Three top multiple listing services (MLSs) have announced that they are strategizing to create standards to support choice in showings for the MLS industry. Leaders from Bright MLS, California Regional MLS (CRMLS) and Midwest Real Estate Data (MRED) are collaborating on developing an underlying application programming interface (API) for service providers would create the best experience for real estate professionals, MLSs and showing services.
“We want to offer an API to unite showing solutions across the entire residential real estate industry in North America,” said Art Carter, CEO of CRMLS. “Whether a broker subscribes to one or more than one MLS, their challenge is working with numerous showing platforms that don’t talk to each other. This project gives showing services a Rosetta stone. It enables easy translation between different showing service languages.”
The project will define a set of guidelines to simplify the real-time exchange of information between showing services, MLSs, brokerages and other data consumers. Its goal is to create a standard that serves as an agreement on how to structure information, as well as standards on how providers and consumers will send and receive information. All three organizations are heavily involved with the Real Estate Standards Organization (RESO) and supportive of data standardization across the industry via the RESO Data Dictionary.
Bright MLS’s real estate service area spans 40,000 square miles throughout the Mid-Atlantic region, including Delaware; Maryland; New Jersey; Pennsylvania; Virginia; Washington, D.C. and West Virginia. MRED serves Illinois and portions of southern Wisconsin and northwestern Indiana. CRMLS is the nation’s largest and most recognized subscriber-based MLS, dedicated to servicing more than 100,000 real estate professionals from 40 Associations, Boards, and MLS organizations.
Leaders from each MLS stressed that this is neither a consolidation nor an attempt to own any showing service provider. Rather, it is a collaborative effort to offer brokers and agents options in how they handle showings via the MLS. After gathering feedback from the broader real estate community, the three MLSs plan to unveil the API in Q3 2021.
“Our brokerages have told us that they want the ability to have more choices when it comes to what showing service platform they want to use,” said Rebecca Jensen, president and CEO of MRED. “By working together, we can better address a challenge confronting brokerages nationwide.”
