Over the past five years I have worked with hundreds of REALTORS on their web site. As we move from MLS to MLS, I've noticed a common theme, and I'm wondering if any of you have observed it as well... The more sophisticated / exclusive / expensive the homes are in a particular community, the less likely brokers are to share data thru IDX.
The patch work of MLSes and the rules that we need to follow as web developers are hugely inefficient. Some MLSes, such as the Vermont Real Estate Information Network are fairly progressive about datasharing. We can post VREIN members data to Google Base, for example, which we're not allowed to do with the data from the Northern New England Real Estate Network, despite an active lobbying campaign for a number of their members (who are instead now manually entering the data anyway...) While VREIN covers western Vermont and most of the population centers, there is one area were there is very little data sharing: Ludlow, VT, home of Okemo Mountain (the place I learned to ski back when it was all pomas!) There are dozens of multi-million dollar homes at Okemo, and yet a majority of them are not shared thru IDX.
If you move to other parts of the country, the situation is even more profound. The town of Greenwich, CT, a suburb of New York with a seven figure average home price, has its own MLS. One broker there told me that the market there is "still very provincial". There is little to no IDX sharing, individual agents are not allowed to show IDX data on their sites, and most of the web sites in that community pale in comparison to what I've seen in other markets. By not sharing the data, brokers are forced to spend huge amounts of money on print advertising in the local paper, Greenwich Magazine, etc. and buyers have to go from site-to-site-to-site to find out exactly what is on the market. How this is of benefit to the buyers, seller and REALTORS is beyond me as it certainly makes the purchase & sale of a home more inefficient.
If sellers were more educated about the inter workings of the MLS, I imagine that they would want as much exposure of their homes as possible... and yet, in some of the most exclusive communities with the most educated buyers & sellers, there is less datasharing then anywhere else. Anyone have any ideas why?
Ted
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