Tucson MLS Withdraws 3000 Listings
July 25, 2007
Well, our MLS system made an interesting decision yesterday. Unfortunately, the decision made by the MLS board may impact our clients adversely, and for a while yet to come.
Here’s the short story:
The MLS board decided to enforce the rule that commission amounts should be marked with either a dollar symbol or a percentage symbol. Notice was given at the start of the month to all agents. Upon receiving the notice, our office administrator asked for a clarification of the rule, never received a response, and was never given a deadline to have all listings corrected until about 3 days ago - when they said that all listings would be withdrawn temporarily if the were not in compliance with the rule.
So yesterday, about 3000 listings were withdrawn from the MLS system, in one fell swoop.
That’s about a third of our inventory in the Tucson MLS.
I can argue that notice was given, and that there was plenty of time to bring all listings into compliance, and I can even support having a deadline and consequences for not following the rule. But instead of handing out fines, they decided to withdraw the listings - which can do a lot more harm to our clients than it does to ourselves.
So what about the agent and seller, who priced a home yesterday when some of the Active competing properties were shown as Withdrawn from the market?
What about the home buyer searching the MLS online yesterday?
What about some of the smaller, one-agent brokerages? What if they are out of town and haven’t corrected their listings? What happens to their Sellers?
What about the monthly statistics put out by the board? We’ll have anomalous data for a while yet.
What about all the home buyers that are on auto-prospecting systems, where new listings are emailed out to them? They’ll be emailed with properties, seemingly “new” on the market because of the change in status from Withdrawn to Active, although the houses may have been on the market for a very long time.
So I’m sorry, folks. As an agent and member of the MLS in Tucson, I think a poor decision was made, that could adversely affect my clients. The actions of the MLS board punished not only those agents whose listings weren’t in compliance with the rule, but they impacted you, and me, and potentially a huge portion of the home buyers and sellers out there. Kind of a cluster….fudge.
Other Information That Might Be Helpful
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Effective immediately, the MLS Board of Directors recommends the following regarding Short Sales: Short Sales are [...] - Peeking at August Stats (September 4, 2008)
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8 Responses to “Tucson MLS Withdraws 3000 Listings”
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Wow. Based on what you’re saying here, sounds like a boneheaded move by the Tucson MLS…. what are these people thinking?
Thinking? It’s an MLS board. They don’t think.
ARMLS won’t allow a commission to be entered without a dollar sign or a percentage amount in the field. It’s built into the software. Seems it might have made more sense for the Tucson MLS to investigate a software adjustment rather than disadvantage 3,000 home sellers … but why look for logical alternatives when you can wield power indiscriminantly.
[...] The Housechick reports that the Tucson MLS kicked 3,000 listings out of the system earlier this week because listing agents had failed to include either a dollar sign or a percentage sign in the co-brokerage field - the field that tells cooperating agents what their compensation will be for selling a home. [...]
Who can we contact at the Tucson MLS to register our displeasure? One thing I will say, is that it sounds like you were on top of things, and that the agents that represented houses that were pulled were not taking care of matters. If I’m purchasing a house that was withdrawn during this time, I know I’m dealing with a seller’s agent that isn’t focused on the job…..
Hi Jon - I don’t know who made the decision, but it came from the MLS board of directors, is my understanding. In fairness to them, agents were warned 6/28/07 that any non-complying listings would be withdrawn, but no deadline was given. The notice of withdrawl just popped up on Tuesday that all non-compliant listings had been withdrawn the day before. While I don’t believe the action was appropriate, there was fair warning.
Johnathan - yeah, you’d think they’d change the software so that you *couldn’t* enter a co-op amount with a % or $. As far as I know, you can still enter just a number without a symbol. Why do you suppose, of the many widespread MLS violations, they took action upon the one that should have the least impact on the public user? Maybe it was just the easiest to enforce? Run a script and voila! Instant compliance.
I agree with Jon there are too many agents that don’t pay enough attention to the listing once the signatures are dry. I think a months notice was plenty of time to fix something in the MLS. However, ARMLS could have been a little more helpful and sent a few more reminders!
If the number in the field is more than 100, it cannot be a commission percentage amount, and if it’s 100 or less, it’s not likely a commission dollar amount unless somebody is working VERY cheap. If it’s a decimal fraction, it’s a commission percentage. Simple to script this fix with virtually absolute certainty of no errors if the agent gets the zeros right.
The MLS board and its software folks couldn’t figure this out on their own to avoid ticking off thousands of customers?
Suggestion to your MLS: tell agents that if they don’t specify a symbol, the software will automatically pick the right one ($ or %) depending on the number they input. Then compile in the logic so agents only have to enter a decimal or a whole number and the code figures out the rest based on the amount.