The NAR and its local associations have focused RESO compliance on the MLS and has been very successful in driving adoption. But, when it comes to association management systems (AMS), where member data is created – and which should be the most accurate source of truth – the data comes out unreliably, in a variety of proprietary formats. Since associations have a contractual relationship with AMS providers, they are positioned well to fix this problem.
Problems in Translation and Advantages of AMS RESO Compliance
Currently, MLS technology providers typically have converted this data and made it available for RESO standards-based consumption – but this is non-optimal for several reasons:
- There can be errors in translation – AMS providers are most qualified to ensure their data is correctly converted to the standard.
- Changes to the AMS database break downstream applications. Just like RESO standards have done for MLSs, changes to the AMS can occur without affecting data recipients using RESO compliant data feeds.
- RESO compliant AMS can provide data feeds almost in real-time, just as MLSs do with listing data today.
- Associations can take advantage of RESO certification tools already developed to ensure standards compliance, ensuring other vendors can “plug and play” easily.
- RESO Analytics can be used to provide insight into local data; best practices are thus shared.
- Association data becomes easier to use – associations can develop innovative applications, sharing development costs or offering their applications for sale, knowing they will work across standards-compliant association markets. Associations can also attract development talent or technology vendors to the real estate association space without the expense and time-consuming work of leveraging AMS proprietary data formats.
- Associations can drive the development of additional member related RESO resources, further increasing competition and innovation in association technology.
NAR itself might wish to explore “RESO-native” data for its own M1 Platform to make AMS alignment easier and facilitate enhanced intra-industry communication of data.
If Associations contract for AMS to become RESO standards-compliant, they can get the same advantages that they have seen MLSs get from standards for more than twenty years.