When I started working at realtor.com, a colleague who had been working in real estate tech for a long time told me something very useful that I’ll never forget. It’s one of the first things I now say to any team, stakeholder, or other colleague when we discuss real estate data.
Listings are not properties.
This baffled me at first, how could listings NOT be properties? Aren’t properties the thing that the listing is selling? Well, yes and no. In order to understand, let’s back up and get a larger picture of the data. Understanding this difference will save you and your team hours of headaches and prevent you from making the biggest newbie mistake I’ve seen teams make.
There are many different types of real estate data feeds you could potentially request from a multiple listing service (MLS), however knowing what type of feed you need for your application can be very confusing. Unfortunately, some MLSs don’t publish all of the feed options available and what they’re for. Knowing the type of feed you need in advance can save you weeks of wasted time while you and your MLS go back and forth because you picked the wrong feed in your application.
A catch-22 for real estate tech companies has been easy, free access real estate MLS access to develop web or mobile apps. MLSs usually require you to be working with a brokerage/agent customer before giving you access to real estate data. But it’s really hard to get brokerages / agents to sign on as customers if you don’t have an working app!
Thanks to a new partnership between the Austin Board of REALTORS, RESO, and CoreLogic, software developers can get a FREE access to a RETS server (called the Developer Reference Server) to develop and test their applications with actual real estate data.
When most real estate agents think of IDX, frustration and pain come to mind.
In talking with Rets Rabbit customers, we’ve encountered all of the common complaints about IDX: confusing interfaces stuck in the mid-90s, lack of mobile device support, incorrect or missing information, terrible support, limited customization options and social media integration.
Is it any wonder that buyers are fleeing to portals such as Zillow or Realtor.com and that agents are considering doing without IDX all together?
Despite over 50% of buyers use a mobile website or application in their home search, a shocking amount of realtors have not optimized their websites for mobile.
That’s how long you have before a significant number of web users leave your site, over 40% according to KissMetrics. Unfortunately a lot of realtor websites take much longer to load. In a recent spot check of 15 top-producing and well known agents in Columbus, OH I found 10 that loaded over 3 seconds, one took as long as 20 seconds!
The good news with the use of some free tools and a little know-how, most performance issues with a realtor’s website can be fixed without a lot of time or money. I’m going to go over a few tools and steps I use with my real estate agent websites.
Running a real estate API company I’ll often get this common question/request from eager real estate technology startups about a National MLS.
“Hi we’re trying to create a real estate portal, how can we get access to all of the listings in the United States. Can your API provide us with this data?”
If you’re not familiar with the real estate industry in the United States, it doesn’t sound like an unreasonable request. In 2016 there HAS to be a way to get all of the listings from a single source right? So does a national MLS exist?
After a quick search I was able to find a real estate API matching his needs. It gave me an idea though, there are a lot of APIs for real estate data if you know where to look. So to make it easy I started a list of real estate APIs and broken them down by category.
Getting a data feed for real estate listings can be challenging if you’re new to real estate technology and how MLSes handle data access. Knowing what to expect and what questions to ask can help save you a lot of time and help get your project started sooner.
This year will be seen at as a watershed moment for real estate technology, after years of fragmentation across MLSs the industry is finally embracing two key standards which will improve the way technology companies consume real estate data. The two standards from the Real Estate Standards Organization (RESO) are called Data Dictionary and the RESO Web API. These two standards will impact every company and technology in the industry, including our real estate API product Rets Rabbit.
In this article I’m going to explain what Data Dictionary and the RESO Web API standard are, why they matter, and why Rets Rabbit is integrating both standards into our product.
