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Spotlight: Open Houses

By Nick Church and Mary-Frances Makichen

The National Association of Realtors® has scheduled “National Open House Weekend” for April 28 and 29. This is a great opportunity for Realtors® to showcase the amazing properties currently on the market.

This event actually started in Washington State! For years, several Washington REALTOR® Associations conducted open-house events. They were so successful that the first state-wide open house weekend was held in 2009. In 2010 the concept went national and nearly every state participated. Once again this year the National Association of REALTORS® is helping to promote this event. 2012 will be bigger and better with hundreds of thousands of open houses across the nation and currently in 13 other countries! The event has gone global.

What you may not be aware of is that many real estate websites, including our public site www.rmls.com and the National Association of Realtors® site: www.realtor.com, display open house information. This information comes directly from properly entered open house information in RMLSweb.

We know many of you are going to join in on National Open House weekend and want to remind all subscribers to get the most out of your advertising by making sure your open house information is properly entered in RMLSweb. Check out our “How to Enter an Open House on RMLSweb” tutorial for clear instructions and help.

For some quick tips on holding an open house, check out these ideas from Realtor Magazine .

April Real Estate Events & Education

This April, take advantage of free RMLSweb training

Here’s a quick rundown of upcoming real estate events & education for April in Oregon & Southern Washington. If you have an event that is not listed here, please let us know by commenting below. For future events, please send an e-mail to communications (at) rmls (dot) com.

Featured RMLS™ Events:

– April 1: 2010 RMLS™ Trade Fair – 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. – Oregon Convention Center 

Events around the Region:

– April 1-2: The Roseburg Realtors® Exchange Group presents the Southern Oregon Commercial Real Estate Marketing Conference.

– April 10-11 & 17-18: Home Builders Association of Metropolitan Portland presents The Ultimate Open House New Homes Tour.

– April 12: Portland Metropolitan Association of Realtors® (PMAR) hosts Create Your Dream Team!

April 13: Earth Advantage® presents “What’s Green Building?” class.

April 16: Grants Pass Association of Realtors® hosts annual Realtor® Of The Year luncheon.

April 16: East Metro Association of Realtors® hosts Citizen Of The Year Banquet.

April 22: Portland Metropolitan Association of Realtors® (PMAR) presents At Home With Diversity educational event.

– April 22-23: Home Builders Association of Metropolitan Portland presents EcoVative Building Conference and Expo.

– April 23: Fair Housing Council of Oregon presents its 20th Anniversary Event.

– April 28: Women’s Council of Realtors® Portland Chapter hosts a Fashion Show.

Also, if you’re an RMLS™ subscriber, we have lots of FREE opportunities for continuing education credit at a location near you; click the link for your area to view the April Training Calendar:

– Coos County
Eastern Oregon
– Eugene
Florence
– Gresham
– Hood River
– Portland
– Roseburg
– Salem
– Vancouver

New Fields and Feature Options Coming Soon to the Listing Input Forms

RMLS™ will no longer be printing contracts or input forms

At RMLS™, we take your feedback very seriously. Every year the Realtors on our Forms Committee review your suggestions regarding changes to the listing contracts and input forms and make recommendations to the Board of Directors. This year they have identified several changes to the forms that will be in effect April 28, including several new feature options and a new field for Energy Efficiency.

In addition, the committee and the Board of Directors carefully reviewed the declining usage of the printed input forms and decided that in order to be more responsive to the real estate market in the future, we will only be publishing the input forms electronically from now on. Printed input forms will no longer be for sale starting on April 15. The electronic forms are available in several formats on RMLSweb:

  • Printable blank PDFs that you can fill in by hand. (If you use this method, you may want to purchase NCR paper from your local office supply store or EMAR so you don’t have to fill them out twice.)
  • e-Forms that can be filled in on your computer and printed out.
  • Print listing agreements from Listing Load.

If you prefer to have them professionally printed yourself, please email frontdesk@rmls.com for a copyright permission letter.

There will be no changes to the contracts or addendum forms at this time. However, we will not be reprinting them in the future. Starting April 15, you may purchase the printed contract pages and addendum forms at a special 2-for-1 rate while supplies last.
More information about the specific field and feature changes will be available shortly. Stay tuned!

Supra Lockbox Acitivity – Updated Through March 21

Supra Lockbox Acitivity – Updated Through March 21

Minimal changes from previous week

When comparing the week of March 15-21 with the week prior, the number of times an RMLS™ subscriber opened a Supra lockbox increased 1.0% in Washington and decreased 0.4% in Oregon.


Click the chart for a larger view

Archive
View an archive of the Supra lockbox statistical reports on Flickr.

Supra Lockbox Activity – Updated Through Week of March 8-14

Supra Lockbox Activity – Updated Through Week of March 8-14

Up in Washington and Down in Oregon

When comparing the week of March 8-14 with the week prior, the number of times an RMLS™ subscriber opened a Supra lockbox increased 1.8% in Washington and decreased 1.8% in Oregon.


Click the chart for a larger view

Archive
View an archive of the Supra lockbox statistical reports on Flickr.

Fall down the rabbit hole and land at this year’s annual 2010 RMLS™ Trade Fair – April 1

Fall down the rabbit hole and land at this year’s annual 2010 RMLS™ Trade Fair – April 1

Don’t be late for a very important date

RMLS Trade Fair Title Bar OCC

RMLS™ is hosting its annual Trade Fair at the Oregon Convention Center.

The theme, “Realtors in Wonderland,” is inspired by the classic tale, Alice in Wonderland. Visit exhibitors with cutting edge technology benefiting your business, get credit hours and enter to win door prizes.

April 1, 2010
10AM-4PM
Oregon Convention Center
FREE ADMISSION

Classes Available:
PMAR presents “Peering Out of the Hole” (Credit Hours for OR Agents Only)
Back by popular demand…John Mitchell presents a 2010 Economic and Real Estate Forecast.

CCAR presents “Transition Course” (Credit Hours for WA Agents Only)
This course explains the real estate license laws that are effective as of July 1, 2010 for Washington agents only and how this will affect real estate firms.

HomeQuest presents “Building your HUB”
An overview of using social media to create a central HUB to run your business around.