Name Our Website!
Sunday 30 March 2008
MFRMLS is currently working with MarketLinx, the developer of MLXchange, to produce a consumer MLS website, similar to REALTOR.com. Once live, the new website will become a tremendous asset to our subscribers by providing a portal where buyers can begin their search -- a search that may lead them to your listing.
While the new site is under development, we are looking for a good website name. Will it be www.floridarealsearch.com? Or www.mlshomebuzz.com? We think you can come up with a better name, and there is a $100 gift card in it for you if you do.
Here's what to do:
- Think of a good name for our new website.
- Email your website name to contest@mfrmls.com by Friday, April 4.
- Include your name and phone number in your Email.
- We will review all the names, and if yours is the one we pick, we’ll award you a $100 gift card!
Here are some tips for picking a good website name:
- It should be as short as possible.
- It should describe what the site does.
- It should be easy to remember and easy to spell.
- You can check with a domain registrar such as www.godaddy.com to see if someone else has already secured a website with the name you like.
Good luck! We look forward to hearing your good ideas. Remember, send your website name to contest@mfrmls.com by Friday, April 4.
2008-2009 Subscription Fees
Sunday 30 March 2008
Your 2008-2009 subscription fees are due Monday, June 16. Here’s what you need to know about your fees and how to pay online and on time.
- Each year subscribers are billed for their prorated portion of the MFRMLS annual operating costs. MFRMLS operates on a break-even budget designed to provide you with the maximum service and support at the lowest possible cost.
- Your 2008-2009 subscription fees are due on or before Monday, June 16.
- Your fees will be posted to our online payment center the first week of May. The online payment center will have an itemized invoice of your fees. Once your invoice has been posted, you can pay online at any time. You can access the online payment center from our website.
- You will receive an E-Bill via email that will show your balance due and let you know when your invoice has been loaded to the online payment center. You will not receive an invoice in the mail; however, in case our E-Bill fails to reach you, you will receive a postcard in the mail alerting you when your invoice is online and ready for you to pay.
- Our electronic billing and payment system provides significant savings that translates to lower subscription fees for you. We strongly encourage you to pay your fees using our online payment center. If you choose to pay by check or by phone, you will be assessed a $10.00 personal attention fee.
- Late payments will be assessed a $40.00 late payment fee.
Check back here for updates regarding your 2008-2009 subscription fees as we get closer to the June 16 due date. Thank your for your participation in MFRMLS!
Englewood Area Board of REALTORS® on MLXchange
Sunday 30 March 2008
You will soon have access to Englewood listings
On April 8, listings from members of the Englewood Area Board of REALTORS® will begin appearing on MLXchange. Englewood will be the second of five Southwest Florida REALTOR® Associations to integrate their MLS with MFRMLS. The Venice Area Board of REALTORS® integrated in March, and in the coming months, you can look forward to seeing listings from the Manatee Association of REALTORS® Punta Gorda – Port Charlotte – North Port Association of REALTORS®, and the Sarasota Association of REALTORS®.
Once all the new associations are onboard and integrated, MFRMLS subscribers will be part of a network of real estate professionals that stretches from the northern tip of Lee County to West Volusia County. It’s a network that includes 13 Associations of REALTORS® and over 35,000 subscribers. That makes you part of one of the largest, most progressive multiple listing services in the country.
Compliance Corner
Sunday 30 March 2008
Top 5 Violations for February 2008
This year, fines for listing violations are down considerably. The decrease in fines is due, in large part, to our new policy of issuing electronic warning letters and allowing agents 24 hours to correct violations we discover. The vast majority of violations are corrected very quickly: thank you for helping us keep your MLS more accurate than ever.
Now we have turned our attention to decreasing the number of electronic warning letters that we send. Here are tips on how you can avoid the Top Listing Violations:
Photos
Our new photo policy makes it impossible for you to list a property without a photo, but remember: the first photo on a listing (except vacant land) must be a frontal exterior photo. Also make sure that your yard sign or other contact information does not appear in any of the photos.
Tax IDs
Formatting Tax ID’s can be tricky. That’s why we provide a Tax Autopop feature that automatically fills in a proper Tax ID straight from the county tax records. If you use Tax Autopop, you’ll never receive a fine for an improperly formatted Tax ID.
Improperly Placed Contact Information
Contact information should be placed only in the REALTOR® Only Remarks field; however, we frequently see this information show up in Virtual Tours, and the Public/Additional Remarks and the Driving Directions field. Each of these fields is visible to a buyer when a listing is emailed from MLXchange. If a listing contains information on how to contact the listing agent, a buyer’s agent may be less inclined to share it, and that defeats MFRMLS’s core mission of facilitating cooperation between agents and brokers.
MongoFAX
Sunday 30 March 2008
Turn faxes into scanned PDF documents
MongoFAX allows you to fax a document to a single toll-free 1-800 number and have that document delivered immediately as an Adobe® PDF file to any Email address you specify. Using MongoFAX allows you to improve the quality of transmitted documents, send to multiple recipients at once, and easily archive documents electronically.
Document Quality
Real estate documents are often faxed two or three times in a single transaction, and by the time the last party receives them, the documents are often illegible. With MongoFAX, a document is faxed only once, and it can be forwarded electronically over and over with no loss of quality.
Multiple Recipients
With one fax, you can send a document to as many Email address as you specify, including your own, making MongoFAX a real time saver.
Electronic Archiving
Because MongoFAX converts your fax into a single PDF document, that document can be easily archived on any computer. Many subscribers send MongoFAXes to themselves simply because it is the easiest way to create an electronic file for a large document.
Fast and Secure
MongoFAX™ competes with overnight delivery, courier, postal mail, traditional fax, scanning and archiving services. MongoFAX™ empowers anyone to send paper to any of the world's two billion email users. The service automatically injects unique customer specific HTML branding, color logos and URLs with every scanned transmission providing a new vehicle for centrally-controlled, point-to-point, location-based, push marketing. All you need is the Email Cover Page, which is provided on the Home page of the MLXchange, under the Services and Tools link, in the Resources section. You can download a copy of the MongoFax cover sheet now.
Benefits of MongoFAX:
- Delivers paper instantly to any email address in the world as a PDF
- Saves up to 90% on courier, overnight and mail costs
- Dramatically accelerates the speed of business transactions
- Gives your clients the flexibility of receiving paper documents digitally
- Digitally archives every paper document to your email
- Automatically converts paper to Adobe® PDF
- Provides security and privacy for confidential documents
- Adds legal integrity over traditional faxing
- 800-number eliminates all fax related Telco charges
- Sends documents to multiple people at no additional cost
- Requires no added hardware or software to buy and install
ShowingAssist (ShowingTime)
Sunday 30 March 2008
A secure, online environment for listing and requesting showing instructions
ShowingAssist helps real estate professionals schedule showings online, saving them from unnecessary phone calls and busy work. The benefits of ShowingAssist include: saved time, fewer phone calls, more showings, better client service, better accountability, and better security—which can all lead to a quicker home sale.
ShowingAssist features include:
- Interactive calendar showing “open hours” to help the showing agent know when the listing is available to show
- Showing agents can request either specific showing times or a window of time when they want to show a listing
- ShowingAssist remembers confirmation preferences of the showing agent for rapid-entry of showing requests
- An online note-pad allows the showing agent to ask questions or add comments as they would over the phone
- Email notifications to the showing agent, listing agent and/or office front-desk improve accountability and eliminate uncertainty
- Showing instruction mode allows for instant showing confirmation in order to save time and get the listing shown
- Online reports act as a reference to the office or listing agent
- Listing activity reports help the listing agent to manage the seller’s expectations
- Optional showing feedback tool system will send an email to the showing agent with a web-based feedback form on the day of the showing
View valuable information and demonstrations on how ShowingAssist operates.
Venice Area Board of Realtors® on MLXchange
Monday 24 March 2008
You now have access to listings in Venice
You may have noticed that since March 4, listings from the Venice Area Board of Realtors® have been popping up in MLXchange. MFRMLS is getting bigger, and the Venice Area Board of Realtors® is just one of five Realtor® associations from Southwest Florida that joined MFRMLS.
Along with new subscribers and new listings, you also may have noticed some new fields in listing maintenance. These fields have been added to accommodate the specific needs of the southwest associations, and you may find some of them useful yourself.
Listing Agent 2
Sometimes more than two agents cooperate on a sale. For those instances, we have added an additional field so that the 3rd player in a real estate transaction can share credit for the sale.
Home Features
Do you have clients interested in buying a Green home? The new “Home Features” field has four pick list options for environmentally friendly properties. The options include: FGBC Green Certified Home, LEED Certified Building, Florida Certified Yard, and Green Features.
Water Features
We have new Waterfront Extras and Water View pick list options to accommodate for the wider variety of shorelines in Southwest Florida.
In April, you’ll begin seeing listings from the Englewood Area Board of Realtors® and in the coming months you can look forward to welcoming the Manatee Association of Realtors®, the Punta Gorda – Port Charlotte – North Port Association of Realtors®, and the Sarasota Association of Realtors®.
MFRMLS Subscription Fees Due June 16
Tuesday 18 March 2008
Look for your E-Bill in early May
We’re getting close to the end of our annual billing cycle, and that means in a couple months your 2008-2009 subscriptions fee will be due.
Just as last year, you will receive an E-Bill via email in May with your subscription fees and a guide on how to pay online. But like always, you won’t need your E-Bill to pay online; you can simply log in to our online payment center. We won’t post your invoice until May, but in the meantime, now is a good time to check your online account and make sure you don’t have any outstanding balances.
You can access the current online payment center now to check your current balance.
By the time we issue your E-Bill, we will have a new online payment center. We’ll provide you with a link to the new payment center as soon as it comes available.
Even if our E-Bill doesn’t find you via email, you will also receive a postcard reminder once your invoice has been posted on our online payment center.
Electronic billing and payment helps keep our operating costs low, allowing us to provide the maximum benefits for your dollars. Thank you for your participation in MFRMLS!
Property Photos
Tuesday 18 March 2008
A frontal exterior shot must be first
Since we implemented our new photo policy on February 27, listing violations for missing property photos have virtually disappeared. However, we have seen an increase in other violations relating to displaying photos on MLXchange.
All listings except vacant land must include a frontal exterior photo. MLXchange allows you to upload several photos, and you are encouraged to upload several photos of different parts of a property, but MFRMLS rules require that the very first photo be the frontal exterior photo.
Also, remember to make sure your yard sign is not visible in photographs, and don’t load agent portraits, company logos, or other contact information in the property photos fields.
Listing Community Pools
Tuesday 18 March 2008
A community pool is a nice feature, and it is worth mentioning in a property listing. But having access to a community pool and having a private pool in the backyard are two completely different things.
In the listing maintenance section of MLXchange, we offer a “Pool (Home) Y/N” field. If a property has a private pool, click “yes,” but if it does not, even if there is a community pool, click “no.”
The proper place to note a community pool is in the “Community Features” field.
Identity Sharing Comes to MLXchange
Monday 03 March 2008
New feature available on March 4, 2008
Identity Sharing allows subscribers to share their MLXchange accounts with other authorized users within their office. This allows an assistant or a sales team partner to log in as the primary user, and make changes as that person. It is a great way for busy Realtors® to get the most out of their support staff.
Here is how to make Identity Sharing work for you:
Once Identity Sharing is activated on March 4, 2008, after you log in to MLXchange, header you’ll see a link that reads: “Signed in as (your name)”. Click on that link to view the Sign-in Dialog Box.
The Sign-in Dialog Box contains two fields: one contains members you can sign is as, the other contains members who can sign in as you. These fields will be empty until you either invite other subscribers or they invite you.
At the bottom of the Sign-in Dialog Box you will see options to “Create new shared identity” or “Delete selected shared identity.”
When you choose “Create new shared identity,” you’ll be able to search for other subscribers in your office, and you can select them to share your identity. In order to set up a shared identity, the person must already have an MLXchange account, and they must be in your office. If you are in a company with multiple branches, you’ll only be able to share identities with subscribers in your own office.
Signing in is as someone else
Once you have signed as a different user, you have full access to all the features of MLXchange. MLXchange will know that you are “signed in as,” and it will keep track of what changes you make. Should you ever have questions about changes that were made to your account while someone was signed in as you, contact the MFRMLS Help Desk and they will be able to give you details.
To get back to your own account, you can simply log out and log back in, or you can select “myself” from the Sign-In dialog box.
If you are someone who will be frequently signing in as another user, you can select the “Show Sign-In As option when I log in” check box to make this feature more convenient.
If you want to know more about Identity Sharing, you can view this instructional guide.