Kipp Cooper CEO
I just got off the phone with Kipp Cooper. Kipp joined the Huntsville Area Association of REALTORS and the North Alabama Multiple Listing Service as the CEO in November 2012. His diverse background includes founding and building a number of successful businesses, managing the lobbying efforts for the Real Estate Industry, and serving as a Legislator in the New Hampshire House of Representatives. I found him to be a fresh and very clear voice around the somewhat complicated topic of listing syndication.
When Kipp arrived at the HAAR/NALMLS, two of the hot topics among his members were inaccurate data and real estate scams on Craigslist. His members had no idea where their data was going, but they knew it was in places it should not be and much of it was out of date. He said that he knew better than to go it alone – and worked with his leadership team to get full buy-in and participation from the brokers and membership. His leadership team created a task force and invited all of their brokers to get together to discuss this issue. About 40 brokers attended and they began brainstorming.
At that time NALMLS used ListHub to distribute their data. According to Cooper, “ListHub is a perfectly good company and they do have many tools for brokers to control where their listings go, but something in this situation wasn’t right.” Data was going out to over 90 destinations and the vast majority of brokers were unaware of what those sites were or how they used their data. They began to look at what some of the websites were doing with their listings. Companies, including Overstock.com, Walmart.com and Freedomsoft.com were, in their opinion, misusing the MLS-provided listings. This misuse did not support the brokers or their intentions. Freedomsoft.com was even providing a video about how not to engage a real estate agent. Overstock and Walmart were creating lists to solicit consumers. Clearly, something needed to change in the way the MLS and brokers were distributing their listings. The brokers were irate and it was time to do something different.
“We are Huntsville – the Rocket City”, Kipp said. “Fortunately our public facing site ValleyMLS.com has 6,000-8,000 unique users per day and 3 million page views each month. This gave us the ability to make bold moves that other MLS’s just could not.”
“Many of my members wanted to just pull the plug altogether on syndication, but I know that would be a train wreck.” Cooper said. “I wanted to create a gigantic funnel of leads for our members, leveraging the nearly 100 million dollars of national marketing the portals spend each year for our members in North Alabama and do it in a way that everyone wins.” The only way to do this was to create “Syndication Rules.”
They started with the IDX rules as a baseline and they developed a list of requirements to share with portals including Zillow and Trulia. Instead of just saying NO to syndication with the “responsible players” in the industry, they created a set of syndication rules and requirements that would create a win-win scenario and work for everyone involved.
One of the more challenging and complicated aspects of syndication is the way each site handles “trumping”. Trumping is about which feed takes precedent over other feeds. There are many feeds going to the portals today. They include the ones used by the North Alabama MLS, ListHub, broker feeds, franchisor back-end system feeds and data-entry by an agent or homeowner. Trumping rules vary with each portal and they can change quite frequently, according to new agreements and many other variables. So the North Alabama MLS decided to ask for their feed to trump all of the others, as one of their requirements to get an MLS-direct feed from them.
Last summer (2013), the North Alabama MLS sent ListHub notice to cancel, consistent with current contract terms. They were expecting to hear back from ListHub and a number of the portals they power, but they didn’t hear a word. Next, they notified about 90 portals directly to be proactive and to avoid last-minute emergencies when the ListHub feed was shut down. Consistent with his past behavior, Kipp circled back with his board of directors to make sure they were fully aware and supportive of the looming shut-off. None of the portals were paying much attention to the MLS’ advanced notice, but everyone expected there would be complaints when the flow of data was turned-off.
And that’s exactly what happened. One of the major portals called Kipp. “Kipp, Huntsville has gone dark”. Yes that’s what happened all right and it was not without sufficient warning. For this portal alone, there were about 60 agents paying for enhanced services and they were howling to the portal about refunds. Cooper received only 5 complaints from his 3,000 members.
Fast forward 2-4 weeks and 3 of the major portals were on-board with slightly different versions of the MLS’ requirements to receive the MLS-direct feed. Each of these agreements is slightly different according to Cooper, who refused to go into detail due to confidentiality agreements. But at the core is the requirement that the listing agent be prominently displayed along with his/her contact information; another is that a link-back is necessary. For North Alabama MLS, the portals link-back to the agent’s actual listing on ValleyMLS.com where they then forward the lead for free to the broker/agent. And yet another requirement is to receive important analytics from each of the portals.
This coming July, the MLS will also significantly enhance its SEO (Search Engine Optimization).
Kipp said, “we can’t compete with the likes of Zillow and Trulia on a national basis and they aren’t going away, but we can leverage what they bring to the table and work with them as valued partners to benefit our brokers and agents at the local level.”
The strategy is to focus on the major portals first. Realtor.com is “dark” right now. They have yet to sign an agreement with the North Alabama MLS, but they remain in talks and Kipp is optimistic. The agreement, which was in place when he arrived, dates back to 1996 – 18 years ago. That is the way it is with most of the 860 or so MLSs. Certainly a lot has changed in the environment and it’s time for the Realtor.com contract to change with the times.
One of the key success factors in all of this is the platform developed and support by Bridge Interactive Group. In addition to managing the feeds, Bridge is providing dashboards, search tools and analytics, which empower the MLS and the brokers to know much more and share valuable insight with their clients and customers. For example, you can search for information about how many 2 BR / 3 Bath listings were searched on each portal they have a direct agreement with and even how many of these were performed by consumers on mobile devices. There is an exciting future for predictive analytics for sure. According to Kipp, the Bridge dashboard is a game-changer and a new tool that his brokers are very pleased with.
Kipp said the MLS leadership is neutral to the advertising schemes around listings. “We never want to get in the middle of how a broker or agent advertises on a portal.” His main concern is with the accuracy of the listing data. To fulfill their mission and responsibility as an MLS, they do support trumping authority with all of the portals to insure display of the most timely and accurate information.
To better understand the importance of trumping, Kipp shared the following example about how one of the major franchisors’ data would frequently trump the MLS-provided data resulting in incorrect information and frustration by clients and customers.
During a recent price reduction, a listing agent immediately reduced the listing price in the MLS system. However the agent did not replicate the change in the franchisor back-end system. The franchisor had an agreement with the portal to trump other feeds so the accurate MLS sourced data was overlaid with inaccurate (old) information from the franchisor back-end management system. It took one to two weeks to correct this. In the meantime, the irate home seller wanted to know why their agent couldn’t advertise the price reduction correctly on Zillow and Trulia. “If we were the trumping authority for price and status, the data would have been correct on all the portals we syndicate to in a matter of minutes, not days or weeks.”
The North Alabama MLS is rolling out its plans to put this solution in place with other portals, including soon to be announced agreements with newspaper and magazine publications, third-party vendors and the virtual tour companies.
In conclusion, Kipp Cooper and his leadership have laid down a well-thought-out strategy that many MLSs are likely to emulate. I appreciate the time Kipp spent with me on the phone this week.
Kevin McQueen – President Focus Forward
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