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Podcast Interview: Matt Cohen on RETS

Posted on April 8, 2010 by Michael Price

matt2In the latest episode of the GeekEstate podcast I had the opportunity to speak with Matt Cohen of Clareity Consulting regarding RETS, the Real Estate Transaction Standard. I recently had the opportunity to represent Zillow at the HAR REIS conference. One of the speakers referred to RETS in his presentation. I was surprised to find there were a number of folks around me asking what RETS is.

When explaining RETS there is no better source than someone that has been there from the beginning in 1999. Matt Cohen is the Chief Technologist at Clareity Consulting. Clareity has been providing high level consulting services to the industry since 1996 and is on the front lines of the development of the RETS standard. In our interview he explains what RETS is, where it’s been, where it’s going and how it impacts vendors, brokers and agents. Enjoy!

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    About Michael Price

    Michael started his Internet journey in 1995 as President of an ISP. He has since been involved with several ventures that primarily serve the real estate industry. Mike is currently providing consulting services that include marketing, branding and much more.

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    • davidcharris

      Thanks Mike and Matt for helping to get the word out about RETS. Now more than ever we are able to take input from the business and work through our network of volunteers to help make it a technical reality. The Research & Development workgroup mentioned in the podcast can be followed on twitter at @resord

      Thanks again,
      David

    • http://www.facebook.com/people/Justin-Britt/540707035 Justin Britt

      But what's the point of requiring MLSs to be RETS compliant if they are not required to provide this great new technology to brokers?

    • http://www.facebook.com/matt.cohen.mn Matthew Cohen

      @Justin Britt – I guess I don’t know many MLSs that don’t provide RETS feeds (of some sort) to brokers and/or their vendors. That said, keep in mind some MLSs have *just* put up their RETS servers and are just getting a handle on managing feeds. If you have a problem in your market because compliance is ‘technical’ – that is, RETS is not actually deployed for use, I would suggest that you work through your MLS governance structure toward that end. Regardless, working on the standard is important so there is something to be adopted!

      • http://www.crye-leike.com/ Angie Vandenbergh

        << I guess I don’t know many MLSs that don’t provide RETS feeds (of some sort) to brokers and/or their vendors.

        I wanted to comment on this. I don't know if this is the area of the country we are in… but Crye-Leike has offices that cover about 40 MLSs. Only a quarter to a third have RETS. It may be mandated – but many of our boards are small and don't have interest and/or money to set up something different. A lot of them barely understand when you ask them questions about IDX rules and data access in general – let alone take the conversation to RETS.

        • http://www.facebook.com/matt.cohen.mn Matthew Cohen

          RETS adoption is at 90% of MLSs – that means that they have the capability. Between the MLS, their vendors, the good folks at NAR's CRT and a responsive RETS community, there isn't much of a good excuse for MLSs not using RETS to provide service to their brokers.

    • Scooter Campbell

      I've been involved with RETS from the client/data consumer perspective for several years now. The data is still not standardized across MLSs. There are no plug and play, turn-key, RETS software products.

      The bread and butter of RETS, getting the listing data, is still largely moving huge comma-separated lists of data. Fields are often added and/or removed, breaking the users systems. Some systems require one way to pull the data (use of offsets) and another system requires a completely different way (pull only the key fields). Not very standard. Some MLSs/Vendors are even reluctant to provide last modified dates for their records. They just don't understand. Good luck getting them to 'get it'.

    • laishacollins

      Can anyone be part of RETS?? I would like to be part of RETS and do something for it. Can anyone guide me through the procedure of joining RETS???
      web design preston

    • laishacollins

      Can anyone be part of RETS?? I would like to be part of RETS and do something for it. Can anyone guide me through the procedure of joining RETS???
      web design preston

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