Big Change on the Des Moines MLS

On October 16th a milestone was reached, for the first time in many years, all cooperating MLS Des Moines area brokerages were utilizing the same software platform. Up until the 16th, Iowa Realty and First Realty Prudential were using MLX by GEAC and pretty much everyone else was on Rappattoni MLS software.

What this meant for the public was that there was no central local source (realtor.com aside) where they could look at all the listings. They would have to go to Iowa Realty or First Realty to search those listings, and then go to another brokers website or the board site DMAAR.com to search the rest. I was told that we here in Des Moines were an anomoly and that other MLSs' around the nation did not allow for two systems.

Having used MLX at Iowa Realty and Rappattoni at Remax, I can say that both systems have positives and negatives. MLX seems to have improved their contact manager, a big plus, but there are a lot of screens involved with searches and setting up auto-search for prospects.

I'm sure many agents around Des Moines are busy this week moving their prospects, clients, past clients, and setting up saved searches. I was up until 1:30am moving my stuff, and I'm only about 10% done. Yikes! You can get a lot done at night when the phone isn't ringing, but all in all I'd rather be sleeping at that time.

Hopefully the Des Moines Area Association of Realtors will have the merged database available for the public sometime soon, but it hasn't happened yet.