MLS PIN has launched a real estate search site which allows members of the general public to search for homes directly, mlspinhomes.com.
The site went live in late October, but MLS PIN decided not to make any public announcement in order to have time to work out any bugs and kinks with their software provider. The site is now running smoothly, said Kathy Condon, president and CEO of MLS PIN.
“We’re pleased with it,” she said.
Site features include a range of options and information similar to those available on other portal sites like Zillow or Realtor.com, including map search, school and neighborhood data and walk scores, as well as photos and tax data. Listings are pulled directly from MLS PIN, ensuring accuracy. Search results display days on market, while listing pages prominently feature the photo and contact info of the listing agent, and only the listing agent.
Not all the information available to agents when they log into MLS PIN is displayed on the public-facing site. Condon said the public site displays the same information available through to other brokerage sites when they display MLS PIN listings over an IDX feed. The site does not currently display listings for recently sold properties. But Condon plans to add this feature in the coming weeks, displaying up to three month’s worth of sold data.
At its most recent annual meeting, the National Association of Realtors recently passed a resolution requiring Realtor-association owned MLSs to display sold data. Though MLS PIN is owned by a consortium of brokers, it plans to follow the trade group’s lead on this issue, Condon said.
Reaction from the brokerage community has been mixed. Broker-members of MLS PIN may elect to opt out of having their listings displayed on the public-facing site, and several of the state’s largest brokerages, including Coldwell Banker, Prudential and William Raveis Real Estate, have done so, Condon admits. However, other large brokers including Hammond Residential Real Estate have elected to participate.
MLS PIN had first the possibility of launching a public-facing site in the fall of 2013; the new site is the result of a series of discussions among the broker-owned MLS’s board. Public facing MLS sites have been a controversial issue in the real estate industry. Many brokers dislike such sites, fearing they will drive traffic away from their own sites. Others argue that having an MLS offer public search features ensures that the public will be looking at accurate, updated listings, and that the listing agent will be more likely to receive any leads on the property they’re trying to sell, without having to pay the large fees demanded by portal sites to be prominently featured on the listings.
That, in the end, was a key factor in prompting MLS PIN to take the plunge into having a public-facing site, Condon said.
“A lot of this [info] is stuff they could easily access elsewhere. There are so many different sites that [the public] can go to, at this point. Our hope is that we can send some leads to some of our agents, whose offices have opted in, that they won’t have to pay for,” she explained.
