The RESO Revolution: Brokers Win Big with Data-compliant Vendors

The real estate industry is on the verge of revolutionary technological innovation—and achieving optimal benefits rests largely on the motivation of brokers and agents. By now, about 90 percent of all MLSs are compliant with the data standards set out by the Real Estate Standards Organization (RESO), which, in the words of WAV Group Founding Partner and RESO consulting member Victor Lund, is "one of the most collaborative industry-wide efforts we have ever seen" to reduce redundancy and replication of real estate information sharing.

The resulting increase in efficiency will benefit brokers and agents directly through their technology vendors. Indeed, brokers and agents need their vendors need to be compatible with RESO data standards in order to be competitive now and in the future.

For an industry driven by information, the continued adoption of RESO data standards will deliver brokers and agents more up-to-date and secure content from their MLS. In a nutshell, the standardization of fields for information that is transferred from the MLS to the applications that industry professionals use every day will mean that all the technology tools 'speak' the same language, without errors, redundancy, and complications caused by breaks in old-school data mapping. For broker and agents, access to the best information available can be at your fingertips—but only if your vendors get on board with the technological tide.

By engaging vendors that are RESO certified, brokers and agents will also be positioned to reduce costs associated with their technology solutions. The most popular RESO-compliant way of data transport to vendors is the Real Estate Transaction Standard (RETS), or "mirrors" of data based on a common dictionary of terms. In effect, it enables synchronized data for easy digital transfer to vendor products used by real estate professionals.

When you consider that major technology vendors like WolfNet, Listingbook, and Homes.com are connected to hundreds of MLSs, you can imagine the volume of data that is transported, often every 15 minutes, at a cost in the tens of millions to manage. Cost savings for vendors who implement data standardization translates to decreased costs for brokers and agents who rely on their services. Standardization is a win-win for everyone.

But there's even more benefits for brokers and agents coming down the tech-innovation pipeline as a result of emerging industry policy changes. The newer RESO web application programming interface, or API, will improve data sharing to even mobile applications by sidestepping the data "mirroring" process and delivering data only when it needs to be used. Effectively, the industry-specific web API is a simpler and faster way to satisfy the need for more evolved tools to handle increasingly heavier mobile data traffic and meet changing consumer property search preferences. Brokers and agents will enjoy a better ability to utilize mobile applications for lead conversion and marketing activities.

While RESO-compliant data standardization is well underway, WAV Group expects broad emergence of new applications for the real estate industry using the newer web API. As recommended in our Technology Guide, brokers and agents should be asking whether their technology vendors are RESO certified—or risk being left in the dark as the transformation gains momentum.