A couple of weeks ago, I gave a presentation at the Clareity MLS Executives Workshop in Scottsdale, AZ. It was on a topic that is near and dear to my heart, as I actually wrote a whole business plan way back in the day on introducing Open Source software to the MLS industry. I abandoned … Read more
In part 1 and part 2 of this series, I laid out my concerns with Project Upstream as it is currently structured, and a path forward in which Upstream becomes part and parcel of the MLS system. As I mentioned in those posts, the technology to do this is not science fiction. It exists today, … Read more
In Part 1, we discussed why Project Upstream as currently setup is problematic, despite the goals of Upstream being absolutely worth pursuing. In this part, I go more into offering solutions. Had I been involved with Upstream earlier on, this would have been my advice, but then, nobody asked me. 🙂 Basically, my take is that … Read more
Over on Facebook, Sam Debord (regular readers are familiar with Sam) asked a really, really good question: Sam DeBord Rob, give us your take on AMP benefiting small MLSs. Does better software slow consolidation, or are other issues driving it? AMP, of course, stands for RPR’s Advanced Multi-List Platform, a project with which I’ve been … Read more
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZ0SR3pYJ7c Who am I, what have I become? Two stories hit my awareness overnight that confirm something I’ve been saying for a while. In 2013, I wrote this: The second possible unintended consequence is not regulatory, but practical. For a while, I’ve argued that the reason why the MLS has become so important was that … Read more
In a recent post on Realuoso, my friend Erica Ramus, wrote an Op/Ed on how Project Upstream will change everything: The Project Upstream broker initiative is an attempt to gather real estate data under one umbrella, again trying to wrestle back control of our listings and data. … Hahn’s description of “MLS Mashups” and the … Read more
This is not a post. This is an information dump. A reader sent me the materials that were provided to the Directors at the NAR Midyear Legislative Meetings that just concluded to support the proposal to fund RPR-AMP-Upstream. Thought many of you hadn’t seen these, so I wanted to upload them and make them available. … Read more
I have a feeling we’re going to be talking about a whole variety of things that went down at NAR Legislative Meetings & Trade Expo (aka, “Midyear”) this year for months and years to come. It’s been a great week, but rough on the sleep schedule, so these are not exactly deeply-thought-out opinions here. It’s … Read more
Now that I’ve been liberated from some of my confidentiality constraints (see my previous post, which required permission from various companies I had non-disclosure agreements with, as well as permission from a client to discuss work I had done for them), I can opine more freely about the topic of RPR, Advanced Multi-List Platform (“AMP”), … Read more