Multiple listing services to link databases (Crain's Cleveland Business)

Aug 19, 2008 12:31 PM - Northeast Ohio soon will have a truly regional real estate listings database thanks to a new cooperative agreement between the Northern Ohio Regional Multiple Listing Service and the Centralized Regional Multiple Listing Service.

Boards governing the Independence-based NORMLS and Akron-based CRIS announced the plan late Monday, Aug. 18, to create a unified regional multiple listing service to be called the Northeast Ohio Real Estate Exchange.

Both MLS operators will produce the unified database by adopting the proprietary Rapattoni system that CRIS uses. NORMLS plans to begin using Rapattoni software and drop its current MarketLinx software.

The central platform eliminates problems real estate agents in areas such as Hudson faced when seeking to promote home listings in both the CRIS area, which serves Summit, Portage and seven other counties further south, and NORMLS. Such agents had to list homes again on the NORMLS system to reach Ashtabula, Cuyahoga, Geauga, Lake, Lorain and Medina counties. Agents using both systems had to use two software systems and pay duplicate fees to do so.

window.OAS_RICH('Middle1')James Lentz, chairman of NORMLS and president of ERA Lentz Associates of Parma, said brokers and agents in Northeast Ohio have been asking for a single source of MLS data without duplicate fees and the added expense of special software services that could merge the listing data into one database. Boundaries come down

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