Professional | ProptechNerd - Matt Cohen

Screen-Scraping – Finally, the Real Estate Industry Solution

In 2011 and 2012, Realtor.com was under the gun to solve the problem it had with screen scrapers, where sites were “scraping” data off of their site and using it in unauthorized contexts. For those that haven’t been watching industry news sites discussion of screen scraping, scraping is when someone copies large amounts of

Principles of MLS Service

3MarchMatt CohenProfessionalmls, strategy

What Should the Scope of MLS Services Be? At the 2013 Council of MLS conference, The Realty Alliance (TRA), a group of large brokerages, put MLSs on notice that a number of MLS practices were angering some participant ﬁrms. In TRA’s brokers’ eyes, MLSs were providing products and services out of the MLSs’ scope

Real Estate Document Management in 2012

12NovemberMatt CohenProfessionaltechnology, transaction management

Clareity Consulting has always been of the opinion that online transaction management – especially document management – has been a critical technology for the real estate profession. This paper examines the real estate document management space in 2012, how the solutions providers and their products are differentiated, ongoing challenges to success of the category,

VOW and IDX Rules: Security Compliance in the Trenches

18AprilMatt CohenProfessionalcompliance, mls, security

As a consultant often called on by MLSs for help with VOW and IDX compliance audits as someone who is always pushing for improved information security in the real estate industry, I love that information security is featured prominently in the VOW rules, section 19.5: “A Participant’s VOW must employ reasonable efforts to monitor

Expanding Agent-Client Collaboration in the MLS

7MarchMatt CohenProfessionalmls

Buyers and Sellers Deserve Better Agent-Client collaboration inside the MLS has mostly been stalled since 1998, when MLS systems ﬁrst started providing an area for clients to view agent-saved searches and suggested listings and provide listing ratings back to the agent. Since that time, some systems have added minor enhancements, such as built-in messaging