Update: Office Exclusive Changes to Begin May 5th

Update (May 28, 2014): RMLS™ recently prepared a FAQ document about the office exclusive changes.

As announced earlier this spring, RMLS™ is bringing changes to our office exclusive form and policies. These changes now have final approval by the RMLS™ Board of Directors and will take effect May 5, 2014.

After carefully considering additional input from subscribers, RMLS™ changed the original revisions in the following ways:
• Removed the requirement to submit a copy of the listing contract when submitting a signed office exclusive form.
• The RMLS™ Rules and Regulations have been revised to reflect that new construction is handled differently.

Retained is the language that prohibits beginning any marketing before “date marketing to begin.” This topic generated much of  the discussion among subscribers, but RMLS™ President Kurt von Wasmuth recently explained some important details in how the rule will be administered:

The basic point of the changes to this (Section 3.2) is to prohibit marketing of a listed property unless the listing broker either submits the listing to RMLS™ or submits an office exclusive form for that listing within the time limits specified. The rule describes marketing activity as including—among other things—placing a sign on the property, social media or internet exposure, or direct marketing of the property to brokers or consumers. This rule does not prevent a listing broker from engaging in general, non-specific discussions about a property that will soon come on the market. Examples of these general discussions would be a broker’s announcement about property in a neighborhood “coming soon” during a company sales meeting, with X bedrooms, Y baths, and a certain kind of yard in a certain price range.

Falling under the rule would be specific marketing efforts regarding a particular property, such as identifying an address, a listing price, and the like. These constitute direct marketing, and in that case the listing either needs to be entered into RMLS™ within 72 hours of signing or the signed office exclusive form needs to be sent to RMLS™. This approach was designed to allow reasonable “pre-marketing” activities that the brokerage community generally regards as common, fair, and helpful to sellers, while preserving the basic premise of any MLS that all participants share their listings on a timely basis, unless a seller has made an informed choice to withhold a property from the MLS.

View a redlined version of the RMLS™ rules impacted by these finalized changes.
View the new Office Exclusive/Authorization to Exclude Addendum.
View redlined versions of the Oregon and Washington listing contracts.

 

Spotlight on Supplements: Additional Structures and Farm & Ranches

Spotlight on Supplements: Additional Structures and Farm & Ranches

Learn more about these two new Supplement forms!

Five new Supplement forms became available for subscribers on August 3rd. These new forms allow subscribers to share even more details about their listings. Read about the Additional Structures Supplement form and the Farm and Ranches Supplement form below!

Additional Structures Supplement:

The new Additional Structures Supplement allows listing agents to describe buildings or structures on the property other than the main building itself. For example, do you have a client who is selling a home with a chicken coop? Or, perhaps your client’s home has a particularly lovely gazebo. You can use this form to describe these additional structures that add to the listing’s attraction.

You can describe up to six additional structures using this form. Other types of structures you can describe are garages, barns and second residences! You can also specify whether or not a Conditional Use Permit is required for the second residence.

The form allows you to enter in information about the additional building’s dimensions, approximate square footage, numbers of bedrooms and bathrooms, and the year it was built.

Remember to use the Supplement Public Remarks field to provide even more details about the additional structure(s)!

Click here to view the Additional Structures Supplement.

Farm and Ranches Supplement:

The Farm and Ranches Supplement form contains fields that already existed for the former Farm (FRM) category. But, with the new Supplement form for Farm and Ranches listings, you have even more options for describing the property.

New options available are:

  • Certified Organic Yes/No field
  • New value option for CRANBOG (Cranberry Bog) in Currently Usable field
  • Extended the Approx. # of Acres field to offer options for nursery, orchard or vineyard

This Supplement form has a Public Remarks field as well for you to further describe the property.

Click here to view the Farm and Ranches Supplement.

Want to know more about Supplement forms? View the Utilizing Supplement Forms tutorial, it’s a visual learning experience!

To see the other Supplement forms and to see other changes that were released with the Forms Change, view the Listing Forms Change Summary document.

Questions? Contact the RMLS™ Help Desk at 503-872-8002 or toll-free at 877-256-2169.

Coming August 3rd: Listing Forms Change

Coming August 3rd: Listing Forms Change

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.

Forms & Documents Keyword Search Added to RMLSweb

Forms & Documents Keyword Search Added to RMLSweb

We’ve added a new Keyword Search to our Forms & Documents menu on RMLSweb. Our Forms & Documents menu has always been filled with lots of useful information, along with  the documents that you need in your day-to-day business.

Now, instead of navigating through a list of folders, you can type in a keyword and search! Here’s a short demonstration:

In addition to the Keyword Search, you can also browse by Tags or by the old “folder”-style organization. Oh, and you can also search the archives of Newsletter articles as well (we’ll have more on that later!).