The TRIBUS Case Study: RESO, Brokers and a Million New Voices

Membership among brokerages in the Real Estate Standards Organization – RESO – has exploded in recent years. With nearly 1 million agents now RESO members through their brokerages, we have a million new voices helping us further our mission to create and promote the adoption and utilization of standards that drive efficiency throughout the real estate industry.

Recently, we collaborated with real estate brokerage technology provider and RESO member TRIBUS to better understand the practical value that standardized data can deliver to real estate brokerages. We also wanted dive deeper to understand better the vital role that broker technology partners perform in addressing many of the crucial challenges that brokerages face today. More importantly, we wanted to put a spotlight on our findings and share them broadly.

The TRIBUS Case Study

A brand-new case study we just released – and will make available at our Milwaukee RESO Fall Conference Oct. 15-18 – does that and much more. The title and stunning design and imagery truly accentuate the role RESO serves today for its broker members: "How RESO Is Sparking Broker Success by Supporting Expansion, Efficiency, and Productivity."

RESO has come a long way in just the last few years in its ramped-up efforts to better serve the needs of broker-owners and their agents. Today, RESO is fueling broker success by improving expansion opportunities, removing redundancy to increase efficiency and creating a more streamlined transaction that grows broker profitability. Brokers face many unique challenges, and that's why it is vital to listen to their voices and the voices of their agents.

The TRIBUS case study digs into the challenges brokerages face today: increasing pressure for technology investment, profit margin compression, the explosion of the iBuyer "instant sales" model, and the never-ending escalation in marketing expenses.

The Role of RESO

One of the questions we are most often asked by folks considering becoming RESO members is about its value: is it worth the investment? Like the Homes.com case study we released last spring, the new TRIBUS case study helps to shed new light on the practical and specific value RESO delivers to real estate brokerages.

Specifically, the report mentions the role RESO standards play in assisting brokerages that expand into new markets, through organic growth or acquisition, in the penchant brokerages have to increase efficiencies through the use of data, as well as productivity gains by eliminating duplicative entry and more flawless systems integrations.

What TRIBUS Has Learned

TRIBUS builds custom software for real estate brokerages, including consumer-facing websites and tools for brokerages, agents and staff like intranet, lead and transaction management, email marketing and more. TRIBUS has been harnessing the practical value of standardized data combined with standardized methods for accessing data and delivering it to their real estate brokerage and technology partners. What TRIBUS has discovered is that RESO is the foundation of success for broker tools that depend on real estate data.

Katie Ragusa, VP Product Development for TRIBUS, explains in the case study, "Real estate data runs through literally every aspect of what TRIBUS builds: From listing search and market stats on broker websites to the agent's ability to enhance their MLS listings with better photos, to automated listing alerts for consumers, and even in our Coach product where agents can track their production and set sales goals."

TRIBUS says that standardized data is helpful to its business and will be even more useful in the future. While they acknowledge the move to RESO standardized field definition does take some work for technology companies that support brokers, it is well worth it.

"Standardized data allows TRIBUS to anticipate details about listings that we should be receiving, even when we're working with a brand-new MLS where we haven't previously had data coverage," Ragusa explains. "To put it into context, TRIBUS currently manages data feeds for well over 100 MLSs, and our pace right now is adding anywhere from one to five new markets per month. Standards allow us to scale quickly and keep our import process clean."

A look at RE/MAX Results

Among the examples that the case study examines is RE/MAX Results, a highly successful Minnesota-based franchise. The study details how crucial RESO standards were to its expansion plans. As the company grew from four markets to six and then added other new markets, it became clear that RESO standards reduced their new market cycle times for setting up new data feeds.

The case study also looks at how automation benefits from RESO standards, how RESO standards enable smoother systems integration and how it has helped some firms make their technology smarter. Case study topics also include faster time to market, how standards help keep agents at the center of the transaction with better data sets, and how standardization of data allows better systems integration across the board, which enables more tech customization.

Pick up your hard copy in Milwaukee

We will have printed copies of the new TRIBUS case study at our Fall Conference in Milwaukee, October 15-18, which is a few seats away from selling out (register here – today). The week after the conference, we will publish a URL to a PDF version for a free download. We do hope you can join us in Milwaukee and let us know what you think about our newest white paper.

Jeremy Crawford is the CEO of Real Estate Standards Organization, or RESO, the organization responsible for the creation, promotion, adoption, and utilization of standards to drive efficiency throughout the real estate industry.