Interviewer: Today were talking with Ed Hardey from Integrity Real Estate Group. He's the Vice Chair for the Metrolist Board and Chair for Metrolist Rules and Regulations. Ed, welcome to the show.
Ed Hardey: Thanks for having me.
Interviewer: We wanna talk a little bit about support services and online marketing. Every agent pretty much these days is involved in online marketing and, of course, they probably need a little help from Metrolist, is that right?
Ed Hardey: Yeah thats right. Thats obviously a big issue in one of the services we provide. So a broker can have their listings go out to places like in IDX feeds, RE Colorado, realtor.com, as well as things through ListHub, which is over 35 sites, okay, you can have your homes go to.
Interviewer: So I dont have a personal website or a realtor has a personal website and they can call Metrolist and say, Id like to have my listings displayed on my website and you sign it, what they call, an IDX agreement, correct?
Ed Hardey: Correct.
Interviewer: Charge for that is?
Ed Hardey: As of March 1st itll be zero; that will be included in the fees for Metrolist.
Interviewer: Flat fee for Metrolist? Okay, and of course, you got to have some type of third party display those listings on your website, whoever that may be, whoever you choose to do that, but theyll work in conjunction with Metrolist to get the data, is that correct?
Ed Hardey: Correct. You get to choose your own vendor, but we provide the data and we update that daily and so thats one of the big pluses for Broker.
Interviewer: Now here is something interesting that I found out, which was, I went back to my third party provider, and I wanted to start displaying new contracts and solds, and they are not equipped yet to do that. When I asked them why, they said because the majority of Metrolist boards, or majority of MLSs across the country, dont provide the feed.
Ed Hardey: You know one of the things...its true, one of the things that we do is we give brokers a choice, including your membership fee, is the professional product that includes active listings. Some people wanted more, under contracts and solds, so we provide that, that is the fee, but a lot of brokers dont take advantage of that and it depends on the broker's individual marketing, what they want to do.
Interviewer: Thats kudos to you and the board, because clearly from talking to the third party provider who works with MLSs all across the country, youre way ahead of the curve because they dont have enough participating MLSs to launch their product.
Ed Hardey: Yeah, in talking about that and making that decision quite a while ago, we saw the data was available regardless whether we provided or someone else, so lets get it right, now let's give our members that option.
Interviewer: Right, now you mentioned some other listings, syndications and distributions. Tell me more about these.
Ed Hardey: Well, probably the biggest one is ListHub, and that allows any broker to, at no charge, distribute the properties to 35 different websites, no additional effort. They can even choose which ones they want, if they only want some of those. One of those websites thats brand new is our exclusive agreement with DenverPost.com. Were pretty excited about; were the only ones that can do that.
Interviewer: Yeah, and now people can go to the classified sections online at Denver Post and search for homes and get the, a lot of the same information.
Ed Hardey: Yeah, theyll get that information, but theyll get it right and the broker gets the credit for their home sale.
Interviewer: And theres two websites that are also really important, that I know a lot of people that are included in, that is...
Ed Hardey: One of them is realtor.com, largest in the country for that. The other ones RE Colorado, which is Metrolists consumer site, and thats the largest in Colorado.
Interviewer: Yeah, its good stuff, you guys are doing a great job, thanks Ed.
Ed Hardey: Thank you, Dan.
Interviewer: Appreciate you being here.
Ed Hardey: Thanks for having us.
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