by RMLS Communication Department | Sep 7, 2012 | RMLSweb, Tips & Tricks
We’ve put together a list of the questions that our subscribers may have about the Listing Load enhancements that will be out in mid-September. This article is updated as we receive additional questions and comments from our subscribers.
**New Question**
Is there a character counter in this release? Will there be an increase to the character count in Public Remarks?
There is a character counter for the remarks sections included with the new release. A request for additional characters in Public Remarks will be submitted to our Forms Committee, brokers who gather each year to assess the data we collect on our listing forms. Don’t forget that there is additional room for remarks on the Supplement Forms, if any of those are appropriate for your listing.
**New Question**
Will Listing Load now work in the Chrome browser?
Listing load will still not work with Chrome at this time. We are maintaining the IE and Firefox whitelisting currently in place. Our goal is to include Chrome in that group, but testing with that browser is not complete.
How will the changes to Listing Load affect me?
Although some of the pages may look different, the basic work flow has not changed dramatically. The enhancements we’ve added should make your ultimate experience more streamlined and productive.
If I have problems using the new Listing Load, what can I do?
RMLS™ trainers and Help Desk are here to answer any questions you have. You can reach us by phone at 877-256-2169 or email helpdesk@rmls.com. In case you need to get started when our offices and Help Desk are closed, we have also prepared an on-line tutorial available 24/7.
Why are you changing Listing Load? I know how to use it and it works.
We compiled many subscriber comments and requests about listing load over the last few years, and the upcoming changes reflect those requests. The result is a new detail view of the listing load search results with quick access to listing reports (agent full, tax full, history, photos and map) directly from the listing load screen. However, if you prefer, there is still a list view that looks very much like the old results screen. You can choose your experience.
What feature am I going to love the most?
We don’t really know, but it could be the Auto-save function, if you have ever lost work.
Where can I go to get information about the changes?
We’ve put together a summary about the changes that you can read here. You can also plan ahead and sign-up for a class in late September or find out how to set-up a training in your own office for Listing Load Enhancements by contacting training@rmls.com or 503-236-7657.
by RMLS Communication Department | Aug 16, 2011 | RMLSweb
Learn more about these two new Supplement forms!
On August 3rd, our Forms Change was released, which made five new Supplement forms available for subscribers to use to share even more information about their listings. In this blog post, we are highlighting the Condo and Amenities Supplement forms. Later, we will highlight the other new Supplement forms.
Condo Supplement:
The new Condo Supplement includes fields that offer the ability for Listing Agents to describe the condo building beyond just the unit for sale. For example, there is a field for Condo Conversion Yes/No, and a field for the number of condo units in the complex.
Want to provide information about the condo association? The Condo Supplement makes this possible. There are fields for Condo Association Name, Condo Association Contact, Condo Association URL and Condo Association Phone.
There is also a field for Pending HOA Litigation Yes/No. Keep in mind that the condo association information and pending litigation fields are kept private and can only be viewed by subscribers, meaning that they are not included in client reports.
Note: We moved the Upper Condo Level field from the address line of the main Listing Load page to the Condo Supplement form. The visibility of the field stays the same (the field will only be visible when the “Condo Unit Location” is set as UPPER).
Click here to view the Condo Supplement.
Amenities Supplement:
Is your client an avid public bus commuter? Does your client have a child who rides the public school bus? Or perhaps your client has a pet that needs frequent trips to the park? The Amenities Supplement allows Listing Agents to describe the distance from the property to different public features, such as parks, bus stops and shopping areas.
The Amenities Supplement also provides a field for Easement Information and a field for Walk Score! Many consumers are familiar with the Walk Score website, which rates neighborhoods for distance to walkable amenities, like shops, restaurants, transportation, etc. Visit walkscore.com for more information. The Walk Score field in the Amenities Supplement allows for the actual number of the walk score to be entered.
Click here to view the Amenities Supplement.
General Information:
On a general note, we want to mention that all of the new Supplement forms (except for Auction, which isn’t new) provide a Public Remarks field to further describe the property for that 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.
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 | 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 | 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!
