Michael Wurzer The RETS community has been busy for the last year or so trying to prepare MLSs for June 2009, when the NAR MLS Committee has required all MLSs to be RETS compliant. This is a great step forward for national RETS compliance, but I have a more incentive-based approach for promoting RETS adoption.
NRDS is the National REALTORS Database System or, more simply, the directory for all NAR members. All the NAR-affiliated Associations of REALTORS are required to keep this system up to date. For many smaller Associations (the ones NAR is trying to get to adopt RETS), keeping NRDS up to date means double-entering the data into both the MLS system and the NRDS system. So, I’m thinking NAR could save everyone a lot of time and money by making NRDS RETS-compliant. Associations would win, NAR would win, MLS vendors would win, and NAR would win. That’s a lot of winning, from what could/should be a relatively straight-forward project for NAR.