by Michele Newbern Gillis
Staff Writer
The internet networking world is too valuable to ignore and Ron Stephan, the executive vice president of the Northeast Florida Multiple Listing Service, has big plans to expand into the high-visibility areas such as LinkedIn.com, MySpace.com and Facebook.com.
“These sites are, in one respect, maybe somewhere you don’t want to be,” said Stephan. “But, down the road we definitely want to be there. As the younger generation starts moving up, they are definitely familiar with the social networking Web sites.”
Stephan spoke at the Northeast Florida Association of Realtors’ Ponte Vedra Council meeting at the Sawgrass Beach Club last month to give an update on new changes at NEFMLS.
Stephan said he was recently contacted by someone he had not heard from in many years. They just happen to be moving to Florida.
“So you can get leads from social networking sites,” he said. “It’s a little hokey at first but the more active you get in these sites the more possibilities you have with the next generation.
“Also, it’s not a bad place to advertise your listings. You can put them out there on YouTube or other networking sites. I guarantee you that social networking sites are going to explode in the next 12-24 months with real estate data. We are going to do some things to try and help you in that area.”
He said they also focused on listing visibility in 2008 with the MLS Advantage and Transaction Desk.
“Both of these products provide an easy pass through from the MLS to both of these products,” said Stephan. “We are looking to streamline MLS Advantage and Transaction Desk this year to make them easier to use.”
He said the appointment scheduling software, Showing Time, has been a huge success in the real estate community. It has been utilized by 60 percent of the real estate offices to either schedule an appointment or to advertise their listings through Showing Time in order to get appointments made.
They’ve spent a lot of time and energy making sure listings are very visible to the public.
Stephan said all of the listings on the NEFMLS are syndicated out to about 30 different national Web sites.
“Yahoo.com is one of them,” he said. “Every listing on Yahoo.com from our MLS is viewed 1.7 listings in a month’s time. Realtor.com data is updated every 15 minutes. If you put your listing on now at Realtor.com, most likely your listing will be there within 15 to 20 minutes.”
Stephan said the Listing Book product is also very popular.
“We have over 2,500 agents in the Listing Book network,” he said. “Five hundred plus of those have updated to the enhanced version and there are approximately 6,300 customers of those agents also registered in the network. It is a huge benefit to get listing visibility.”
Looking forward to 2009, Stephan said they will be making a few changes to cut costs including discontinuing taking photos through the MLS photographer.
“Fewer than 40 percent of the photos the photographer takes are actually hitting the MLS system,” he said. “You are all taking photos or have someone taking them for you before the MLS photographer’s photos get on the system. That was a huge cost to us that we can now reduce in our budget for next year.”
Last month, NEFMLS started the cutover to the enhanced MLS system.
Stephan said the mapping in that product looks tremendous and is a huge difference in what the current mapping provides and what the new mapping will provide. There are Webinars on the MLS where agents can learn about the system enhancements.
“I think you are going to be pleased with the results of the new system,” he said. “The overall design of the system is really neat. It gives you a better, more up-to-date feel on the search pages and result pages and it gives you a lot more information when you are looking at those listings.”