More on SD and OSFA

I did finish the marathon--took a long time because of the knee injury. I'm still amazed I finished. Thought seriously about quiting at mile 3, but just kept trying things, stride, stretching, etc. etc. and the knee finally improved about mile 9. Got through the tough hill and freeway, then down to Friars and the next 10 miles were just pain and patience. I'm either courageous or wacko (my friends know which). Now I want to do next year's and run for time.

A couple more thoughts on the diversity of housing seen along the trip (and one size fits all - OSFA). It's similar to sampling in ecology. How many variable would it take to describe a cornfield? What about a rain forest? More data fields for the rain forest? By several levels of magnitude! What about a rain forest and a tropical reef? Both are diverse, but the data fields need to be different. If you're an ecologist and you want to understand those environments you need to have carefully designed sampling devices and protocols to capture the diversity, or lack of same in each type of environment.

Long long ago, I did my doctoral work on intertidal pools and developed an array of sampling devices that matched the physical characteristics of the habitats and the organisms in an attempt to capture the diversity in a way that resonated with the organisms themselves. If your goal is the learn how organisms interact with their world you need to interact with that world (using sampling devices)in similar ways and at similar scales.

So what's any of that got to do with MLS systems? All houses aren't the same. In fact they can differ in staggering ways. How do you filter them, ie sample them? You need a sampling device--a search engine. You also need variables for the search engine to filter. What kind of filter and what kind of variables? It depends on the houses, their surroundings and other off site attributes. One filter and one set of variables for a broad assortment of houses isn't effective for Buyer or agent. Does it really make sense to have one database for a whole state that might contain $80,000 condos and $20M estates? If you were a buyer would you feel you were working with the best system possible if you wanted an oceanfront estate with a seawall made of rip rap that also had private stairs to the beach--and you were looking in the same data container that had $80,000 condos in it? Would that seem optimal? With a statewide, someone else created your data environment and gives you a sampling device--the same that everyone else gets.

Now the agents should know the properties individually and they can help the selection process if they do--but what if they work such a large area they don't know all the houses personally? How many houses can an agent know personally? What happens then? The agent occupies the virtual world of the one size fits all database and the odds that the Buyer finds the RIGHT house decrease.

Is this one size fits all data container the very best system the real estate industry can create for the Buyer? Absolutely NOT!

When the big left coast association first trotted out the 6 principles and started talking about statewide MLS, I often stated my opinion that with their resources and the collective intelligence of 200,000 members, if they didn't fully intend to create the best MLS system ever, they shouldn't even start the process.

That's still my opinion. Why create less than the best, just because it suits certain political and corporate goals that have little to do with the stakeholder group that pays billions in commissions on the way to meeting a basic human need-- finding a place to live?