On November 6 NAR announced a new product, Realtors® Property Resource (RPR), which is scheduled to be released to us in April. For those who have not seen the webcast on this, it is available here.
Realtors® Property Resource is a powerful new service that will arm real estate agents with more data and power than ever before. With an intelligent and well-designed user interface, the system is rich with a national database of 140 million property records, both residential and commercial which will decidedly become the resource for all matters real estate.
The system will provide 265 million residential and commercial assessments, sales and mortgage records which will be updated more than 650,000 times each month. Added to that will be all of the on-market and off-market data from MLS's, including photos, virtual tours as well notes by individual Realtors® which will create the most accurate source of real estate data in the country.
The plans are to include 850,000 distressed property records with eleven statuses, with complete address, owner and mortgage information. This information will be updated monthly.
For school information 125,000 public and private elementary, middle and high schools, along with detailed data and parent reviews will be available.
Neighborhood demographic data detailed on more than 700,000 communities will also be part of the product. And, it will feature psychographic data, i.e., consumer spending and consumption habits.
To top it off, RPR will provide its own Realtor Valuation Model with some similarities to Zillow. However, this model is touting 90% accuracy. As opposed to Zillow's use of public records data in its estimates, RPR will use actual MLS data in conjunction with notes, annotations and opinions of individual real estate agents. It promises to be the "gold standard" in property valuations.
Other features to be part of the system are:
- Search faceting - a view in real time.
- Mapping tools with side-by-side comparisons.
- User generated data changes.
- Personalization profile management.
- A library of customizable reports.
- Extensive help with live chat and a knowledge database.
- News features and marketing reports.
- A database tuned for market analytics.
The buzz surrounding this product is focused primarily on questions about whether or not RPR will compete with or hurt local MLS's and what the impact will be on companies like Zillow. One blogger even wrote of the possibility of a "civil war" between NAR and the rest of the industry.
Matt Stigliano has also written an excellent post on how RPR may have an effect on the Realtor® referral business.
Whether or not this product competes with the MLS or threatens the existence of companies like Zillow remains to be seen. However; it seems to be a foregone conclusion that RPR will definitely shake things up and I have a feeling that it will all be for the good.
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Copyright 2009 - Claudette Millette, Broker, Owner, TheBuyersCounsel
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