April 2007 Archives
I enjoy reading various blogs by other people. Having an insight into their position on certain issues is interesting to me. Often times, when I watch news shows where a few people are being interviewed, they always try (depending on the channel) to get people with different views to get on and fight it out. It's entertaining and interesting to me how different people can have such a firm belief in something which is so different from what someone else thinks.
Through my recent blog reading in the last few days, I stumbled across an example of a challenge faced by the real estate industry which is compounded by people's firm belief in something (or maybe just their inability to accept change).
What is a bathroom? Is it a separate room? Does it have to have a door? Does it have to have running water? What features must it have (or be lacking) to be considered a "half bath"? If it has more features than a standard "half bath" but not all of the features of a standard "full bath", what is it?
The mere existence of the discussion about this shows progress. We're moving more and more towards a standard way of communication information about real estate properties. Agents understand that if more people understand what they're saying, their properties get that much more exposure. The challenge exists within local areas where agents talk face-to-face about properties. When you say your property has "two and a half bathrooms", you want them to know what you're talking about. This is often defined by the local MLSs for their agents (which is good).
Now imagine trying to communicate that to someone within a different MLS that might go by a different set of rules.
Ouch.
There's a lot of work being done on what are called the RETS2 Payloads by some smart people from various industries. The idea behind RETS is to enable communication (over the Internet) of common real estate data between 2 points (RETS2 being version 2.0 of the RETS standard). The idea behind the payloads is to define what that data is, what format it's in and how it relates to other data within the same transmission. That way, "Lot Size" isn't "4.5 acres" from 1 source and "big" from another.
My hope is that soon, we'll have a way that we can all play nice and can exchange data in a common format. I've watched the RETS-Dev mailing list a lot recently to follow the progress of such standards and I'm very optimistic in what's being worked on. Sure, at first, it may seem like a lot of text and discussions about seemingly nothing but if you look below the surface, you'll see the progress being made and the potential outcome of those discussions and decisions.
Press on!
Through my recent blog reading in the last few days, I stumbled across an example of a challenge faced by the real estate industry which is compounded by people's firm belief in something (or maybe just their inability to accept change).
What is a bathroom? Is it a separate room? Does it have to have a door? Does it have to have running water? What features must it have (or be lacking) to be considered a "half bath"? If it has more features than a standard "half bath" but not all of the features of a standard "full bath", what is it?
The mere existence of the discussion about this shows progress. We're moving more and more towards a standard way of communication information about real estate properties. Agents understand that if more people understand what they're saying, their properties get that much more exposure. The challenge exists within local areas where agents talk face-to-face about properties. When you say your property has "two and a half bathrooms", you want them to know what you're talking about. This is often defined by the local MLSs for their agents (which is good).
Now imagine trying to communicate that to someone within a different MLS that might go by a different set of rules.
Ouch.
There's a lot of work being done on what are called the RETS2 Payloads by some smart people from various industries. The idea behind RETS is to enable communication (over the Internet) of common real estate data between 2 points (RETS2 being version 2.0 of the RETS standard). The idea behind the payloads is to define what that data is, what format it's in and how it relates to other data within the same transmission. That way, "Lot Size" isn't "4.5 acres" from 1 source and "big" from another.
My hope is that soon, we'll have a way that we can all play nice and can exchange data in a common format. I've watched the RETS-Dev mailing list a lot recently to follow the progress of such standards and I'm very optimistic in what's being worked on. Sure, at first, it may seem like a lot of text and discussions about seemingly nothing but if you look below the surface, you'll see the progress being made and the potential outcome of those discussions and decisions.
Press on!
