I’m working hard behind the scenes to upgrade and enhance our website, and one of the main dilemmas I’m having is whether to create what’s called a VOW – Virtual Office Website? The biggest downside? Visitors will have to register. The upside? They’ll get access to more details about homes for sale and those that have closed.

A bit of background first. As members of the local MLS – the Western Upstate Multiple Listing Service – we have to abide by their rules on displaying listing information on websites. When the Internet first broke into the real estate world, many agents were worried about losing control of their listings and didn’t want their listings being shown on another agent’s website. We always felt that was shortsighted thinking – the more places a home is shown the better the chances of selling it! But back in the day, lots of agents were scared of what the web was doing to them. So the MLS responded with what was called IDX – Internet Data Exchange – that allowed any agent to show other agent’s listings only under certain conditions. Only certain fields could be shown (like Address, Price, etc) but others could not (like Days On Market, Year Built, Taxes, Room Dimensions, etc). Also you are required to show the listing agent’s name and company. And you couldn’t give much information about homes that have sold, been withdrawn or expired. Even more, agents could opt out of having their listing participate, and some have and still do. It’s about 3% of the total number of homes in the MLS. I’m not sure why any agent would want to do that, but I hope they have explained to their client what they are doing.

These are pretty much the same rules we are working under now, and sometimes I can get around them. For example, I’m not allowed to show you the actual “Days On Market” field, but I can remember the day a listing first showed up on the IDX daily feed and start counting from there and show you my own “Days On List” field, which is pretty close to the same thing. But I still can’t show anything ( and neither can anyone else)  if the listing agent has decided not to allow it.

But the problem is, if you came in to our office and sat down with Elizabeth or Gia or Tina, they could show you everything we have about any home that is in the MLS – even homes that have been opted-out of the IDX feed. All the room dimensions, tax details, prior listing details and all the information about past sales too. They could even give you a print out you could take with you! But visit our website, and you get less than everything. That’s just crazy! But no matter how I complained, things just didn’t move fast enough.

So after years of only having access to IDX data, the National Association of Realtors finally approved a policy that would allow any agent to display all the MLS data on their website, just like you were in the office. They called it the Virtual Office Website Policy. But the biggest hitch is that you must first “establish a relationship” with the visitor, just like you would in a real office. And they determined that by having someone register, you would be doing that. Then you give them access to all that information.

So back to my dilemma. I don’t really like sites that make you register to see their information, but that’s the only way this is going to work. I only have to ask for name and email, so it wouldn’t be too intrusive. And of course we wouldn’t use it to spam you. So, would you register if you get more more details about the homes, as well as see the 3% of homes that are currently opted out of IDX?