Boston’s Multiple Listing Service, MLS-PIN, is set to launch a powerful new networking tool for Realtors called Listingbook in April, Banker & Tradesman has learned.
The service, which has exploded from 4,000 to 400,000 users in the last 18 months, links buyers, sellers and agents to MLS data – allowing consumers to conduct their own listing searches, while letting agents monitor clients’ market needs and interests.
Kathy Condon, president and CEO of MLS-PIN, confirmed the multiple listing service and Listingbook are working toward an agreement, but said no formal contract is yet in place.
Officers from Listingbook reconfirmed that an agreement was in place to bring their products to Boston’s MLS in 60 to 90 days.
The Greater Fairfield County CMLS in Connecticut joined in June 2008. According to Don Hull, CEO of the CMLS, Realtors were selling homes through the system in a matter of days.
“I think it’s the most important tool in the real estate industry since when MLSs started flourishing with loose-leaf pages in the 1950s,” Hull said. “I can’t think of a more powerful way of providing a resource to a consumer. It’s the marketplace talking to them; it’s not the agent telling them what’s what.”
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The marketplace talks to buyers and sellers because they have access to non-confidential MLS data. Agents invite their clients to the system, and can quickly set up an account. One of the major mechanisms that makes Listingbook successful is the “morning report”: buyers receive a market report based on their interests and a list of criteria provided by the system each morning. They are informed of any changes in price, upcoming open houses, sales, or new houses on the market.
Sellers get daily reports to monitor how similar homes have fared on the market, what property values look like in their neighborhoods, and how many buyers have shown interest in their house through Listingbook.
Agents receive an aggregate of their clients’ search data and market reports, showing how buyers’ tastes have changed, or how values around sellers have changed.
Bob Mori, a broker associate at RE/Max Right Choice in Trumbull, Conn., said every morning report gives him a reason to reach out to at least one client. Mori, who helped beta test Listingbook in Connecticut, said the simplicity behind the powerful results makes it the best real estate notification program he has ever used.
“It does part of our job, and at the same time it helps them become more prepared to deal with us,” he said. “It is extremely easy to use. You literally need no training. The process is like a ‘Harry See Sally’ elementary book, it’s so easy.”
The Greater Fairfield County CMLS signed a five-year exclusive contract with Listingbook last year, ensuring that it is the only MLS in Connecticut that has access to the system.
“The object isn’t for us to shut others out; it’s to control the environment where they get in,” Hull said. “This becomes a tool to facilitate data sharing.”
Listingbook was created by a Realtor and her husband, Joan and Bob Milman, in Greensboro, N.C. in 2000. The social network predates Facebook and MySpace, but until a year and a half ago it had only 4,000 users, mostly in the Greensboro area. Three years ago, an investor named Randall Kaplan bought into the company after expressing disbelief the program wasn’t used across the company. It now boasts 400,000 nationwide.
Todd John, Listingbook’s chief revenue officer, said the company will also add Washington D.C.’s MLS, the largest in the country, to its client list around the same time MLS-PIN is brought online.
Editor’s Note: The web version of this article was updated and changed from the print version on Feb. 18, 2009.
