by RMLS Communication Department | Jul 26, 2011 | RMLSweb
Includes New Supplement Forms!
Each year, the RMLS™ Forms Committee, which is comprised of volunteer Realtor® subscribers, recommends changes to the Listing Input Forms to be approved by the Board of Directors. The annual Forms Change will be released on August 3rd, 2011 from the suggestions made in 2010.
Click here to view the Listing Forms Change Summary document.
Click here to watch the Utilizing Supplement Forms tutorial!
Extended Outage: The upcoming changes to Listing Load will require some additional time to update the website. As a result, RMLSweb will be in maintenance mode from 7 p.m. on Tuesday, August 2 to 7 a.m. Wednesday, August 3. Please plan your work schedule around this outage.
Five New Supplement Forms Available On RMLSweb: We are adding new Supplement forms for Additional Structure(s), Amenities, Condo, Farms & Ranches and Water Rights.
- There are Supplement form navigation links at the top of the “Listing Load: Edit Listing” page and also in between the individual form sections. These links will take the user to the Supplement form section at the bottom of the page.
- To add an Amenities, Additional Structures or Water Rights Supplement form, the user must check the “include” box on the far right side of the Supplement section bar in order to see the Supplement fields and to input information into them. The Supplement forms for Auction, Farm and Condo cannot be selected or unselected with a check box. These will be included as required by selecting an Auction price type, a Property Type of Condo or a Property Type of Farm (or Farm/Forest).
- When viewing a report within RMLSweb, users will have the option to “Show/Print Supplements” at the top of the page.
Below are some of the significant changes to the forms:
Year Built Description Field: Starting on August 3rd, this field will become required for all Residential listings. We will backfill this field (fill in the Year Built Description for you according to certain criteria), but suggest that if you have ACT, BMP, PEN or WTH listings that are Residential, to select the Year Built Description before August 3. We are also adding a RESALE option to this field. The criteria we are using for our backfill process is as follows:
- If the Year Built Description is blank and Occupied By is Proposed or Under Construction, then the Year Built Description will become Proposed or Under Construction.
- If the Year Built Description is blank and the List Date is within the last 5 years, then Year Built Description becomes UNKNOWN.
- If the Year Built Description is blank and the List Date is older than 5 years and Status is ACT, BMP, PEN or WTH, then the Year Built Description becomes UNKNOWN.
Farms and Ranches: Due to the addition of the Farms and Ranches Supplement form, we will be converting Farm listings to either Residential (RES) or Lots and Land (LND) categories, according to specific criteria. The conversion of Farm listings to either RES or LND is based on the following criteria:
- If Habitable Residence is Yes, then the listing will be converted to RES
- If Habitable Residence is No, then the listing will be converted to LND
- If Habitable Residence is blank (meaning it was a pre-RMLS listing), and the number of bathrooms is greater than zero, then the listing will be converted to RES, otherwise it will convert to LND.
Want to know more about the changes? Attend one of our RMLSweb updates classes at your local RMLS™ office. See the Training Calendar to find a class near you.
Questions? Contact the RMLS™ Help Desk at 503-872-8002 or toll-free at 877-256-2169.
by RMLS Communication Department | Jul 20, 2011 | RMLSweb
41% of respondents have not used the new photo caption feature
Recently, we posted a one-question survey on the RMLSweb desktop for RMLS™ subscribers. With the new ability for subscribers to add captions to their photos (using the new Photo Manager), we wanted to gain some insight into use of the captions. Posting of the survey also had another purpose – to inform those who might not be aware that the caption feature exists.
We had 2,137 subscribers respond to this question, which is roughly 20% of our subscribership. As you can see from the responses, 41% of those who responded to the survey said they have not added captions to their listing’s photos. While we have seen the number of photos with captions steadily increase since the release of the new feature, this percentage shows us that there is still room for more growth. If you combine the two “Yes” answers, you can see that 39% of respondents have added captions to photos. 11% said they have added captions to ALL of their listing’s photos!
Also interesting to note, 12% of the 2,137 respondents said they don’t have any listings, and 8% didn’t know there was a photo caption feature.
For more information on the new Photo Manager feature, view Document #1726: How to Upload Photos Using Photo Manager or watch our tutorial: Adding Photos To Your Listing. If you have any questions, feel free to call the RMLS™ Help Desk at 503-872-8002 or toll-free at 877-256-2169.
by RMLS Communication Department | May 11, 2011 | RMLS News, RMLSweb
You can now upload multiple photos at one time and add captions to photos!
The new, transformed Photo Manager is now available in Listing Load on RMLSweb! Feedback from subscribers in the 2010 Subscriber Satisfaction Survey, as well as other channels, showed a need for RMLS™ to update our photo loading functions. Due to this interest, we have released a new Photo Manager, which enables users to upload multiple photos at one time, add captions to photos, and provides users with added functionality to make uploading and maintaining photos much more efficient.
Here are some exciting things you can do with the new Photo Manager:
Upload multiple photos at one time. When locating photos to upload, you can now select multiple photos and upload them all together. The new photo upload feature also displays thumbnail previews of the photos, as well as status and progress information, so you can track the uploading process. Note: To use this feature, you will need to install the free Microsoft Silverlight plugin on your computer, which can be downloaded here. For users who don’t want to download Silverlight, the previous functionality of uploading photos individually will still be available via a link on the Silverlight installation prompt screen.
Add captions to your photos. You can now add captions and sub-captions to your photos from a list of provided captions. If you don’t see a caption that fits your desired description, please email the desired caption to rules@rmls.com. The captions will only appear within RMLSweb and not in data feeds at this time. Note: you cannot assign a caption to the first photo.
Drag and drop your photos to reorder. The new Photo Manager allows you to drag and drop your photos to reorder them, making it easier than ever to manage all of your photos! To rearrange, simply click on the photo you would like to reorder, and drag that photo to the location you would like it to appear. Once the photos are in the desired order, you must click “Save the Order” before continuing for the changes to be saved. 
Auto resizing. No more stretched photos! One of the reasons the new Photo Manager will be more efficient than ever is that it now resizes photos for you! Silverlight allows you to select any sized photo and will resize it prior to upload. It will resize the photo to the size of 640 x 480. This makes uploading faster! For best results, we recommend using landscape photos. However, the Photo Manager now recognizes the orientation of the photo (whether landscape or portrait) and will now add padding (white space) to portrait photos to make them into a landscape-oriented photo. Therefore, portrait photos are now accepted and will be resized (with padding/white space) to prevent distortion and stretching.
Other highlights:
- Bulk deletion – delete multiple photos at one time!
- List & Preview/Grid View – two viewing options via a dropdown menu!
- New arrow buttons – allows scrolling through photos using a “previous” and “next” method!
- Pop-up Viewer – view and print larger photos!
For more details and information on the Photo Manager, take a look at Document #1726: How to Upload Photos Using Photo Manager. Or, watch our video tutorial: Adding Photos To Your Listing.
If you have any questions or need help with the Photo Manager, feel free to call Help Desk at 503-872-8002 or toll-free at 877-256-2169.
by RMLS Communication Department | Apr 18, 2011 | Industry News, RMLS News, RMLSweb, Tips & Tricks
Stay current with the RMLS™ Twitter and Facebook accounts!
Sometime during the last decade, the term “social media” grew more fiercely than wildfire. Social networking sites such as Facebook, Foursquare and LinkedIn were created. To go even farther, we began to see social media in the form of blogging (WordPress, Blogspot), micro-blogging (Twitter), online reviewing (Yelp), photo-sharing (Flickr) and smart purchasing (Groupon).
It’s difficult trying to keep up with the constant flow of new social media applications, trends and products that come on the market each day. Due to the fact that social media has started to play a more key role in the real estate industy, RMLS™ is making an effort at “keeping up with the Joneses.”
Here’s how you can benefit from our efforts:
Did you know you can check up on our Twitter feed, Facebook page and RMLS™ Updates blog, without creating an account of your own? Say there is an RMLSweb outage (which is not something we like to think about, but it has happened before) and you want up-to-date information, here is what you can do:
Twitter: Go to http://twitter.com/RMLSweb
This will take you to the RMLS™ Twitter account, where you can see all of our recent “tweets” and our Twitter profile (even if you don’t have a Twitter account of your own!). From here, you can choose to “follow” us if you have an account! We recommend you do so in order to stay current with our updates.
Facebook: Go to http://www.facebook.com/RMLSweb
Here, you will be directed to our Facebook page! A goal of ours for 2011 is to increase our fan base on our Facebook page. Since we’re on the hunt for new fans, make sure to “like” our page!
Blog: For those of you who may have stumbled upon a link to this blog, at any time you can access it by going to: http://rmlsweb.wordpress.com/
We plan on doing some cool contests and giveaways in the future for those following us on Twitter and Facebook. Don’t miss out on the opportunity to win some free stuff! Also, don’t forget to tune in for these weekly events:
- Tuesday Training Tip – Each Tuesday we post an interesting RMLSweb training tip to our Facebook and Twitter accounts regarding certain aspects of the RMLSweb system.
- Friday Fun Fact – Each Friday we post a humorous fact on Twitter and Facebook about a fact of the day and how it coincides with a statistic from RMLSweb!
Finally, if you are looking to become a more efficient social media user, check out tools such as Hootsuite and TweetDeck that allow you to view and post to your Twitter, Facebook and Blog feeds – all at once!
Happy social media adventures!
by RMLS Communication Department | Mar 31, 2011 | RMLS News, RMLSweb
You can now use your Firefox browser to access Listing Load
One of the most common requests we have received in the past is to update Listing Load so that it is compatible with the Firefox browser. As a result, in early February the RMLS™ Board of Directors voted to make Listing Load enhancements and Firefox compatibility a top priority for projects to complete in 2011. Well, we are happy to announce the ability to use Listing Load with your Firefox browser is now available!
To clarify, this announcement is in regard to the compatibility of Firefox with Listing Load. While there are some features of RMLSweb that still are not functional in the Firefox browser, this release is a major step toward full compatibility. (For a list of the functions that are still not fully compatible outside of Internet Explorer, please see Document 1765.) We have tested and approved Listing Load with Firefox Version 3.6.16 and Version 4, and we have also tested it in the Firefox browser on both Windows and the Mac operating system!
Here are some items to keep in mind when using Listing Load in Firefox:
- The look and feel of Listing Load will be slightly different in a new browser, so you may notice small changes in alignment, shape of fields, etc. Below is an example of different field shapes in Listing Load when using Firefox on a Mac. The fields that are more rectangular are the required fields, while the rounded (bubbled) fields are optional.
- Spell Check does not work when accessing Listing Load through Firefox. However, the Firefox browser is equipped with its own Spell Check that you may use.
- To print In-Progress listings from Firefox on a Mac, we recommend using Adobe Acrobat Reader instead of Macintosh’s preview viewer. Adobe Acrobat Reader has more configuration options than the default viewer, allowing users to adjust margins and page size as needed to ensure correct layout and formatting of the printed In-Progress input forms.
If you have any questions or run into any problems or issues, please feel free to call Help Desk at 503-872-8002 or toll-free at 877-256-2169 and mention that you are using Firefox.
by RMLS Communication Department | Mar 16, 2011 | RMLSweb, Tips & Tricks
Written by Kelsey Brunson, Communications Specialist
As a member of the Communications Department here at RMLS™, I get asked a wide variety of questions from subscribers. I want to take some time in this blog post to answer two questions that subscribers ask on a regular basis. My thought is that more of you might also have these same questions and might benefit from the answers I can provide.
How Do I Search for Forms, Documents and Tutorials?
The Forms and Documents menu is home to all of our documents, including (but not limited to) training documents, informational documents, desktop news posts, Market Action reports, and tutorials. You can access the Forms and Documents menu through Toolkit at the top of the RMLSweb screen.
Once you are in our Forms and Documents menu, there are three ways to search for that particular document you are looking for. Below is an image showing you the locations of the three areas you can use for your document search:
1) Enter a keyword, phrase or document number into the search box.
2) Click on a tag and get all the documents in that particular category.
3) Search the Forms & Documents Folder Menu. For example, document folder 1500-1699 in this menu is the Market Action and Statistics Menu, where you can find all of the new (and archived!) Market Action reports.
How Does RMLS™ Calculate Appreciation?
Another commonly asked question that I receive from subscribers is how to calculate appreciation (or depreciation). Appreciation is a comparison of the average sales price of a specific area between two time periods. Here are some key points to remember about this calculation:
1) You must compare TWO time periods. Sometimes I get asked, “What is the appreciation of Portland for the last year?” A more accurate question to ask for this statistic would be, “How has Portland appreciated (or depreciated) from 2009 to 2010?” Or, you could compare one month to the next, such as January 2010 to February 2010. (Notice that we are comparing two time periods here).
2) You can use the appreciation formula to calculate both appreciation AND depreciation. Often, subscribers believe that the formula for appreciation is different than the formula for depreciation. In fact, the same formula is used for both of these calculations. Whether the result is a negative or positive number determines if the area’s average sales price has appreciated or depreciated between those two time periods.
3) Document #1745: How to Calculate Appreciation, gives a detailed example of how to use the appreciation formula. This is an easy formula involving plugging in the average sales price for your two time periods! Take a look at this document; I use it for guidance as well!
If you have any questions, feel free to email communications@rmls.com. Or, you can call our Help Desk at 503-872-8002 or toll-free at 877-256-2169. They will be able to answer your question or transfer you to the appropriate department. Thank you!
Each year, the RMLS™ Forms Committee, which is comprised of volunteer Realtor® subscribers, recommends changes to the Listing Input Forms to be approved by the Board of Directors. The annual Forms Change will be released on August 3rd, 2011 from the suggestions made in 2010.
Farms and Ranches: Due to the addition of the Farms and Ranches Supplement form, we will be converting Farm listings to either Residential (RES) or Lots and Land (LND) categories, according to specific criteria. The conversion of Farm listings to either RES or LND is based on the following criteria:
