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I have always been told the best time to sell a home in Ohio is the month of May. That being the case, many of you are advising sellers to get their homes staged for display and promotion. Excellent photography, virtual tours, and even drone views can make a difference. MLS Now’s Matrix system has integration with Property Panorama for virtual tours, and with the CoreLogic HomeVisit for Visual Media, professional 3D modeling and photography. We are also pleased to provide integration for you with your third party vendor(s) of choice for your marketing and other services.

For a quick look at the housing statistics in the MLS Now markets, please visit https://mlsnow.com/ and select “Stats” for a look at “FastStats, MLS Now Statistics, Archive MLS Now Reports, 10K Reports (Historical), and Ohio Realtors® Statistics”. There you will find easy access to the housing statistics generated from MLS Now data and formatted by various vendors for your use.

As you read through this newsletter, please take special notice of the article about showing availability written by John Kurlich, MLS Now COO. Please also see the latest from Rental Beast and other important information.

Enjoy the Spring selling season.

Carl DeMusz, RCE, CMLX²

President & CEO

As we head into the busy Spring market, please remember that the MLS Board of Directors eliminated the "Coming Soon" status last August.  This ended the only status in MLS Now that could be considered a "Delayed Showing" status.  In December, the Board of Directors reaffirmed that listings in the "Active" status must be available to MLS Now Participants and Subscribers for showings.  "Under Contract Allow Showings" is also an active status.  All listings in either the "Active" or "Under Contract Allow Showings" statutes, must be made available for showing appointments.  Listings that are not available for showing appointments must be moved to an off-market status, either "Temp Off Market" or "Under Contract No Showings", whichever is appropriate to the actual situation.  If a listing is not available for showing, it may not remain in one of the two active statuses.

This means a listing may not be entered into an "Active" status during the week with showing appointments made available starting on Saturday or Sunday.   A listing may not be entered one day and have showings delayed for several days.  If an Active listing is not available for showing appointments, our rules require it be moved to the Temporarily Off-Market status, until it will be made available for showing appointments. This is the reason the Back On Market (BOM) date is required to be displayed in the Broker Remarks, to ensure Participants and Subscribers are aware of when the listing will become available to them.

Listings that are in the "Active" status, or in the "Under Contract Allow Showings" status in MLS Now, must be made available to all Participants and Subscribers of MLS Now, not just the listing agent or agents affiliated with the listing broker.

If a listing that is in the "Active" status receives an offer from a buyer, which is accepted by the seller, it is then Under Contract.  If, after accepting the offer and going Under Contract, the seller no longer wants to continue to allow showings of the property, the listing status must be changed to the "Under Contract No Showings" status.  It may not be left in the "Active" status, nor may it be moved to "Under Contract Allow Showings".  If the seller is no longer permitting showings while Under Contract, the listing must be moved to the off-market status of "Under Contract No Showings".

Both "Temporarily Off-Market" and "Under Contract No Showings" are off-market statuses.  Listings in these statuses may not be shown by anyone.  Listings that are not available for showing appointments, are not available for showing appointments to anyone including the listing agent and other agents affiliated with the listing broker.   Showing a listing while in either of these statuses, or allowing such a showing, can result in a $500 fine and may also be in violation of NAR Code of Ethics, Standard of Practice 3-8: Realtors shall not misrepresent the availability of access to show or inspect a listed property.

MLS Now staff will enforce these requirements with warning notices and fines, where appropriate.  Should this prove to be insufficient, the Board would have to consider eliminating warnings and instead require automatic fines.  The Board could also consider making Saturday and Sunday "business days" and/or changing the "2 business day" rule for the entry of listings, to "1 business day".   

Now that we have made that clear, let's look at showing availability from another angle.  There are times when a seller needs some advanced notice for showing appointments.  As much as Buyers might like it, and as much as Seller agents may recommend it, not all Sellers can have their property ready to show at a moment's notice.  Some can't have it ready even with 24 or even 48 hours notice.  Others may have special circumstances that legitimately make it extremely difficult to show the property at certain times of day, or even on certain days of the week.  Some properties are tenant occupied and may be difficult to show.  Some may have court ordered restrictions.  The one thing all sellers have in common, is that they want to sell their property.  Other than that, not all sellers live the same way.  Not all sellers or properties are subject to the same life circumstances or situations.  All will have challenges.  Some will have more challenges than others.  Some showing restrictions are necessary to accommodate a seller's special and specific circumstances, and may be legitimate, if requested by the seller and applied to all Participants and Subscribers, including the listing agent and other agents affiliated with the listing broker.  With honest and professional guidance and advice from their listing agent and listing broker, sellers will do their best to make their property as available as possible for potential buyers to tour.

We’re excited to share that beginning soon, new features to help you better service and monetize residential rentals will soon be available within the MLS Now platform.

Offered as a subscriber benefit, a suite of rental tools will soon be incorporated into your MLS. These tools will help you easily manage rentals within our MLS and are provided in partnership with Rental Beast, a leading real estate technology firm with a suite of residential rental tools and a comprehensive database of more than 10 million rental listings.

Upon launch, all MLS Now subscribers will gain access to new rental tools at no additional charge. There’s nothing subscribers need to do, except to be ready to use these tools to better serve your rental clients, conduct rental transactions more efficiently, and convert renters into homebuyers.

Why Rental Beast?

• Rental Beast fills an information gap: Rental Listings, Rental Data
• Rental Beast fills a productivity gap: Free Lead-to-Lease & Homebuyer Conversion tools integrated with MLS Now
• Rental Beast fills an education gap: Unlimited access to online rental coursework with Rental Beast University

What To Expect:

• Core Rental Functions: Use Rental Centric Search and Rental Add/Edit functions to easily find available rentals and upload, clone, or claim existing owner-sourced listings
• Online Rental Applications and Tenant Screening: Initiate rental applications directly from any rental listing detail page using Apply Now by Rental Beast, a lightning-fast, FCRA-compliant rental application and tenant screening engine
• Rental Beast University: An online education platform designed by industry experts to support real estate agents through every aspect of the rental process
• Renter-to-Buyer Conversion: Lead qualification and nurturing tools designed to help you identify and establish relationships with future buyers before they enter the home-buying market · Rental Listing Syndication: Enjoy enhanced marketing for your rental listings, including syndication to MLS Now's IDX feeds as well as RentalBeast.com, and RSC's new, consumer-facing rental website, with leads returned directly to you. Your listing - your lead!

Want to learn more?

Register for an upcoming webinar to learn how to get the most out of the coming integration, and to learn more about how to easily manage rentals within our MLS.

Rental Beast Webinars

Consumers don't understand the MLS.

Research shows:

• 24% of consumers have a vague ides of what MLS means.
• 25% thinks it means "Major League Soccer"
• 76% have NO idea how the MLS benefits them

Here's the good news: Those benefits are real and strong. And consumers understand them when they are explained in non-industry language.

The MLS is how consumers, through their agent or broker, are In The Know® about real estate. What's for sale? How much do I offer? How much is my house worth? Brokers and agents, using the MLS, have the answers. The MLS provides the bedrock of information millions of people depend on to make smart real estate decisions. The vast majority of home sales happen by real estate brokers and agents working together on the MLS, not because of portals, websites or apps.

The In The Know® campaign highlights how the MLS helps brokers and agents deliver benefits to buyers and sellers. This is a story about the MLS, but the brokers and agents are the hero. It unlocks a facet of their value you may not have thought to share before. Now you can.

• Campaign Website
• In The Know® Site for MLSs
• In The Know® Site for Agents

Homesnap will be offering educational webinars to MLS Now members to help you become more familiar with their app.  These webinars will take place in April, May and June.  Please click the links below for details and to sign up!

• Homesnap Showings Introduction – 4/26 @ 12:00pm
• Homesnap Pro+: Your Ultimate Productivity Tool – 5/24 12:00pm
• Homsenap Pro+ - Your Ultimate Branding Tool – 6/28 @ 12:00pm

Homesnap also offers informational resources that are available to MLS Now members.  Here are some links to information you will find helpful:

• Homesnap University  - This page includes Homesnap's training calendar along with links to sign up for live webinars, deep dive how-to guides, tutorial videos, and printable resources. 
• Homesnap Help Center - This page includes Homesnap's customer support contact information, searchable FAQs, and additional collateral. 
• Homesnap Blog - This page is where Homesnap posts articles on the latest developments at Homesnap, including details on new features

Printer Friendly Views in RPR

Have you ever wanted to just print what was on your screen in RPR? Perhaps a list of properties that you'd like to share with a client and you certainly don't want to run a report for each one? You can! RPR has printer-friendly views, which allow you to:

Simply print what's on your page to save time

Check boxes from a list or from the Photo List to select properties you want to print

Make your selections, then hit the print icon (it's between Mailing Labels and Create Report)

Also perform this print page option from the Property Summary pages and the RVM® Details page

Watch this under one minute video to see all of the above in action…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y12NIxXCVVQ