In its just released "2003 State of the MLS Industry and MLS Vendor Sales Report," Clareity Consulting catalogs the win-losses of major MLS vendors.

Clareity Consulting's report about the MLS industry shows the year-to-date MLS sales wins and losses for the major MLS software vendors from late July and August, and offers insights into key issues facing the real estate industry this year, says the report. Wins are new accounts and losses are lost accounts. Renewed accounts are separated into its own category.

Wins and losses must be taken in context, suggests Matt Cohen, spokesperson for Clareity. For example, midwestern vendor FBS recorded the most wins of any of the major vendors, but most of the MLSs won were smaller accounts, one as small as ten members. However, they also won an MLS with 3,500 members. Marketlinx lost one account, Offutt and Rapattoni did well with some large MLS acquisitions and no lost accounts.

"Their momentum is tremendous," offers Cohen.

According to the report, the biggest losses were incurred by FNIS, but FNIS, along with Interealty, is one of the largest vendors, had the most accounts to lose, points out Cohen. "FNIS declined to post sales or renewals for the survey," he says. "Most vendors announce 'We won an account' and then I can look in our database to see who the old vendor was. In several cases, the old vendor was FNIS," explains Cohen. "FNIS, on the other hand, has not announced their 2003 MLS wins or retentions. We requested that information from them several times, talking to everyone from sales people to senior management, but were rebuffed. It was explained to us that they have a policy not to release such information - very different from the happy announcements made on most vendor's sites! I also visited a number of MLS and association sites trying to find a FNIS recent *2003* win on a news page or newsletter, but was unsuccessful in finding any examples. We also called everyone on the 'Top 50' list in the report to validate their information, and none of them indicated a move to FNIS in 2003. Does FNIS have any 2003 wins at all? We do not know with certainty and therefore indicated their response as we did."

Why should this report be of interest to Realtors in general? "The interest is probably for regional MLS executives who make the decisions that affect every Realtor," says Cohen. "They compare all the criteria of what agents want against what the vendors offer, so it is important to look at what is happening to the vendors."

For example, when GTE stopped serving MLSs, some people got hurt, points out Cohen. "It is important for the average Realtor that the MLS executives understand these vendors and their positions in the marketplace," he explains. "Are they improving their software? Do they give good customer service?"

Many MLSs are not only changing vendor dance partners, many switching to Internet-based systems and adding parallel Internet-based systems to legacy services, some are building their own information management systems. While the report doesn't list how many of these MLSs are considering making such a change, Clareity claims that more MLSs are considering operating their own systems to escape problems that arise from licensing: expense, functionality compromises due to shared code base issues, volatility with vendors, and learning platforms that eventually must be retired.

"I think the main reasons are that some MLSs feel like it will be less expensive in the long run and that the system will be customized better and in a more timely way if responsibility for change is taken in-house," explains Cohen.

Clareity is involved as a consultant to many MLS organizations.

"MLS executives are going to want to call people to ask why they left a vendor or if they like new systems," suggests Cohen, "it is important for task force committees to understand the competitive environment with vendors. Our reports help to stimulate these vendors to not ignore issues when they come up and to have a better informed consumer. Realtors live and die by this. We want to see industry move forward and get better."

He continues, "Myself, I'm continually surprised at how much work our industry has to do in the security and business continuity areas. Clareity has performed some security and business continuity audits where only minor remediation was needed, but we have performed a lot more where the barn door was wide open. There's a lot of sensitive data on these systems and given all of the professionals whose livelihood depends on security and uptime, I consider this a very important topic - though not central to the report."

Other issues that Clareity promises more information about in the future are technical issues with regard to data licensing and virtual office Website (VOW) operations. He points out that the company just completed a report on data licensing, and may do a report about VOW technical problems and adoption.

"We left the VOW policy alone - at least for now. So many people have written so many good articles about it, such that while it is important, it is not exactly fresh news. We spent more time on things that weren't quite so much in the public eye."

Published: August 7, 2003

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