I don't know what the rules and regulations are in other parts of the country but the MLS in Washington State will not allow agents to include any information regarding open houses in their marketing remarks. Now the marketing remarks consist of 500 characters that are swept by all other web sites. So essentially we cannot use the MLS to notify buyers of an open house!
Their reasoning is the multiple is not supposed to be used to promote an agent. They act as if the agents are going to include in their marketing remarks "come meet the fantastic Susan Peters who by chance will be hosting an open house at xxx this Sunday" as opposed to a simple "open Sunday 1 - 4".
I don't know if this makes any sense to you, but to me it certainly doesn't serve the best interest of the seller, the agents, or buyers! It definitely helps the dominate brokerages who contract significant ad space on a weekly basis. By forcing their agents (and consequently all other agents) to advertise and pay for it in print it certainly cuts down on the broker's budget. It's also a huge boon to print media.
As we've discussed on Active Rain almost ad nasuem, the print media is the least effective way for us to advertise. A simple "OPEN SUNDAY 1-4" in the marketing remarks is infinitely more efficient and impactful.
My final question is ... who does the MLS really serve?
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Susan,
I couldn't agree more. And what about those outrageous fines? It makes me think the MLS really serves as a money making machine in and of itself.
Sandy
Susan in New Jersey we are allowed to put in Open Houses on the MLS, Not all agents use it, but it is present. What I disagree with is that the MLS makes itself available to the public.
Hey Susan, we can put it in in Portland, there's actually a field on the MLS site that allows for public or broker's opens, the dates and times. When you fill the field it shows up on buyers searches. Keith, Re/Max, Portland, OR
We can put Open House in the MLS remarks and have a field that we can fill out when we have an upcoming open house. Buyers or other agents can search by Open House and can easily find every thing that is open on Sunday. Go figure the MLS is about SELLING houses.
We can mention an open house (not that many do) but we can't put any contact information like phone number or website or email address in the listing. Also, we only get 450 characters, and that's sometimes hard to get everything in.
Donna is right about open houses in our area, that is mainly the time and address info and brief description. But if they show up they can get all the other stuff anyway.
Sandy: It will be interesting to see what the policy is with other MLS's.
Maria: Thanks for responding. I can't understand why an agent wouldn't use it. It's free, it's easy and it's picked up by every other site. As far as the MLS making info available to the public, I'm afraid that horse is already out of the barn.
Keith: So far we're batting zero in Washington. Thanks for the info. I'm not surprised.
Susan, wow, this seems like disenfranchisement towards the Realtor! Why not allow that information to be listed? You gotta love bureaucracies!
Oh, we have had that debate here in the bay area ad naseum too. They bend over so far to protect everybody from every body, that they loose their common sense. We are sometimes our own worst enemy as we are the good guys, the insiders to the system. They should be focusing their attention on those that are trying to take our mls away from the Realtors!!! Agree totally Susan.
Cindy: Our MLS is a broker owned entity and you can tell who the big dogs are.
Donna: Even though we beat you by 50 characters it's not enough. That's why I started putting text on my photos. Thanks for the feedback.
I couldn't agree more -- the open houses are usually for the nosey neighbors and I usually only pick up a few buyers a year through an open house.
Have you talked to your real estate board about this? Can't you change it if enough people agree to it? We can put it in our MLS in Palm Springs and many people that go to the site, print out the Open Houses for the weekend and go off that.
I think our multiple is just always behind the curve. Look at the public side totally the worst public access to homes out there. I do agree that there should be no personal marketing in the public remarks section, but I do think that being able to list an open house date and time should be allowed.
Ahhh Susan, the answer to this is actually very easy. It has to do with which companies dominate the NWMLS board. A whole blogging topic in and of itself.
I think the MLS is supposed to have rules that everyone agrees upon in advance. By putting the open house info in the remarks, this allows buyers to bypass their buyer's agents and go directly to the listing agent at the open house. Now, if that doesn't bother you, then why not just let the listing agent put their direct phone number in the remarks. Both help the seller sell the house. If the rule is, "What will benefit the seller?" then that creates some pretty amazing rules. I think that is what the Department of Justice wants to ask in terms of their litigation with NAR. There are many organizations (e.g., Banks) who would love to get into the real estate business on the basis that it will benefit the consumer. There are other dot.com type organizations that want to publish the listings so that they can sell the leads. NAR is opposed to both of these even though they would both help the consumer. I'm not saying that NAR is wrong, but I'm not sure that the MLS is designed in first principal to be consumer-oriented; I think it is designed to be broker-oriented.
Wish it were that way here. Agents announce their opens in the public remarks, thereby sending buyers on an IDX site directly to the listing agent.
Oh well.
Lenn's comment above is exactly why we don't allow open houses to be noted in the public remarks section of the MLS.
Hi Susan - the MLS systems were set up as an offer of cooperation and compensation to those agents who are part of the system. What it has evolved into in various areas is up to those who run it and make the rules. We have a bulletin board type area on our MLS where all that goes, and we can't use the public remarks section for anything that promotes the listing agent. And I agree with that policy and the reasons behind it.
There are other venues for marketing and promoting open houses - both for the public and other agents in the area.
Ann
Susan, At Windermere we have an open house market that you can put on the web site. I know its not the same, but it helps get the open house announcment out without JUST an expensive print ad.
Susan, we're allowed to put open house notices in for agents as well as general public. Who does it serve to not allow them? Certainly anything that could move a listing should be.
Some of theie rules sure are questionable as to who benefits
Our MLS (Louisville) actually has a space to put open houses that goes out on the IDX feed...Heck, I think that's completely in line with our fiduciary duties to the seller...If you are doing open houses to sell a different one than the one you are in, I suggest there are better ways to spend your time.
Susan, we're all a bit annoyed by the MLS and their new auto-fines rollout. Granted, I'll be glad to see agents get nailed for putting their own phone # in the "phone to show" remarks. But I see your point about not being allowed to post open house info. The public mirror site does have a link to our websites, so I guess you could put open house info on the homepage of your website. I'm about to work on that myself.
I can see it being a rule. I mean the NAR has been fighting tooth and nail to say that the MLS's are a co-op and not an advertising medium. Rules like this exist in order to protect that theory. The more marketing you allow on the MLS, the harder that argument is. You don't get to have it both ways.
Our CA MLS gives us the opportunity to tell other agents about open houses. Our NV one does not.
Yours is a good question. Think the mls is supposed to serve it's members... to make it easier for all to know what's available. That's in all of our clients best interests too. But your point is that broker reciprocity comes with some rather quirky rules. And sometimes our mls administrators think the mls is theirs.
best
In Yakima we can post public and broker tours for view on public MLS reports. A lot of offices here are moving to the NWMLS...maybe that move is a bit premature if options are so limited. Perhaps we should keep using the Yakima MLS after all.
In Arizona we can list the info but can certainly see where ti is limiting if you can't.
That seems like a rule that has been taken too far. We can advertise open houses but not personal marketing.
Gary: All I'm asking for is the same thing that most MLS" s allow. The ability to say OPEN SUNDAY 1-4.
Julianna: This isn't even the half of it.
Terrylynn: The only thing this ruling protect is the budget for the big dogs.
Kerry: Thanks for the feedback.
Paul: I'm going to work on that.
Jo: Forward this on to your fellow agents. I wonder how many people it would take to turn this thing around?
Colleen: We know who dominates the board.
The MLS is a coop op site not a public advertising site. If you are worried about paying for print ad, which I feel is still the best way to advertise an open house find a brokerage that has ad space avaible to their agents at no extra charge or atleast the first couple of print ads. Maybe get Re/Max to start advertising Opens on their websites. I know Windermere does and I believe JLS as well. The MLS does not care who sweeps their info, their main goal is provided information between license agents and creat an agreement for compensation.
Get on the Board
Good points Susan - the public open info is good, but we really should be able to put a simple line in there if it is open or not...
Susan - our MLS has a special section for open houses and it's picked up in the local paper's website this way - SacramentoBee.com. I can't imagine not using it for our open houses. We also put our open houses on Realtor.com and our website. By putting them on our own website, we now have buyers looking at our site weekly for the coming open houses.
Interesting question... we certainly have a category for our company, corporate and personal websites to advertise up coming open houses.
However, I can certainly see why it would not be allowed with adding it to the remarks in the MLS. Working with buyers and setting up several auto searches that automatically sends properties over in a brochure view could cause problems if buyers just showed up to the open houses without us.
I don't know about your area, but in ours many of the agents sitting open houses are not the actual listing agent, they are agents in the same office as the actual listing agents looking to pick up buyers. Agents holding the open house automatically think they are the "procurring cause" because they were sitting the open house when buyers came wandering in without their agent.
My opinion, but there are several sources to promote open houses for absolutely free including R.com, websites, AR, etc.. etc.. Which as you've stated... are far more effective then print media.
I think the agents in your area need to talk with the MLS officers. They certainly seem to be out of step with the real world.
We have a field that we can fill out for open houses. It is rarely used other than for broker opens. It feeds though to the public facing site, but I don't see people using it. I've put my open houses in Realtor.com too and dont get much result from that. I don't think that open houses should be in the general remarks field for the reasons so many have mentioned above.
Wow! Susan, that pretty much sucks! We even have an "Add Open House" function that buyers can tap into. I use it in addition to the Washington Post and Craig's List, and we're starting to get a lot of visits from the MLS thing. I mean, that is what MLS is for as far as I'm concerned. You should check out the Houston Association of Realtors public site. I think it's the best one I've ever seen, because it includes open information right on the pubic listing page.
Tell you MLS to grow up!
When the market turned sour, so did the MLS. Abuse not only in the remarks but OOPS, branded tours, OOPS a propertly listed in the wrong community, OOPS the wrong square footage, OOPS four bedrooms instead of two.
I report data errors all the time, they never seem to get fixed.
Data entry errors my hind end!
Renee - I see those "mistakes" all the time lately. I also report them, and the MLS does get them fixed. Not sure if they fine the people, too, or not.
My favorite is a picture of the listing agent's sign with their phone # and web address mixed in among the pictures of the house.
They serve themselves of course. We simply pay for their existence. The fact that we pay doesn't mean we get any perks...lol. I wonder about the mls and nar sometimes.
John, Len, Don, and Anne:
1. First of all I want thank you for your thoughtful comments. The only thing I can say about your concern with your buyers going to open houses on their own is to stress the importance of a buyer agency agreement. I think if the only thing that's keeping a buyers loyalty to their agent is access to information then that agent has bigger problems than published open houses.
2. I hold all of my listings open the first weekend; more as a courtesy to my fellow agents. I would never think of trying to steal their buyers. On the contrary I want to make it as easy as possible for my fellow agents to show and sell my listings and even though there are a few bad apples, I think most agents have the same respect for these relationships.
2. I do agree that the MLS shouldn't be used for agent promotion. I just don't happen to think posting the time of an open house is promoting an agent. I see it as a more transparent way of doing business.
Susan - here in Connecticut, buyer agency agreements are mandatory when we're working with buyers. So, that is not the issue.
The issue is that IDX is now a part of our profession. When prospects are using our personal websites, if they see on the listings that there is an open house, then our personal website may have just generated a client for the agent who is hosting the open house. Possibly not even the listing agent. Keep in mind that we market our websites. Prospects that we have not met with will be searching our sites. Why should the IDX feeds on our sites direct them to another agent? That's not the intent of IDX.
On the other hand - I welcome all agents' clients to my open houses. I will gladly let them view the home during the open house. And I will gladly accept an offer on that home from the other agent with no issues at all as to who was the procuring cause. A sale from an open house is still a sale, no matter who the buyers' agent is!
It sounds to me like you should contact your MLS board, get involved somehow, and try to change the rule.
You certainly have a lot of support for your arguement about Open Houses.
I know that before I joined the board of our local MLS, I wondered what they did.
Now I know, and am working on changing the things I don't like about it.
Patrick: That's great for the buyers who are searching Windermere's site but what about the buyers who are on JLS, CBB, Re/Max or God forbid Redfin? Everyday it seems like there's a new website for buyers and it would make all of our lives a lot simpler if we could just post our open house time on the most searched site and have it swept.
Debbie: Your in the majority so far.
Michael: I think we need to start questioning.
Joe: I agree completely.
Lisa: I'm going to do that too.
Melina: I appreciate your point but since the majority of the MLS's allow open house info to be made public I think we should have that ability as well.
Gary: That seems to be the case here.
Shannon: I think you're going to miss your Yakima MLS.
Bob and Carolin: Thanks for the feedback.
Wayne: That's all I'm looking for.
This blog kind of got a way from me and I want to appologize for taking so long to respond to all of the thoughtful and engaging comments. It has certainly given me a lot to think about.
James: I think I'll look into that.
Courtney, Lori, Richard and Christy: That's 4 more for transparency.
Paul: I have my buyers present one of my busines cards to every open house agent, the minute they walk through the door. It saves a lot of trouble.
Maureen: That's 1 more for the MLS.
Patricia: Our Mls has actually grown old and stogdy.
Renee and Don: I just saw that sort of thing this morning.
Don: Thanks for your considered comment.
Adam: Good Advice!
Oh yes, this discussion in our area is pretty much the same. It's as if we created the monster and now it is biting off it's limbs...UGH. We sometimes are our own worst enemy with this type thing. We just keep fighting that fight here too.
Terrylynn: I think it's a case of the tail wagging the dog!