Why we go to Inman Connect

Tonight your leadership met post conference to discuss all that we had heard at the Inman Connect Real Estate Conference. The 2010 MLS President, Keith Taggart, brought back a wonderful idea for a broker service. At Inman there are 4 tracks that run simultaneously and tomorrow there will be a period of time where there will be 6 tracks running. By sending several of the MLS leadership and key staff (Chris Chappell - Broker & Vendor Services & Adam Taflinger- MLS Help Desk Manager) we are able to cover all of the offerings and get the most out of the conference.

Ideally, all of the vision & policy for the membership/subscribership should come from the REALTOR volunteer leaders. Paid staff should have the skills and the insights to implement the ideas and strategies effectively. Committees should be the hands-on development of programs and services that go up to leadership for alignment with policies, budgets and strategies. Through key staff and leadership attendance we can give the member the most bang for their investment buck because we have both sides of the equation filled.

Anyway, at our post conference discussion, Keith had presented to the group what he had heard in the presentation he attended. Automate contact with the seller for the broker with real data. He had listened to how a NY firm had implemented this service for its agents. Every week, sellers get an automated update on how many hits from the public sided site and ListHub their listing received as well as an automated update on any new properties on the market (in their neighborhood comparable to their home) or any new sales comparable to their home in their neighborhood/area opening up the "Is it priced correctly" dialogue. The report is emailed weekly to all the sellers' personal email who have listings held under that brokerage firm.

Keith expressed what a valuable service this would be to OKC brokers. As the 3 key staff players were in the discussion we answered with that the public sided site hits on specific listings were available to every agent, the value my home feature could easily target solds and new listings, and that brokers can pay List Hub for detailed property specific listing hits at a very reasonable price. So staff could share with leadership that the tools themselves were available now.

However, as a working broker, the MLS President gave us the agent perspective- yes there are tools available but as the agent this task could become rapidly very time- consuming and, as the broker, ensuring that this contact was made weekly could become a full time job in itself for either very large firms or firms that specialize in working the selling side and are primarily listing (rather than selling side) oriented.

It appears that the MLSOK has the tools available to provide the program and MLSOK does have the capability of packaging this as a broker program with one exception the broker would still have to pay ListHub for the syndication hits but we could work on an interface with ListHub. Therefore there would be a basic package with MLS data only and an enhanced with the ListHub data. The group tossed around various delivery models (of course we would like this to be a free service- my concern is that what if the volume became large enough to require additional staff- would brokers at a certain point be willing to pay for the service if it hit certain specific volume levels?).

This service would address both of the seller's most pressing questions to the agent: "What have you Done for Me Lately?" and "Is my home Priced Correctly?". We are very interested in your feedback- please comment or email me at dkennedy@okcmar.org

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