in the UK will allow us to open his experience and understanding of the US system to interested parties in the UK.
“Rob’s work, known as the Data Dictionary, will be responsible for nearly every US residential property sale in the United States throughout 2016 and onwards.”
Anyone interested in knowing more can email Mealham at admin@inea.co.uk
Comments (27)
In Americans can do something we cant: They can build vast numbers of new properties if they ever have a housing shortage because they have so much more land then we do. Therefore the realtor works on very high service levels to gain clients/buyers referrals.
In Brittan we are suffering from a housing shortage but we cant build nearly enough new homes as result insanely high house prices, relatively high numbers of house buyers chasing each house that is for sale. Agents over pricing to get the instruction with a (at best) 50/50 chance of selling at or close to the asking price.
We don’t need multi listing, no house stays on the market long enough unless it’s completely over priced plus UK buyers aren’t stupid.
UK buyers aren’t stupid.
Even resale homes need selling. The Yanks mainly sell resale through MLS, co-brokerage.
Question – house on fire – 1 fireman and a bucket in 20 mins or all firebrigade in 3 mins with a engine
1 a side football team vs 11 side
bucket or thimble to bail out a flood
moped or Car to get to destination
JCB or shovel
Many agents OR 1
All are natural examples of bigger can be better when applied to a short time scale when a job needs doing.
Question – house on fire – 1 fireman and a bucket in 20 mins or all firebrigade in 3 mins with a engine
If only 1 can put out the fire – then the whole brigade can put out many at the same time.
1 a side football team vs 11 side
1-a-side every time. The offside rule was written for it.
bucket or thimble to bail out a flood
Thimble gets right to the bottom – bucket can’t be that effective
moped or Car to get to destination
Moped can go places the car could never manage and get you there quicker.
JCB or shovel
JCB is useless if you can’t use the controls. EVERYONE can use a shovel.
I really like this game. Can we do some more, please… ;o)
No 🙂 Everything has a time and place.
The UK has seen sole agency and portals create a race to the bottom. For sure those many agents on RM and Z have a bigger window together than lone agents not in.
On that if data was revamped to flow to a mutual hub where sharing meant share via better fees etc. It could leave many budget agents out in the cold.
We use to “Co -op” on instructions back in the day and this practise phased out.
Reason for it agents only co-op’ed on the **** properties that were either overpriced or had a poor fee.
Also di not have a standing monthly DD just sent an email round to branches with particulars and fee they would receive.
Think its all a little dated now, it about gaining instructions not sharing them.
Smile – there is an increasing interest in collaboration. Today 4 softwares have come forward to talk to Rob Larson on Thursday. We already have first adopter softwares. Softwares are starting to realise being able to give an agent a MLS CMS means agents could have 100’s or 1,000’s of listings rather than 10-20.
In my offices and agents I worked with we’d list most new listings as subs, not just hard to shifts. Why not. If a vendor agrees to pay say another 1/2% on top of sole, then if sold direct the main agent contractually gets more. if sold via a sub agent nothing is lost and poss a sale is gained.
Also you can only sell one property once when for sale. having subs allows offerers to be offered prop 2-3-4.
Trevor,
I appreciate this is your business but in the main agents see it as flawed.
In a time where fees are being eroded a vendor will not give an extra 0.5% so they can be multi listed. If they really did want that they may as well instruct Countrywide (they are dropping their pants on fees at the moment) they will get circa 1200 offices for maybe 1%
Also there is no way i would ever let a fresh decent instruction go co-op. not in this market.
It is an outdated system. The internet has effectively killed this practice off. The only USP now is you can advertise now on lust one portal and sub the instruction out to other agents who are on different portals thus giving the vendor exposure on 3 portals. Which is why OTM have said agents cannot advertise with you as well as them.
We’ve been using this system in central London for donkeys years. It’s called Lonres.com (London residential) and yes, it works!
AdiT – Lonres is a good system too. We applaud any prop tech that opens more listings to local agents.
Take a very good agent with 10 listings. In the empty office next door add a chimp that can access via collaboration 100-150 local listings.
Take a buyer who wants something the first agent doesnt have = zero matches.
Send the buyer into Chimp, who gives 5-6 matching listings.
My guess is even a Chimp could sell what they can gain access to.
Agent one can’t sell what he/she doesn’t have. ….
Mr Mealham
What you have just done in the post above is confirm for me why MLS is something I want to steer well clear of.
I’ve got nothing against chimps – but I certainly won’t take food out of my family’s mouth to help feed them.
But chimp may understand that if he takes (the extra fee that MLS allows justification to clients) for additional exposure, then its only fair to share back. Givers gain. Lone agency could be a quiet place and a costly one to add few listings to all portals.
Isn’t it better to have a % of something that someone wants or 100% of nothing as the few properties a sole agent has don’t fit today’s applicants wants.
Trevor – All I’m saying is that we’ve been using it for years. It’s not new.
You like to call them chimps, I like to call them new agents who either don’t have any instructions or not enough yet.
Good luck!
AdiT – Just out of curiosity how much do you pay for Lonres?
Adit – what Im saying isn’t disrespectful – its just grass roots. If an agent is asked for what they don’t have – how ca you get a sale. 1. don’t? 2. work with the guy or lady next door who has what your clients want.
1/2 or a % of something is better than 100% of nothing.
If you search the web there is mention of a Mr Mann who in 1891 was a surveyor who’d take listings on in the morning and at a higher fee offered extra exposure via London agents.
Ummmmm. Main agent takes on listing, agrees higher fee for collaboration to sub agents. MLS/ sub agency is nothing new. It’s more of a lost practice, that yes some groups still today see value in, when others are racing to the bottom. …….
It’s not hard to pitch. selling on promise of extended better service provides the platform to better higher fees and a stronger legal contract where other agents can collaborate rather than pitch to steal main agents listings.
Lonres anyone!!
Point taken, Trevor, thanks. But although I can absolutely see the logic of “a share of something is better than 100% of nothing”, how do you overcome the natural reluctance of agents in this country to share their hard-won listings? Particularly since, in these days of national portals, which the majority of house-hunters turn to, it could be argued that there is no discernible consumer benefit to instructing an MLS agent?
Team have been multi-listing for donkey’s years, surely?
Fencesitter – for sure. The main difference is that agents who want to play in the TEAM tennis court have to use their tennis rackets.
ie INEA can take feeds in from around 50 of the UK softwares rather than 1. All said we respect TEAM’s co-broker work and Resource Techniques.
The trouble is that if 4 local agents all have 10-25 listings to put in a shared pool (MLS) and are on 3-4 different softwares, then it needs a neutral post box to link agents on different softwares.
Ah, Mr M. Hats off to you for continuing to try and push water uphill. Could you just remind us all – what is the average commission percentage paid by vendors in the U.S.?
Agency Insider. The US realtors typically charge 5%-6% which gets split 50/50 between the sellers and the buyers brokerages, then sub divided as between brokerage and negotiator.
Typical realtors handle 6-8 listings at a time, compared to UK negs handling greater numbers.
US agents also do pre legals which UK agents don’t
I always traded by 1/2 or a % of something was better than 100% of nothing.
Were in the age of sharing and big data. MLS to the UK makes sense to innovate the UK market.
Many thanks for the info.
Mr Mealham – a question if I may.
You state “MLS to the UK makes sense to innovate the UK market.”
Yet you have previously stated many times that MLS was ‘the norm’ in the industry during the 80s and 90s (not that I ever came across it more than once I reckon…).
WHY did it cease to be – and WHY would it work this time?
Sorry – that’s two questions…
Hi PeeBee 2 questions is fine.
MLS is simply a main agent multi-listing. I came into UK agency in 1986 and learnt from very old fashioned traditional agents that offering clients extended exposure with agents in other newspapers, other office locations etc was an attractive premium service to gain extra exposure. Up North you may have used sub instructing or lessor ‘joint agency’.
Why did it cease? Do you remember the insurance and mortgage companies buying up offices for silly money?
Many good practices where bosses carried out main agency and subbed out to 2-3-4-5-6 other local agents took the big £bucks. Corporates then often had 2-3 localish brands and broke some of the little local networks.
Then came Rightmove which was given away for free for 2 years. But really the ‘free’ bit was that agents listing on RM had to 1. manually add, or 2. get their software to adopt creating a feed from the agents CMS to RM
The RM feed has data fields missing such as ‘share’, ‘share with whom’, ‘share %comm’, ‘share rules’, ie can’t sub list ‘on this portal, that or back of buses’ etc.
As such the old sub agency form that accompanied property details with vendors acceptance of higher fee and allowance to sub out – is more advanced than the Rightmove feed – as t allowed agents to cross share local listings.
Some might say RM wasn’t really just giving away portal display for free – they were funding property marketing in return for agents getting their softwares to adopt their schema.
The RM schema works in one direction – Agents CMS to portal and doesn’t return listings.
RM became No. 1 and agents became their best sales people to consumers. Agents then sold RM presence above their own worth. From there RM become the agents digital window and agents to compete (now not working together) had one place to go. Drop their fees.
Budget models came in with large funding and there you have it.
MLS working on the basis of ‘Givers Gain’ means agents with too low fees could be blocked from sharing to, in a like way that facebook allows blocking.
So PeeBee – to share 20 listings and get 100 back? Worth it?
In the USA Rob is the TOP technologist. Anyone questioning MLS is welcome along to meet Rob who daily B2B links 78,000 realtors who gain better than UK fees.
His work will link 1m realtors to a new national de facto multi-directional feed schema come 1st Jan 2016.
At INEA we have a feed schema that breaks the RM schema restraints to allow sharing up and down.
“MLS working on the basis of ‘Givers Gain’ means agents with too low fees could be blocked from sharing to…”
Erm – isn’t that like…
… a cartel?
Hi PeeBee. No thats the clever bit. MLS can provide the platform to let ANYONE in. But would you want to share with an agent you didnt like, or one who COULDNT SHARE BACK?, or one that ran off with the agent up the roads wife or husband.
Many big data platforms enable sharing – but equally create data privacy allowance to fit in with peoples choice and right to hide data from choice blocks.
But your right in that budget agents could find they’d get back as much as they were unable to share.
As such MLS could be tragic for budgets if they kept fees LOW. Givers gain means they’d have to stop playing the cheap card. …..
By giving agents the ability to share or block on a one by one basis we can allow all in to set their own rules, rather than set the rules for them. MLS is simply a post box.
Ahhh… so it’s not a cartel, then.
In the same way that ‘Multi-Level Marketing’ isn’t ‘Pyramid Selling’, I would suggest.
From Jan 2016 every property sold in the USA through over 1m agents will have gone through Rob’s specifications.
One of the nicest guys at the very TOP of US prop tech and the CTO of CRMLS the biggest MLS out there with 78,000 agents using it daily.
Agents co brokering gain access to more stock. As such the low fee budget agents don’t get shared back to and are losing ground over there.
Great opportunity to meet the US tech man at the top. We already have softwares coming along next week looking to integrate our UK MLS feed.