Here are some more mid-year Raleigh-area real estate stats from Triangle MLS. Halfway through 2024 some major trends continue. Like most markets, inventory is so low that prices are still creeping up despite relatively high inflation and mortgage rates.
“Months of Inventory” is a popular metric since it provides a rare forward-looking guide to the market’s direction. At 1.8, both Wake County (including the city of Raleigh) and Durham County will run out of houses to sell in around 7 weeks if no new listings come on the market. There will be new listings of course, but the rate will not improve until more houses come on the market than are sold. This metric should be 4-6 months, so it must double or triple to return to historic norms.
Land costs go down as you drive away from Raleigh-Durham International Airport (RDU) so the picture improves somewhat. Lee, Harnett, Warren, Nash, and Franklin all have three or more months of inventory. Closer in, Orange, Chatham, Johnston, Alamance, and even Person and Granville have less than three months.
More on the pullback in the overall dollar volume later this week. *Halifax is an outlier because the sold data is so thin and can be excluded.
The special thing about Affordability is its variability since it’s a relative concept. After all, what a person can afford depends on perspective to some degree. Most guidelines advise aspirational homeowners to plan on allocating no more than 30% of their household income to housing. Spread across sixteen counties, each community, each development, indeed each family, have specific affordability results. The Triangle MLS (TMLS) dataset tells a story about affordability featuring both temporal and spatial variability expressed as an Index. This month TMLS is taking a look at 2024 Year to Date sales data, mortgage rates, and the latest Household Income estimates to update policymakers, lenders, builders, and the rest of the housing community on the latest affordability challenges.
A housing affordability index (HAI) of 100 means that Median Household Income (MHI) is 100% of that necessary to afford a Median-Priced House at prevailing mortgage rates.
Affordability is about three things: the buyer’s income, the cost of money, and the price of houses. These factors are tightly interconnected so that a smooth path up or down is possible, but it makes the choreography difficult.
If the price of houses generally rises at the same rate as household income, the line stays level. As long as the price of money from the nice mortgage people remains within a moderate range, there are no hardships. But those three things, income, bank rates, and house prices do not always move together and sometimes they diverge. When that happens, well, pain happens, but to varying degrees so this post will review the current conditions of the counties around RTP and then take a look forward.
The scope of the chart below is all sixteen counties, Residential properties in all categories: Single Family Detached, Condo, and Townhomes looking back over twenty years.
The two lines are the Housing Affordability Index (HAI), the bold line, and the 30-year Mortgage Rate, the dotted line. The rate is 69 for the 16-county area, so Median Household Income is 69% of the income necessary to qualify for a median-priced home financed by a traditional mortgage at prevailing rates. That rate was 147 in March 2020, the month the COVID pandemic began to materially impact the American economy.
The inverse path of the mortgage line is striking. Find 2019 on the chart, it’s where the dotted line, the Mortgage Rate, starts to fall. The Federal Reserve in that year began a program to stimulate the economy by lowering rates. The result was a sharp rise in HAI followed by a slow climb to 140-150, indicating Median Income was 140% to 150% of the income necessary to qualify. In other words, more than enough for middle-income households.
So it is unavoidable to resolve that, for the entire 16-county area, Housing Affordability is at an all time low. Compared to the month COVID started, March 2020, the index is down over 53%. From 147 to 69. Homes are half as affordable as they were four years ago and, notably, the index had never been below 100 until March 2022. The impact has been dramatic across all price ranges and all parts of the Triangle, less so the farther you get from the Central Business Districts, RDU, and RTP.
Next, zooming in on Wake County, the submarket that includes Raleigh and dominates the 16-county region, is now 68, down over 50% from the pre-COVID economy when the index was 141. This closely tracks the market-wide stats since Wake County transactions
Transactions in May 2024, to demonstrate the dominance of Wake County data in the 16-county data.
Next, Durham County over the same period demonstrated similar results. 68, down from 135 pre-COVID.
Orange and Chatham Counties combined dropped by the same percentage as the other counties but were already less affordable than the other counties pre-COVID at 105. May 2024 has come to rest at a level lower than any in the Metro area: 53 out of 100.
Johnston County is more affordable at 71. Down the same percentage as the others since pre-COVID.
Alamance County, below, also at 68, down the same percentage as the others.
Our Mortgage friends say that most first-time buyers have to “drive until they qualify”. A longer commute lowers the house prices and helps affordability but which direction matters. In our area, the most affordable is in the northwest, Halifax County, followed by adjacent Warren and Vance counties.
Levers for Affordability
For affordability to improve there are only three levers to pull, metaphorically:
Median Household Income has to go up. In the Triangle, we have better than average prospects for rises in income. The median household income in Wake County, North Carolina has shown a positive trend in recent years. As of 2022, the median household income was approximately $97,099, showing a steady increase from previous years ($91,558 in 2021 and $88,763 in 2020) (FRED) (Census.gov). Surrounding counties have a similar projected increase.
Mortgage Rates have to fall, or moderate. While not historically high, they seem much higher since they doubled from recent rates. The real problem is rates when compared to house prices and income. They moved up much faster than the other two variables and have not fallen much below 7%. Predictions are for rates to moderate but not fall below 6% for several quarters.
The Average price of a house has to come down for the average income person to be able to afford one. But, of course, the average person is not a financial construct, they are a person with all the accompanying complexity with their particular income and expectations. Looking at the Median Home Price in the area over the last twenty years the rise is dramatic and recent. A TMLS Study revealed an inflection point in 2016 when the market began a rise the Stock Market would call a Bull Market.
The ten years before 2016, and the ten years (so far) after look quite different. In the period 2006 to 2016 the Median Price hovered between $160,000 and $200,000, never breaking below $160,000 or above $210,000. Then, in a generally unremarkable market for mortgages, the market began a sustained ramp up in prices. A $200,000 Median was sustained for the first time in 2016. Median Price did not cross $300,000 until 2021 but then, remarkably, crossed $400,000 just the following year in 2022 where it remains today.
A Look Forward
We have established that houses cost more than before, and that relative to income, the cost is exacerbated. So it follows that people at the bottom end of the scale are often priced out of ownership in some communities. Some people, maybe most, traditionally see MLS as a list of houses for sale. If you know an appraiser you might also understand that it’s an important source for accurate information on homes that have recently sold as well. That data is essential in the process of getting that mortgage on your new house.
But the MLS is even more than those things. It’s a community, a network, a professional organization comprised of some of the largest real estate companies in the state. The group has an independent Board of Directors, a Stakeholder Council made up of five regional Realtor Associations plus NC Licensed Appraisers and NC Licensed Home Inspectors. That group, almost 15,000 of them, pay dues that support the operation of the network and a staff of over two dozen.
In addition to the basic block-and-tackle of operating the network, Triangle MLS also does research, and enforces strict data quality rules including fining Subscribers over $10,000/month for inaccurate data. The University of North Carolina Kenan Flagler School of Business and Triangle MLS have an Internship Program focused on gathering and reporting open and accurate housing statistics for policymakers and leaders in the region.
Finally, Triangle MLS wants to encourage prospective home buyers to watch this channel for new ways to access housing. TMLS supports projects like these, all novel ways for some buyers to become owners.
Our favorite projects are those that allow previously marginalized communities access to equity-producing housing options near transportation and employment centers. Projects like this Cottage project in Raleigh.
Those projects produce communities as well as new opportunities for housing the least housed.
Another favorite example is a project in Alabama called Lincoln Mill Village where I had the honor to serve as Board Chair. The organization diligently watched every parcel in an inner-city neighborhood adjacent to an old, mostly abandoned yarn mill. When a property came up for sale, they would seek donations and buy them. They also actively lobbied remote landowners to sell to them, slowly acquiring over half of the houses in the area. Each property was completely renovated and leased to families and people just starting out.
Taking clients from local recovery programs and Habitat for Humanity, the organization gradually renovated more than 70 houses and flipped the whole neighborhood. The area was so transformed that the organization was forced to move on having been priced out, the community now popular with artists and young families. That’s what success looks like when you have to move on, pictured below.
These kinds of projects, along with traditional development, will likely all be done. Some well, and some not so well. Wherever the demand is this high, business people will capitalize to take advantage of the opportunity, and more supply will come. Triangle MLS’s role is to help make it easier for everyone involved to make data-driven decisions that positively impact the nature of the supply we create.
Conclusion
While Affordability is challenging, Triangle MLS has the oldest, most up-to-date, and most complete information about Affordability available in the area. The leadership and staff of the organization are focused on providing Accurate and Complete information to advance the cause of Home Ownership and the Wealth and well-being of our Communities across the Triangle region.
Projects and Programs are all focused on empowering our Subscribers to better serve their customers, the buyers and sellers of real estate in our area, and on informing the general public about the Value of MLS. These posts are an important aspect of that value since they represent a primary channel through which TMLS describes Affordability and other metrics. Triangle MLS believes that informed, empowered people make the best decisions whether they are first time homebuyers or the Governor of North Carolina so this site, and this information is intended to be useful for both.
This is worth quoting, given where we are. Abraham Lincoln while campaigning across Illinois in 1860 was not popular generally. He was at a campaign event and spoke about worthy local men running for District Attorney, or State Attorney General, or the like, and joked that these men may indeed be elected if not for his name on the ballot. This is from Michael Burlingame – Abraham Lincoln: A Life – Vol. 1, Chapter 16:
Lincoln returned to the statehouse, making his way through a dense crowd of people “seizing his hands, and throwing their arms around his neck, body or legs and grasping his coat or anything they could lay hands on, and yelling and acting like madmen.” (Springfield correspondence by A. C. C., 7 November, Independent Democrat (St. Louis), 7 (Concord, New Hampshire), 22 November 1860.)
He spent the rest of the afternoon at the capitol. He manifested “a lively interest in the election” but “scarcely ever alluded to himself or his candidacy.” Rather he “was interested in the fortunes of the local candidates of his town, county and State and to have heard his remarks one would have concluded that the District Attorneyship of a county in Illinois was of far more importance than the Presidency itself.” At one point “he mentioned a candidate for the Legislature in one of these counties who he hoped would be elected, and he would be, Mr. Lincoln added, ‘if he didn’t find Abe Lincoln too heavy a load to carry on the same ticket.’”
Later “he said that elections in this country were like ‘big boils’ – they caused a great deal of pain before they came to a head, but after the trouble was over the body was in better health than before. He hoped that the bitterness of the canvass would pass away ‘as easily as the core of a boil.’”
Michael Burlingame – Abraham Lincoln: A Life – Vol. 1
So, maybe the greatest American President thought of our elections as a great boil, as in the disorder of the skin!
There was a rash of news stories this week showing MAGA Republicans at a rally voicing support for Vladimir Putin and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. One lady said, referring to the Russian leader, “he’s just taking back what’s his, I don’t see the problem with it.” Similar sentiments regarding support for Russian advances in Crimea and that troubled region were also made at the recent CPAC meeting. Held annually the gathering always produces some hyperbole but in an election year the content is usually especially spicy and this year was extra hot, given the nature of the contest before us this Fall. So, why am I writing a post about an obscure, and quite dead Welshman beneath an early impressionist painting? Because the Welshman saw something that MAGA lady almost certainly has never heard of, people dying of hunger on the richest farmland in the world. People were arrested or even killed for picking leftover grain, gleaning, from harvested fields. Maybe, who knows, if the MAGA lady knew the whole story it might be a foothold on reality for her. Until then she’s another manipulated American basing her views on Kremlin propaganda, again.
We have to start somewhere to get back to the truth.
How about we start with Peter the Great? Or his spiritual successor Catherine the Great? Peter expanded the Russian Empire and dramatically westernized his country in still visible cultural and other changes. He won wars against the Swedes, the Turks, and the Austrians assisted significantly by the Cossacks, natives of the Zaporiga Region in Ukraine and Russia. Culturally the Cossacks built a reputation as fierce defenders of their territory so often tested by invaders from across the ancient world. Later they were allies and mercenaries for armies who sought their expertise and numbers. But they were separate. Peter made deals with them, and so did Catherine. Their language comes from the same ancient Eastern Slavic tradition but it’s different. The people know which is which and they will tell you if you ask, or maybe if you don’t.
They know they are different, ask them.
“I don’t speak Russian” is one of the first things anyone said to me when I went to Kyiv in 1984. The college I went to had a focus on international experiences and I was there with a group of Economics and Finance Professors as their student researchers. The idea was to familiarize a group of students currently forming their opinions and deciding on careers in business with the realities of a Planned Economy. It was an interesting idea and we did manage to learn even with the dramatic amounts of vodka with which we were presented. Vodka in water glasses with fresh oranges. We were studying Russian Language and trying hard to use our words and the kind Ukrainians helped us, of course. But they corrected us anytime we said they spoke Russian. They know Russian, and they can speak Russian, but they do not as a people speak or understand Russian or Russians.
Gareth Jones
So who is the Welshman? Bet you thought I had forgotten the Welshman. Gareth Richard Vaughan Jones (13 August 1905 – 12 August 1935) was a Welsh journalist who in March 1933 first reported in the Western world, without equivocation and under his own name, the existence of the Soviet famine of 1932–1933, now known broadly as The Holodomor. See, the Russians have for generations asserted ownership of lands between the Southern Provinces and The Black Sea. Crimea was sought by Peter that long ago. Putin is just the latest to treat that Sea as a Russian Lake. Stalin asserted State ownership over millions of acres of Ukrainian farmland during his disastrous klepto-communist reign. That’s what Gareth Jones stumbled on while traveling in the area during this period.
Garth Jones spoke Truth, the NYT published Russian propaganda
Jones was a young man, in his twenties, but when he wrote of his experiences and gave a news conference in Berlin, the world took some notice of him. He reported that Stalin’s policies were killing thousands of people. Of course, it turned out to be much worse, certainly millions of people starved in the Holodomor, a word that means “murder by hunger”. Stalin’s policies asserted that The State owned all production from agriculture so all crops were seized from all harvests. Inspectors swept through barns and houses and lofts, caves, hollow trees, and even graveyards with long sticks to find hollow caches of precious grain. Even “gleaning” was outlawed. Gleaners were arrested and summarily executed in the field, for picking up leftovers once primarily food for gulls. French painter Jean-François Millet painted the painting at the top of the page in 1857, lovingly depicting poor peasants picking from the fields. It was controversial with high society when it was released in Paris. Modern Parisians did not like to be reminded that they were vastly outnumbered by masses of subsistence farmers, some close to starvation and desperate. Around the time of Jones’ visit, maybe a million native Ukrainian people died because of a Russian Land Use Policy directed from Moscow, Stalin’s Five Year Plan. And it was only a hundred years ago. (The photo is of a painting called “The Gleaners” at Musee d’Orsay in Paris).
Fake News (again)!
But wait, there’s more! So I know about Gareth, but there is a pattern here that’s more important than this one Welsh guy, as important as Gareth turned out to be. The real issue is not that most people don’t know about Gareth, that MAGA lady certainly doesn’t, it’s really about the media, truth, and a guy named Walter Duranty who wrote for the New York Times at the time as our Gareth. See, when Gareth published his articles and had his press conference Duranty was a Moscow-resident American journalist. He had lived in Moscow for a decade and wrote articles that won the Nobel Prize and were later denounced by The Times and everyone except the Moscow authorities. Duranty was a hack and wrote to please the Dictator in the Kremlin. While he was disgraced, the Nobel Committee has so far refused to withdraw the prize. The result for many Americans, as today, might be that those reading only the headlines might be tricked into believing a foreign power’s successful attempt to cover up their nasty. Stalin certainly did that successfully with the New York Times and the Kremlin mouthpiece Duranty.
If you were Ukrainian, you do not have an affinity in your heart for Russia. I’ve been there. I know Ukrainians find one and ask them if you don’t believe. They want to Westernize, like most modern Europeans. They want self-determination. They want their borders to stick and to work their differences out with their neighbors through the actions of a modern Civil Society. Drone wars. Indiscriminate attacks on civilian targets, hospitals, and nuclear power facilities do not indicate the presence of now widely accepted rules of civil order. Putin violated those rules and continues to press any advantage, including attacking the soft right flank of the American electorate. Fake news, modern Durantys, are out there today convincing lightly-educated Americans that Russia has some historical right to the homes of other people. They are not historians so I can only assume they got this from Talk Radio or Ticker Carlson or some other promoter of the fringe.
Please, if you value peace, truth, and freedom, push back on the merchants of hate and doom who push these sick ideas. They are only trying to manipulate Americans into believing their lies as a tool to erode support for the people of Ukraine. Don’t be a tool.
PS: Read more about fake news, the Kuwaiti Ambassador’s daughter who testified about things she’d never seen to encourage the US to defend her country. here.
What a crazy idea, right? What if all the MLSs competed every four years to see who was the best? A race for the gold! Some friends are setting up a new Olympic Sport and I am following their progress, watching how that’s done. It’s an interesting process. It starts with a World Championship series on all five continents where the best in each country compete to be the best on their continent. That happens every four years during the Olympic Off Years and is the feeder process for picking the Olympic team. So there is a huge infrastructure of people, buildings, rules, marketing; all the things.
For MLSs, what if we took the regions in the nine regions, as defined by the Oracle of Swanepoel. Each region would host competitions in the approved “Olympic Sports”. The regional winners form the Olympic Team from each country, and they move up to compete in the Olympics. I love it. The big question for me is:
What are the MLS Olympic Sports? The real Olympics have these criteria:
International Popularity: The sport should have global appeal with widespread participation and fanbase.
History and Tradition: The sport should have a significant level of history and tradition, indicating a solid foundation.
Governance and Organization: The sport should be governed by an international federation complying with the Olympic Charter, demonstrating effective organization, anti-doping efforts, and ethical practices.
Athlete Representation: The sport should provide equal opportunities for both male and female athletes, promoting gender equality.
Technical Requirements: The sport should have standardized rules, a well-defined competition format, and suitable facilities.
Appeal to Youth: The sport should attract the younger generation, keeping the Olympic program dynamic.
Media Coverage and Public Interest: The sport should generate sufficient media coverage and public interest globally.
Anti-Doping Compliance: The International Federation of the sport must adhere to anti-doping regulations and ensure a clean and fair competition environment.
Given those criteria, we can put together some ideas:
Data Downhill (syndication):
Definition: A prime function of any MLS is distributing our Subscriber’s data to the various websites that display the listings. There are literally hundreds of them from Zillow to the smallest Mom & Pop IDX vendor.
Competition: A draft listing is prepared and, at the whistle, is added to the competitor’s system. Auditors from Accenture and the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research (ISR) measure how many microseconds it takes for all accounts to receive, and display, the new listing, with attachments and media.
Sharpshooting (accuracy):
Definition: The center of confidence and integrity, data accuracy is a feature of any MLS system and without it nothing else matters.
Competition: Auditors from Accenture analyze a sample of listing data using a carefully guarded randomized selection formula (alphabetize by street number and pick the last 30 odd-numbered MLS numbers). Check the address against CASS, the price against an AVM, the lat/long against the GeoCode, required fields against known datasets, etc. The winner has the highest composite score.
Prose (remarks):
Definition: The description of the property for sale is a rare opportunity for creativity. From Haribo Sugar-Free Gummy Bears to Three Wolf Moon t-shirts, Amazon reviews are rich sources for creative writing. Realtors have few chances to add value in the rapid-fire process of marketing a house. Public Remarks is a rare example.
Competition: Professional copyrighters (or ChatGPT) review a carefully selected (#2) cohort of Public Remarks are selected and analyzed for 72, or a number that can be factored into 72, elements of style. The winner has the highest composite score.
Aesthetics (media):
Definition: Photos, videos, virtual tours, are the data elements that get all the attention. The quality of the media probably matters more than anything, besides the price, when marketing a property.
Competition: AI photo tools line up to do their best. A Jury of Visual Artists scores all media for beautifulness. The winner has the highest composite score.
What else? This is fun. I want to do it now, maybe in Salt Lake City or Lake Placid like the Winter Olympics.
I saw a penny in my change today. I noticed it because it was imperfect. I love the new quarters and the designs but sometimes an old one catches my eye. This one is from 1964, the year I was born, so no wonder it looks worn. How many pockets has that thing been in since 1964?
A very (very) successful and also friendly local Durham broker asked me a question in an email the other day.
Her: OK, I see that we have to enter listings through the “Listing Management” button on the Dashboard. Fine. Which system should I use to set up searches?
Me: Great question. This is what our Choice project is all about! You (and all Subscribers) have three of the most popular MLS platforms from which to choose for searching. The Listing Manager is only for adding and editing listings, there is a lite search function in that app in case you need to look up a listing for editing. But searching, and listing alerts, and prospecting happens in one of the three MLS options.
If I were in your shoes, I would set up a simple search in each system using a personal email address, not your TMLS email address. That way you can see what a Client will see when there is a listing alert. Paragon, Matrix, Flexmls, Homespotter, all do these alerts a little differently.
See what you think about them
Share them with a client
Take a poll
Click through them back into the Client Portal for each platform and check out each experience.
Paragon has the Collaboration Center, Matrix has OneHome, FBS has its Client Portal and each has its strengths and weaknesses.
So, if you are happy with Paragon then you would set up your searches like always. If you have trouble or get weird results using your current searches, try recreating them. There were over 500 changes to the database when it was translated to national standards in November causing some existing searches to be impacted. To be safe, I would reset them.
The list is always kind of, what, a little surprising I guess. Weathervanes came out this year so I expected wall-to-wall Jason Isbell. I could have told you King of Oklahoma would be the top song. The Pop playlist got more airtime than I thought, how about that Harry Styles next to Taylor Swift. Olivia Rodrigo almost made the top ten, love her energy. And one song from The Greatest Showman soundtrack and some atmospheric tracks down the list, Theivery Corporation, Nirvana, Simon and Garfunkel from back in the day, closed out at 100 by Tempted from Squeeze. Kind of a fun list really!
Why Did TMLS Change the System? Triangle made the decision late last year to do two things in 2023: translate the database to the national standard, and offer choice in MLS systems to Subscribers. The first part involved combing through every term in every category and comparing them to RESO, the official national dictionary of real estate terms. This required hundreds of small changes in our terms, and they are all reflected in the new Listing Management system. The benefits of this are many:
Consumers looking at other markets will see terms they recognize, instead of local jargon that might be well known to us but is foreign to people who are accustomed to the standard.
Matching terms allows us to data share with other MLSs with relative ease. Now that we have this milestone behind us, watch for announcements about pending data shares with other North Carolina MLSs.
Software based on the standards works everywhere. So, products can be built once and published everywhere. This materially increases the availability of these services because it dramatically reduces the cost to deploy and maintain them.
Now, with the database translated, TMLS was able to move to the second part of the plan: introduce the concept of Choice.
Front End of Choice: In the past, the MLS Board of Directors chose the MLS software and all 15,000 users were forced to use it for almost everything. Other markets such as California Regional MLS, the country’s largest, NorthStar MLS, MRED, and others offer more than one MLS interface so it’s a new but not original concept. By allowing Subscribers to choose between the three leading MLS platforms, we force those companies to compete more urgently for your business than they ever have. Now, you have until the end of February to try the three leading systems. We know that choice is going to be popular with the membership as soon as the data levels out.
Very briefly, three choices are:
Paragon from ICE: Paragon is a popular MLS platform and has been the only platform for TMLS Subscribers for the last several years. It is popular for its consumer-facing features and ease of use. ICE is a large, publicly traded company based in Atlanta and recently acquired the former Black Knight Financial Services, the makers of Paragon. You can learn more about ICE here and here, as well as our recent Podcast here.
Matrix from CoreLogic: Matrix has the most subscribers of all MLS providers. It is popular for its depth and integration with public records through its Realist platform. CoreLogic is owned by two venture capital firms: Stone Point Capital and Insight Partners. You can learn more about CoreLogic here and here, as well as our recent Podcast here.
Flexmls from FBS: Flexmls is also very popular and has about the same number of subscribers nationally as Paragon. It is known for its flexibility, mapping, focus on mobility, and a consistent experience from computer to phone and back. FBS is by far the smallest of the three, and is 100% Employee Owned. You can learn more about FBS here and here, as well as our recent Podcast here.
Listings, updates, photos, and documents managed with the Listing Management system will copy into Paragon, Matrix, Flexmls, and the other systems at roughly the same time. After launch on Nov 29, it will take some time for the systems to sync and for mapping errors to be fixed. At some point, hopefully this year, we have a design to make those updates instantaneous (using webhooks, for data scientists in the audience).
Several people responded to that, and felt a connection. I assume these people have been frustrated, and later learned that the “rock” they were pushing uphill, the thing that frustrated them, turned out to be the Universe and not some person, or rule. In hindsight, it was never something they could have influenced.
Stay with me… I bet some of the salmon swimming upstream are really frustrated by those waterfalls. while others are having fun. Some of them are probably competition-Salmon, trying to outdo each other, to see which one does the best leap. 20% are griping about the whole thing. Likely talking about the old days when the falls were higher or the water was colder. When bears were bears and fish were men, or something.
Arguing with reality reminds me of the futility of griping. If your lot is to swim, you should learn to love the leaping.
Personally, I think cancer taught me this lesson. I know that seems like a tangent but, again, stay with me.
Sitting in an exam room on the 14th floor of a hospital in downtown Philadelphia, an intensely earnest genetic counselor shared with me, and my wife, that my cancer was likely “terminal”, her word. She showed me a scatterplot diagram illustrating the disease outcomes for a thousand or so patients in my cohort, people with the same type tumor according to the tumor’s DNA . The dots were all deaths, dates on the chart indicating how long after diagnosis.
In the moment, the dots looked like a murmuration, where birds fly in a tight group all together, with a leading edge and a stream of dots tapering off. Not many people died right away so, left to right, there were only a few dots on the left but they grew in density moving to the right, sort of like the pattern the birds make. Before twelve months, on the chart, there were only a few. Twelve to twenty-four months, there were dozens. Twenty-four to thirty-six months, the dots melt together into clumps. Thirty-six to Forty-eight months still dense but starting to taper off. Then, four years and out, there are fewer dots than in the first year.
The counsellor struggled to tell me that meant, based on the experience of the people in the cohort, I was not going to live more than about forty months, most likely less. Things changed for me and my family that day, but it took months of therapy to make sense of it.
In 2008, after ten years in business, the other founding partner at my company retired and I became CEO as well as President. So, in 2011, I had been in charge for three years and my company had just launched a new software product. It was a huge deal and cost millions to execute. I had speaking engagements all over the country on the schedule including a high-profile panel discussion at the Clareity MLS Executive Conference in Scottsdale AZ. Plus, my wife was scheduled to go with me. Since we were going to be empty nesters in the fall when our second daughter went to college, there were big plans.
But, life had other plans. After the diagnosis, I went back to the hotel and started making calls to my team telling them I could not make it. I suggested we push back our release plans and cancel the trips. My daughter called and said she was reconsidering going off for college and staying home.
Instead of cancelling everything, my team stepped in and did all the work stuff with confidence and ability. Several stepped into senior roles, maybe a little early, and are still killing it out there in the world, including my brother. Amazing, good things came of it.
I had to focus on setting my family up for success after I was gone, and maybe even surviving although the odds were very low. I went on to get two kinds of chemo, plaque radiation behind the eye, lots of lasers, three surgeries; basically everything they could throw at it and I lived. And the kid went to college and, so far at least, everyone lived happily.
I did not learn patience easily, and I still struggle. But I did learn this huge take-away: the universe does not care about my expectations. After all of this, I made a list of things that are most important to me. When I was finished, I found that I personally did not make the list. Everything on the list was about someone else and all of it is more important than me: my wife’s happiness, even her future relationships if I don’t make it. My daughters’ futures, my granddaughter’s happiness, leaving the place better than I found it, supporting people who need a hand, I mean, those things will last and I won’t. None of us will.
In the old paradym there is one system and one price for all members of the MLS, generally referred to as “subscribers”. Associations have “Members”, MLSs have “Subscribers”. The price is negotiated by the MLS Committee or Board of Directors in each city with the assistance their staff and counsel. MLSs vendors generally bundle services such as Tax Data,Statistics, Showing Scheduling, and the like into the price which ends up being presented to the MLS Committee/BoD as a Price Per Member per Month. The bigger the MLS, the smaller the price per subscriber, because all Subscribers pay whether they ever actually login or not. That’s called a Site License and it’s how almost all MLSs operate today, so that’s what it cost today. But what should MLS cost? Let’s think about what MLS-Next might look like without the one-size-fits-all nonsense.
What Should MLS Cost?
So, for illustration purposes, a 1,000 member MLS is paying $10/subscriber/month for their MLS software. That comes with an input form to collect the data encoded with the MLS’s specific business rules so the data complies with MLS Rules & Regs as well as other data integrity rules. For example, the price can’t be zero, the listing agent ID has to be a valid, the closed date can’t be prior to the list date, and literally hundreds of others. In addition to capturing the data, the software will also include rule-based change forms, automated processes that expire listings based on dates and business rules. Also reporting from Consumer Reports to CMAs and Multi-property flyers, there are dozens of those and most also include a Report Builder so Subscribers can create unlimited styles and options for their clients. The MLS will also include support for a handful of integrations with Tax Data, Rental Data, outside reporting services, and integrations. All that for $10,000/month or about $120,000/year on a 3-5 year contract.
In the standard environment the 1,000 users all have to use the same software to both manage their listing inventory and also their customers. A core function of the MLS is of course to capture the data in an organized way, as we described above, but then most Subscribers also use the MLS to send updates to their clients. Subscribers use the MLS to describe the parameters a buyer is looking for in a new house, and to send them an email when something new comes on the market or something changes. This drip marketing function is a core service delivered by the Subscriber to their clients and most, according to a recent survey, use their MLS for this. So the emails every customer in the market are receiving from their Agents are, the same.
Fast forward to 2023, November 29th to be specific, and the 16,000 Subscribers in the Triangle MLS will find that the data, the listings that we capture with our rule-based forms, has been separated from that second part. The software Triangle users decide to license to talk to their clients will be up to them, not me and my staff at the MLS. And, to begin with, there will be three: Paragon, the one all 16,000 use now, plus two of the other national leaders in the MLS space: FBS and CoreLogic. Its a goal I have had for a long time, and not just me, it’s a goal our industry has been working towards for at least a decade. To push the purchase decision out of the MLS Board Room and into the offices of our Brokers and Agents.
Maybe it’s a little like IDX software in our industry. The MLS does not dictate who our Brokers can use to power listing search on their websites. They have to sign a Third Party License Agreement since they will be holding MLS data on behalf of the Broker, but we know how to make that easy. We support thousands of those sites from hundreds, certainly dozens, of IDX vendors. Its an active marketplace with a wide universe of prices from free to thousands of dollars a month.
So, what should MLS cost?
Who knows. Thankfully in America we mostly still believe in the power of the market to answer questions like that. At launch in November all options will cost the same. Base MLS membership costs $X and comes with the ability to add and edit the listings plus one of the three MLS systems. To add a second system it costs an additional $Y, a third is the same, $Y. So, to be clear that’s $X a month for one, $X+Y for two, and $X+$Y+$Y) for three. In dollars, say X=$50 and Y=$25 so $50 for one, $75 for two, and $100 for three. Those prices are subject to change of course and likely will change. I think it’s strange that they are the same. Like if you went to a restaurant and everything on the menu was $39. That would be strange, and would mean there was some funky math happening back in the kitchen.
That means the answer to our question, what should MLS cost, depends on who you are. Right now the options cost the same to make the transition easier for our 16,000 subscribers for whom all of this is new and confusing. But that’s the only reason they cost the same and that will always be the reality of the marketplace, it almost can’t. Those conversations have lead to some really fun questions. So, if Brokers get to choose whatever options the MLS software companies can work onto the Dashboard, what would a product look like that cost $250? Or $2500? What if a team could choose a complete customer engagement system from 1000 Watt or Agency McKenna? The MLS could automate the property and license data sets and provide programatic access to everything through our shiny new API.
On the other end of that spectrum we already anticipate a $50 option that does not come with an MLS system. Brokers and Agents working for certain tech-heavy national brands do not want or need to use Paragon or Matrix or any of those platforms because they have their own. Soon, when can receive as well as send data through a rules-based API, Brokers with the right tech will submit listings from their own platforms and never need to use MLS software at all. Their people can work entirely within the firms branded environment and never leave. That’s optimal for any business. So, when they signup in the future, they will pick a new API-Key-Only Option which still includes full MLS membership but no software, since they don’t need it.
Either way, whether it’s $25 or $2 or $2,500, the MLS of the future will support them all, but we won’t compel the use of any of them. That seems like a decision best left to the real estate professionals themselves.
Standard Operating Procedure for MLSs has, admittedly, been bad for innovation. Terrible, really.
For my thirty years in the business, there has been one way to enter listings, and one way to work with them: through whatever MLS software some Board committee picked. Then, every Realtor and appraiser in the market was forced to use that software for everything. For three to five years until, just when everyone gets accustomed to using it, the committee votes to switch again. It’s great. People love that.
To make things worse, the person leading the MLS is usually also the CEO of the Association of Realtors that usually owns and operates the MLS. Not always, there are some big ones that have their own leadership but in most places, the MLS Director is also the Association CEO. These folks usually come up through the Association as Government Affairs, Finance, or Membership Directors, often Legal. And, they are some of my closest friends and a big reason why the industry has been so fun and rewarding. But they are not, as a rule, Subject Matter Experts when it comes to technology.
So, that creates a situation where a non-technical management person is leading a group of non-technical real estate people making what are fundamentally technical decisions. An unfortunate but not terribly surprising outcome of this dynamic is a general over-reliance on the vendors to do, well, everything.
Black Knight, CoreLogic, and Flexmls, and to a lesser extent, Rapattoni, DynaConnections, SEI, and, back in the day, Solid Earth have dominated the MLS-tech space for decades. These are all very good companies run by friends that I trust and respect. No. Seriously, I mean that. I won’t even start to try and name them all, they know who they are, and they know those relationships mean a great deal to me. Despite my personal affinity and respect for them, in my new role I now see how this is underserving most MLSs. The vendors have too much power and control, their agendas dominate strategy, and they sometimes forget, the companies not the people, who owns this information in the first place. I am thinking of some mortgage giants looking at MLS as a source of leads. Just because MLS Subscribers use Software A to store their leads, does not mean the publishers of Software A have any access or rights to use or even see the confidential information stored inside Software A.
If I store my tax returns in a mini storage warehouse, the owner of the warehouse does not have the right to access, see, or use any information inside the leased space. This is no different, and TMLS will never sign a License Agreement that challenges the ownership of our Subscriber’s confidential information. So, before we get to the architecture of “getting out of the way”, let’s pause for a moment to remind ourselves that we are talking about protecting someone else’s valuable property left with us for safekeeping.
Like an original song, painting, or movie, the creator of those works owns them. In our context, the Intellectual Property, or IP, is centered around the listing agreement. Thats the contract between the Listing Brokerage hired by the owner to sell their, house, farm, condo, or whatever, and the Owner. The broker owns the contract, and usually the Exclusive Right to Sell the property in question. She owns the photos she took, or a license to them if she hired a photographer, and most documents she uploaded describing the property. She uploaded this material to our website, entrusting it to us, the MLS, to share it with authorized real estate professionals solely for the purpose of marketing and selling the property. It is her intellectual property that, when added to all the others, creates the critical mass, the positive network effect that defines the collective and creates the MLS’s core value.
So, at the MLS, our job is to build and maintain that list. And to add to it where we can, and to constantly check the records for errors, potential fraud, inequity, or other undesirable economic outcomes. Our job is not to build or even think too much about the software our Subscribers use in their own businesses. As we’ve described, almost all MLSs choose one system for an exclusive contract term. All listings must be entered through that platform, and all searches and prospecting, statistics, public records access, CMAs, drip marketing happen there too. Unless the Realtor or their Broker has heavily invested in their own tech, most Subscribers rely almost exclusively on the MLS software to operate their businesses.
But what if we changed all of that.
The particular software platform a Subscriber chooses to use the information in the MLS is less important to us. Mainly, we don’t want to be a roadblock to any novel way an innovator my find to incorporate the information into their businesses. Forcing people to use one interface feels like monoculture. Like it’s anti-choice, anti-diversity, anti-openness. We don’t want to be any of those things.
For the last several years in The Triangle region, as most places, to enter a listing there was one option: Black Knight‘s Paragon system. Lack of choice is not the only issue here, what if Paragon was down for days or weeks like Rapattoni’s MLS system in August 2023? If that was the only way to manipulate the listings we would be down. That is an unacceptable business risk.
TMLS Network Diagram September 2023
Because system architecture is one of those things I needed to understand as a software CEO, I spent considerable time studying, attending seminars, and interviewing technical experts to try and learn what an “optimal” configuration might be. Engineers and our friends at RESO have been futurecasting the optimal future MLS for years and, happily, the answer is not new, and does not require new inventions to make it real. Other industries have figured this out and built systems that effectively communicate in a rule-based way so that related systems can work together and scale through automation, like the one illustrated in the TMLS Network Diagram from Sept ’23.
What are the building blocks?
Standard Data: It starts with data that is similar enough to be shared across boundaries without unnecessary and inefficient ETL processes. RESO originally reported over 500 types of “status” and more than 400 existed in only one MLS. It’s really hard to share listings when the “threads” don’t line up. Triangle Data is compliant with RESO’s latest Data Dictionary, version 2.0.
Standard Rules: If rules are different it produces a race to the bottom, meaning the MLS with the least rules weaken the viability for everyone and make the whole dataset less or even unreliable. All five Triangle Stakeholders abide by the same rules.
Open Data Policy: For Subscribers, Triangle makes data available in multiple ways including all three major MLS interfaces from Black Knight, CoreLogic, and FBS, as well as high-availability, RESTful APIs for Subscribers requiring only data. This Front-End-of-Choice was made possible because of the years of work at RESO normalizing hundreds of disparate datasets.
Enriching the Data: When a Subscriber enters a listing into the system, Triangle checks other trusted databases for things like green energy features that may be registered at the address, or whether fiber internet is available. The TMLS system adds these fields to the information provided by the Listing Broker to make it easy for her to provide those choices to her clients.
Compliance and Auditing: We can check to see if the property described by the Listing brokerage matches trusted data sources from Government and other places. Artificial intelligence routines constantly scan the images and documents uploaded along with the listings tagging aspects of the information. Missing and conflicting information is reported to the Listing Brokerage who is prompted to improve the accuracy of the listing and the system by confirming or challenging the alert. The result is a dataset that is more reliable and more complete than other sources of real estate information.
So for all of those reasons, coming this fall, Triangle MLS is going to be MLS agnostic, Front-End-of-Choice, or just “Choice”. All three of the major MLS platforms will be available to Subscribers of TMLS. Black Knight‘s Paragon system used now by all 15,000+ members will remain the default MLS platform for all users and will continue to work as normal. But if the Subscriber prefers CoreLogic Matrix or FBS’s Flexmls, or they have their own platform, they can choose none, one, two, or all three. Triangle’s job will be about ensuring the data is accurate and complete in all supported interfaces. The days of steering Subscribers to one platform or another are over in the Triangle.
Multiple ways to look at weather data.
That configuration is something like apps on a phone. I have three weather apps that do slightly different things. All three use the same National Weather Service data to produce their displays (by accessing an API), but one has a cooler radar, another has better alerts, and another has nicer hurricane maps. I bounce back and forth between them during severe weather. Maybe MLS will be like that in the future. Instead of being married to one for years, the Subscribers get to compare and move around if they want to, or use one for some things and another for something else.
Spreading the data around also reduces single points of failure. If there are multiple ways to get to the data, one or more of them could be offline and there would still be a way to do business. The benefits of this architecture are many, and the costs are present but manageable. It means that all three will be more expensive on a per unit basis, since no one gets an exclusive. But that also means that we will never tell Black Knight to uninstall Paragon. Never. Can other Black Knight customers say that? As long as my Subscribers want to use Paragon, we will support it. That changes the relationship in a material way, in a positive way. Yet another reason to change the way we do things and, finally, get out of the way of innovation. Its part of becoming the best MLS in the business.
Interested in PropTech stuff? Watch for more on Triangle’s social feeds and occasionally on this site. Also, come out to PropTechSouth.com, the South’s Premier Property Technology event of the year.
