REINCheck

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You're listening to REINCheck with Andrea Rice, Contracts and Industry Specialists at REIN, where you get the latest member news and information delivered straight from the source, REIN MLS.

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Andrea Rice
Hello and welcome to REINCheck. I am your host, Andrea Rice, and today we are checking in to discuss a new partnership between the Richmond and Hampton Roads MLSs. I am so excited to welcome with me today the Senior Vice President of Operations and Outreach for the Central Virginia Regional MLS, Erika Almstead. And also joining us today is the Director of Operations for Real Estate Information Network, Ellen Montemurno.

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Andrea Rice
Erika, Ellen, thank you for joining me today. As we delve into the details of this newly launched data share between the two MLSs.

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Erika Almsted
Yes, Andrea, thank you so much for having me here. I'm really excited to talk about this.

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Ellen Montemurno
Yeah. Thank you, Andrea. This is super exciting to talk about.

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Andrea Rice
It is. It is exciting, Ellen. And before we get started, I was wondering if the two of you could just give our listeners maybe some stats or a little bit of a breakdown about CVR MLS and REIN to give us a bit of a background. Erika, let's start with you and CVR MLS.

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Erika Almsted
Sure. So CVR MLS was established in 2000 by two local MLSs who joined forces to serve the Richmond and Tri-Cities Central Virginia region. And for those who don't know, Tri-Cities are the Petersburg, Colonial Heights, and Hopewell areas. And we currently serve about 6800 agents.

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Andrea Rice
Wow. That's wonderful. And Ellen, can you give everyone a quick stats update on REIN?

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Ellen Montemurno
Yes, I'm happy to do that. REIN was founded in 1969, so we've actually been in business for over 50 years. We're a little bit unique because we're a broker owned MLS, and right now we proudly serve about 8500 agents and brokers in the Hampton Roads area.

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Andrea Rice
Wow. Erika, Ellen, that is just amazing. And it sounds to me by doing a little quick math here, we're talking about something that's going to benefit almost 14,000 users. Ellen, can you give our listeners a bit of an understanding why CVR MLS, the Richmond area MLS, and REIN, the Hampton Roads MLS, have decided to launch this data share?

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Andrea Rice
How is this going to help members?

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Ellen Montemurno
Yeah, Andrea, I'm so excited about the partnership because it's really going to broaden the reach of our mutual members in terms of understanding the scope of the market in both the central and Southeastern parts of Virginia. So this is going to make our members more informed when they're working with their clients. And the two MLSs already share a handful of overlapping cities and counties, and this just is going to bridge that gap.

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Ellen Montemurno
So we're excited to be pioneers in Virginia between two of the largest MLSs to form a partnership like this and bring this added value to our members.

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Andrea Rice
Yeah, that's great. And Erika, do you have anything to add to what Ellen just said?

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Erika Almsted
Well, just kind of echoing what Ellen said, really the focus of the partnership is to help our members better serve their home buyers and sellers by giving them a wider access of listing information and data. Ellen mentioned that there is quite a bit of overlap in our agent markets and you know, we see a lot of movement between Central Virginia and the REIN market, so giving our respective agents a wider scope of information helps us as MLSs better support our agents.

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Andrea Rice
Yeah, and based on those comments, I can see why everyone is so excited about this partnership. I think members are really going to benefit from it. And Erika, can you give listeners an understanding of exactly what a data share means for members of CVR MLS and REIN?

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Erika Almsted
Yeah, that is a great question, Andrea. The term data share gets thrown around a lot in our industry and means a lot of different things. CVR MLS and REIN are doing a native data share and that's a fancy way of saying that our listing data is integrated into each other's systems, and that means when a user goes into their own matrix system to do a search, both CVR and REIN listings will be there within their search results and on their same screen so they don't have to go outside of their Matrix system to find each other's listings.

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Erika Almsted
They can stay within their own Matrix system where it's familiar, easy and convenient and, you know, just gives them a wider variety of information.

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Andrea Rice
Yeah, I love that they're getting so much more information. But can you tell us, will there be any kind of a learning curve involved? Ellen, what can they expect to experience when they're using the MLS with this data share?

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Ellen Montemurno
Yeah, well, Andrea, that's a great thing about a native data share. There's virtually no learning curve because members are going to go right into the same system that they're used to going into. So searching for a listing information will be the same. Users are just going to have more access to more information. There are some differences and things users should be aware of in terms of the type of listing information they're going to see from CVR MLS or REIN.

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Ellen Montemurno
But the process for finding that listing information is exactly the same as how they do it now.

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Andrea Rice
Well, the fact that there is no learning curve or a very small learning curve, if that, is I'm sure, a welcome relief with all of the things that have been going on with the industry this year. Erika, can you elaborate on what Ellen just said about some of the differences and things users should be aware of when they're searching for listings from the other MLS?

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Erika Almsted
Yeah, of course. First, users need to understand that not all of the informational fields are being shared. As much as the two systems have in common in terms of listing input fields, there are some big differences. So, for example, coming soon is a status in CVR MLS, but not in REIN. So REIN members won't have access to CVR MLS coming soon listings.

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Erika Almsted
And we are sharing most property types like residential, multifamily, residential rentals and land and farm, but we're not sharing commercial listings. Neither one of our MLSs require commercial listings so they're considered optional in our markets. And the systems were so different when it came to those listings that it was too difficult to align those fields to make it useful.

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Erika Almsted
We're hoping that might be a future iteration down the road.

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Andrea Rice
Okay, great. So it sounds like users will find a lot of great information on residential listings and other property types, but not on commercial properties at this time. So are there any other things that users might need to know?

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Ellen Montemurno
Well, yeah. To help members identify which listings were entered in, what system they're going to see are prefix added to the MLS number if it didn't originate in their own system. So for example, in REIN's version of Matrix, Richmond based listings will have CVR or in front of the MLS number. In CVR MLS is version of Matrix, REIN listings will have REIN in front of the MLS number, so this should make it easy to identify where the listing was sourced.

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Ellen Montemurno
And one important thing to know is that the information is only going to be shareable within the Matrix systems. So this means that REIN listings can't be syndicated from CVR MLS Matrix system and CVR MLS listings can't be syndicated from REIN Matrix systems. So to simplify that, what I mean by this, if I'm a CVR MLS agent who has a website that allows consumers to search for properties, I can't add any of the REIN listings to my website and vice versa.

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Andrea Rice
Okay, good to know. So there sounds like there isn't going to be a big learning curve for users because they're still using the same system that they're familiar with. And the essential listing information for residential and rental listings will be available and there may be more to come as the two MLSs continuing to work together. So that's great.

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Andrea Rice
Thank you, Erika and Ellen. That's a lot of great information. Erika, any last thoughts before we go?

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Erika Almsted
Yeah, just a couple things. Without getting too far in the weeds, I think the things our users should know are there are a few differences. CVR MLS uses SentriLock for our keybox lock box system and I know that REIN uses Supra, so that is going to be something that our users will have to work through. Also, some of our users use ShowingTime, not all of them do between the two systems.

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Erika Almsted
And so that is another thing that agents are going to have to remember to be responsive and communicative when working with each other because they might not be on the same system. So just there are solutions in place for those things, but just reminding them that these are just a few little hurdles that they'll have to work through.

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Andrea Rice
Yeah. Thank you, Erika. Great point about those keyboxes. And before we sign off, I want to thank both Erika and Ellen for joining me today to share the information about this data share. There's a lot of great information. And as always, I want to thank all of you for listening. I want to remind listeners that more information such as FAQs has been made available to CVR MLS members and REIN members in their respective member websites, and both MLSs have staff that can help you take advantage of this exciting new member benefit.

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Andrea Rice
I hope you enjoyed this episode of REINCheck and if you missed any of the previous episodes, I do invite you to go to REINMLS.com to take a listen. And if you haven't done so already, make sure you subscribe so that you get future episodes delivered directly to you when they're released. Thank you and have a great rest of your day.

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You've been listening to REINCheck with Andrea Rice. Stay in the know from those who know. Delivered straight from the source, REIN MLS.