Michael Wurzer Clareity Consulting recently published the results of a survey called “Beyond The Listings” in which the questions are aimed at finding out what content MLSs should offer beyond listings. The top five types of non-listing content are:
- REO/foreclosure data (70% very important);
- School information (56% very important);
- AVM (45% very important);
- Demographics (41% very important); and
- Crime information (40%).
Items of slightly less (but still important) interest were points of interest and public transport and air traffic overlays.
One of the items in the survey I (and Matt Cohen, author of the survey) found most interesting is that MLSs “want [this type of information] integrated in MLS reports even if they already have access to the content somewhere else.” This confirms my experience providing MLS software. Agents and brokers don’t want yet another web site to have to manage, they want the content to be integrated into the sites they already use. This is one of the reasons I’m hoping the RPR APIs are robust and enable MLS vendors such as FBS to serve our mutual customers, the REALTORS, by integrating as much of the data as possible into the MLS system.