by Michele Newbern Gillis
Staff Writer
For those of you who pull out your Treo to pull up listings this might come as a shock to you - The Northeast Florida Multiple Listing Service wasn’t always Internet-based.
Gasp! Actually, it used to be printed in large book, resembling a telephone book.
“When I started, we had the books with the yellow pages in a looseleaf binder,” said Walter Williams, broker/owner of Coldwell Banker Walter Williams Realty. “We then progressed to a bound book, then to the computer. It was only then did we get statistics. Certainly, it made us more efficient and able to provide better service to the customer along with much more information to the customer and the other Realtors. It also helped us with making business decisions and giving market direction.”
Selby Kaiser of The Legends of Real Estate shared her memories.
“When I started in real estate, we had a book that came out every two weeks, and it was already two weeks behind,” said Kaiser
“This was a great improvement over the listing cards that were delivered to each person, to be filed in large boxes by hand!
“We then moved up to a computer, one of those that had the rubber coupler that you had to cram the telephone receiver in. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t, so reliability was never assured.
“As computers improved and became more reliable, we eventually were able to wean the members off the books, but it was very hard, and met with fierce resistance for a long time.
“Today, we all have computers in our office, our home and on our Smartphone, where we can check on a listing from the car - stopped in front of the house, I hope!”
It’s not just the transmission of information, either.
“The range of additional services that the NEFMLS provides was never dreamed of so long ago,” said Kaiser. “We have maps, tax rolls, contact management, transaction management, contract forms, and the list goes on and on.”
The NEFMLS started on a dumb terminal in 1978.
“It was a monitor with a keyboard with a modem that would dial-up to the computer system,” said Ron Stephan, the executive director of the Northeast Florida Multiple Listing Service.
The Realtors would enter their information into the computer and then the books would be printed from that information.
“Around 1990, photos appeared,” said Stephan. “Then you were able to get photos on the terminals. That was huge.”
The addition of a listing was quite antiquated.
“The Realtors would go onto the terminal and type ‘AL’ to ‘Add Listing’,” said Stephan. “So, the 4,000 details that we have now did not exist back then. All those details such as fireplace, stone, house exterior and the like did not exist.”
When Stephan started with the NEFMLS 15 years ago, they were still printing the books.
“I came here in 1993 to start setting up the NEFMLS and they showed us these books,” said Stephan. “Because they had merged the MLSs already, Clay County had stopped the book, Jacksonville Beaches was continuing the book and Jacksonville had killed the book. Russell Grooms of Watson Realty, who was on our board, said if the Beaches is getting a book, everyone should get a book, so we started printing the book again.”
That’s when they were printing them every two weeks for all of Northeast Florida.
“That didn’t stop literally until we moved into this building (the new NEFAR headquarters near the Avenues Mall) six years ago,” said Stephan. “In 2001 we were still printing some books because some people still wanted the books.”
The computers were updated to Windows and NEFMLS was updated and improved with more and more details.
In 2004, the Realtors were taken into the future with an Internet-based NEFMLS system.
“At that point, they had a choice,” said Kimberly Wiggins, general manager of the NEFMLS. “They could either dial into the mainframe or they could access the NEFMLS via the Internet.”
“Anything besides those NEFMLS books was an advantage,” said Stephan. “I feel sorry for those agents practicing back then who were over 40 because those books were about impossible to disseminate information from without a magnifying glass.
“When it was all gathered on the computer and we had to go to those ‘Boris’ classes, we thought we died and went to heaven. (Note: Boris was the name for what’s now NEFMLS.)
“But there were those few who hated the idea of losing that precious 20-pound book. Just being able to have the data Web based is wonderful. You once were limited by the computer’s location in the office; now you can access it from any location that has Internet services - literally, all over the world.”
Earlier this year they signed on to join the MLS Advantage network, a stand-alone system that provides brokers and agents property listing data from listings in other NEFMLS systems.
The future? Who knows?
“ I’m sure that those still in the business 25 years from now will look back at what we have today and be amazed at the antiquated systems,” said Kaiser. “Change and technology marches on at warp speed.”