brass bands?

Well, it's been a week since the merger of the New Statewide whatever (that isn't) and Mr. Mega regional was signed. Aside from a vendor alley post and some cutting comments thereto the silence has been deafening. No brass bands, so fireworks displays or nuthin.

Of course the process is a long way from over and may actually get more complicated with choices to be made about vendor (there are two possibilities now) and the remaining details of data sharing to be addressed. The data sharing part may not be that simple--the amount of customization performed during the early adopter phase of the old statewide MLS (that wasn't) precluded data sharing, even within the small population of small MLSs. That locality specific content will probably be scrubbed. Then there's the existing Mr Mega regional vendor--one of the key national firms that is unlikely to do much to accommodate the new addition in terms of data structure.

What about the MLSs that are using the New statewide application now? Will they continue to do so? Or will they opt for a proven industry leader application? Will they really have a choice--like, what if everyone migrates to the leading vendor? That's why there is dissolution language for the New statewide application. Of course if it is the latest and greatest, like all the Kool Aid Krowd has been insisting for going on two years, there should be no troubles. Maybe Mr. Mega regional members will want to give it a spin? Don't hold your breath.

In a perhaps related issue, I went to the state associations green page again yesterday--still locked in a time warp--dated 2008 (when there was a president passionate about green and a short lived task force). Someone should maybe update the page every quarter or so?

Aside from boasting about removing provisions of the energy bill still hung up in congress, the state association is too busy with free enterprise to dip more than a toe into the shrinking pool representing the planet's environmental health. The economy and a stalwart conviction that private property rights and the profitability of the real estate industry take precedence over everything else has further widened the gap between the real estate industry and the public.

There's a void there poised for some enterprising brokerage--saw an interesting website from a European firm that laid out an impressive vision of what the world of real estate brokerages might become. As I've said before, the real estate trade organizations and their governmental lobbying efforts (if any) are notably different in other parts of the world. In the US, how are the benefits of our very sophisticated organizational model distributed to the public and those actually in the business of representing the public in buying and selling real estate? That's a question not often asked. The system sure works well for the state and national trade associations though!