Author: admin

By Susanne Dwyer

The National Association of REALTORS® (NAR) has amped up its efforts to ensure REALTOR® association-owned MLSs implement RESO standards. NAR acted after an analysis determined there were many MLSs non-compliant with the standards. Adoption is a policy requirement.

Approximately 90 MLSs were notified and given 60 days (from the date of the letter) to respond—roughly until the beginning of April. MLSs that do not respond within the window will lose coverage under NAR’s Master Professional Liability Insurance Policy.

According to NAR and RESO, to date, many MLSs have responded, and most have already begun implementation.

“As NAR CEO, it’s my priority to keep the association and it’s 1.3 million members ahead of industry evolution, and one way I’m doing that is by ensuring the creation and adoption of industry-wide data standards and that all REALTOR® association-owned MLSs are compliant with RESO standards,” says Bob Goldberg, CEO of NAR. “This will improve industry-wide access to consistent, real property data and allow increased competition for new technology systems that will bring huge benefits to real estate professionals and better services for buyers and sellers.

“Today, the number of REALTOR® association-owned MLSs that have not yet implemented data standards represents less than 2 percent of [approximately 17,000] REALTORS®, so this initiative continues to be a huge success,” Goldberg says.

“This is as much our effort as it is the industry’s effort,” says Jeremy Crawford, CEO of RESO. “Along with NAR, RESO is committed to ensuring these mandates are met. Across the board—from its executive leadership to its policy staff—NAR has been an instrumental partner. We are actively assisting the MLSs that have responded, and are confident they will implement our standards successfully.”

The deadline to implement the RESO Data Dictionary was Jan. 1, 2016; the deadline to implement the RESO Web API was June 30, 2016. Both the Data Dictionary and Web API were developed by the Real Estate Standards Organization (RESO) in an effort to create consistency, cost savings and efficiency in the industry.

Stay tuned to RISMedia for more developments.

Suzanne De Vita is RISMedia’s online news editor. Email her your real estate news ideas at sdevita@rismedia.com. For the latest real estate news and trends, bookmark RISMedia.com.

The post NAR Amps Up Efforts to Ensure Implementation of RESO Standards appeared first on RISMedia.

…read more

From:: Real Estate News

By Susanne Dwyer

The National Association of REALTORS® (NAR) has amped up its efforts to ensure REALTOR® association-owned MLSs implement RESO standards. NAR acted after an analysis determined there were many MLSs non-compliant with the standards. Adoption is a policy requirement.

Approximately 90 MLSs were notified and given 60 days (from the date of the letter) to respond—roughly until the beginning of April. MLSs that do not respond within the window will lose coverage under NAR’s Master Professional Liability Insurance Policy.

According to NAR and RESO, to date, many MLSs have responded, and most have already begun implementation.

“As NAR CEO, it’s my priority to keep the association and it’s 1.3 million members ahead of industry evolution, and one way I’m doing that is by ensuring the creation and adoption of industry-wide data standards and that all REALTOR® association-owned MLSs are compliant with RESO standards,” says Bob Goldberg, CEO of NAR. “This will improve industry-wide access to consistent, real property data and allow increased competition for new technology systems that will bring huge benefits to real estate professionals and better services for buyers and sellers.

“Today, the number of REALTOR® association-owned MLSs that have not yet implemented data standards represents less than 2 percent of [approximately 17,000] REALTORS®, so this initiative continues to be a huge success,” Goldberg says.

“This is as much our effort as it is the industry’s effort,” says Jeremy Crawford, CEO of RESO. “Along with NAR, RESO is committed to ensuring these mandates are met. Across the board—from its executive leadership to its policy staff—NAR has been an instrumental partner. We are actively assisting the MLSs that have responded, and are confident they will implement our standards successfully.”

The deadline to implement the RESO Data Dictionary was Jan. 1, 2016; the deadline to implement the RESO Web API was June 30, 2016. Both the Data Dictionary and Web API were developed by the Real Estate Standards Organization (RESO) in an effort to create consistency, cost savings and efficiency in the industry.

Stay tuned to RISMedia for more developments.

Suzanne De Vita is RISMedia’s online news editor. Email her your real estate news ideas at sdevita@rismedia.com. For the latest real estate news and trends, bookmark RISMedia.com.

The post NAR Amps Up Efforts to Ensure Implementation of RESO Standards appeared first on RISMedia.

…read more

From:: Finance and Economy

By Susanne Dwyer

Vitals: Audu Real Estate
Years in Business: 18
Size: 1 office with a small team of agents
Region Served: Greater Grand Rapids Metropolis
www.audurealestate.com

With a background in the hard sciences such as biology and chemistry, Lola Audu came to the U.S. from Nigeria as a student before becoming a U.S. citizen in 1999. She was drawn to the real estate business thanks to an entrepreneurial spirit learned from her parents and a fascination with how the housing market worked in this country.

“In many parts of the world, you can’t own land, and if you do, you buy it in cash,” she explains. “The process of leveraging money to enable the sale of a housing asset was a new one to me in many ways, but one that I found fascinating.”

Audu became a REALTOR® in 1995 and opened Audu Real Estate in 1999, serving the West Michigan real estate community for 22 years.

In 2017, the West Michigan market was “extraordinarily active,” with bidding wars on most properties, though it slowed to normal levels by the end of the year.

“The low inventory also impacted prices, with the average sales price booming,” says Audu. “There’s been a lot of rethinking and retooling and investment in trying to bring new housing online.”

Over her career, she served as the first minority president in the 117-year history of the Grand Rapids Association of REALTORS®, has been involved in the National Association of REALTORS® and the Women’s Council of REALTORS®, and regularly trains on social media and blogging.

“The arena I feel I have been called to is rethinking our functions about our industry and where we need to go,” she says. “For me, this started in earnest during the real estate crisis when we saw our industry get hit hard.”

In 2006, Audu became involved in the online lobbying community to help agents learn to appreciate technology and the Facebook platform, and was also a pivotal voice in helping others learn how to deal with short sales and surviving during that time. This propelled her into the world of education, which led to her role in writing and teaching the coursework in social media and blogging that was certified for Continuing Education in the state of Michigan in 2007.

Having grown up in West Africa, Audu is very interested in cultural training, knowing that it’s important to serve people whose cultural context is different from the agent and broker profile that exists today.

“I had a very unusual upbringing,” she says, comparing it to someone growing up in Chinatown in New York City, where even though you’re in the U.S., everything around you is so culturally attuned, you might as well be in China. “Mine was reversed. I went to an international boarding school in Nigeria, which attracted a lot of different kinds of people. I found myself being raised in a mini United Nations. We had 44 kids in a graduating class from 16 different countries.”

That experience spawned a way for Audu to better relate to the world and understand people—qualities …read more

From:: Real Estate News