MLSaaS™

Our newest offering is a Platform-As-A-Service (PaaS) to solve a massive pain point preventing development of extraordinary real estate websites. This solution is for Developers, Webmasters, Designers, Marketing Agencies and other similar b2b vendors.

Real Estate Coaches, Real Estate Speakers, Thought Leaders, Authors, Real Estate Influencers and Celebrity Agents should apply for our Real Estate Influencer program. VR REI program is a Brand-able Customized Real Estate Website/CRM all-in-one platform you may price and sell as desired, with full customer support, billing, and onboarding provided by Virtual Results. Optionally, Influencer partners may offer live or recorded online courses integrated in the solution. This is a separate program and not relevant to the information on this page.

Web developers and designers often face an obstacle in bidding/completing websites that feature real estate listings. The issue is the listings. Not the design or even the UI – no biggie. It’s easy enough to create a featured listing section (manual entry) and integrate a bolt on IDX solution. The issue is the result is terrible.

Nationwide MLS API or MLS as a Service for Developers

Virtual Results Platform’s new MLSaas™ is our newest technology offering to empower Developers, Designers and Agencies to abstract away the challenges of working with real estate website and bring their full innovation and imagination to these projects. The platform is suitable for any type of project, from individual agent websites to multi-state multi-MLS powered brokers and franchises. Already available in Canada and Mexico, there is every reason to believe platform will also dominate overseas.

So why not just create an API then? Because like online product sales (see below), it turns out that a lot more is needed besides a simple “product” feed. Extensive legal requirements are in place that govern how data must be displayed, what logos and disclaimers are shown, how often data must be updated, safeguards in place for scraping / editing / misuse and abuse. MLSes must be informed and approve websites. Website owners must sign legally binding paperwork, maintain state licensing requirements, receive broker and board approval for the data, be current in dues and in good standing with various licensing boards. Data vendors (and end users) sign legal forms with real financial and access penalties if violated.

Practically speaking, how exactly would someone deal with a data inventory that might include 50M photos and 300K listings that must be updated every 15 minutes? MySQL is going to be hard pressed to pull that off alone.

Finally, from a UI perspective, a couple not insignificant requirements: Instant Search-As-You-Type / AutoSuggest and Autocomplete, Searchable fields to include State, city, zip, neighborhood, price, schools, MLSID, features and more, Search Results page to refine/display results alongside a map with auto cluster and pin points corresponding to listing locations.

Shopify for Real Estate Websites

Shopify solved a painful problem. Developers and Designers (and end users) encountered an enormous pain point when even a simple product catalog and checkout was needed on a small business website. E-commerce required technical expertise, infrastructure and 24/7 maintenance that only makes sense financially if the platform could be built and sold at scale. Today, anyone can use Shopify to launch a basic E-commerce website quickly and inexpensively. But many users want more than a simple website so they turn to website developers and designers and agencies to create Shopify websites that stand among the best e-commerce websites in the world.

The Virtual Results Platform solves a similar pain point in the world of real estate websites. We have done the work: 7 years of earnest, exciting and demanding product development. The solution has been real world tested with hundred of clients across dozens of MLS. We have access to data from over 600 MLSes and can easily accommodate multiple MLS and even private/custom data sources. User can even manually add or edit their listings to appear normally among property searches. No separate website area for custom listings. No duplicates.

Shopify’s platform necessitates inherent limitation for the Developer/Designer. So do we.  For the most part, that is a good thing. For example, in Shopify developers can’t change a product’s price or make other edits once a user begins the checkout process. Ours our less restrictive. For example, developers may design listing pages but our developers implement and edit those designs, after we confirm MLS compliance. Similarly, listing widgets available for use throughout the site may be customized by developers for appearance and configured for content, but our platform will ultimately not allow MLS violations. As an example, on a blog post or website page there may be a desire to display listings in X city, between Y-Z prices, property type SFR, status Active. Depending on MLS requirements, our platform may add MLS logo, disclaimer, or listing brokerage name. All MLS requirements are monitored ongoing and any attempts to circumvent regulations will result in account termination.

How do I Start MLSaas™?

Initially, we will be opening up this program to a select few partners.

Ideal Partners – Beta Stage

We are open to working with partners who/are

  • Flexible to adapt as our processes and systems develop
  • Current or potential large customer base. Significant scale and/or budget goals
  • Committed to the real estate website niche
  • Clearly understand and can articulate the problem(s) we solve
  • Delighted to relinquish control in exchange for our benefits
  • Creating a product/service unmet by current tech solutions

Get started by sending an email to [email protected] with subject line, “Developer Partner Program.” Describe your goal and a little bit about yourself / team. We can’t wait to hear from you.

 

Why 3rd-party IDX Websites Are The Worst

  • Best case, the site looks like and feels like 10-year old technology
  • Agents hate (and fail) to enter listings in yet another location… then fail the hassle of keeping listing info up to date
  • Buyers & Sellers (rightly) are baffled by listings in different formats and website locations
  • Listing agents forced to convince sellers they’ll get cutting edge marketing, despite agent’s own website.
  • Online Marketing Hobbled:
    • Listing retargeting and product feed for automating digital marketing impossible
    • Conversion tracking for leads (Source, Ad, etc) all but completely unavailable
    • Passing tracking and conversion data back in to platforms like Facebook / Google not possible
  • Analytics often fail to show live and historical activity on IDX Listing pages and Search
  • Search Engine Optimization (SEO) weak
    • Google Sitemaps include only pages from the website. All 500k+ property pages completely ignored and not submitted to Google
    • No Google approved on page code (schema) for Real Estate Listing, Real Estate Agent, Testimonial and more
    • No ability to add additional information to listings to create more unique content, such as neighborhood or statistical information

 

Why Even Great Website Developers, Designers and Agencies Hate Real Estate Websites

  • All the reasons above, plus…
  • Unlike other small business websites, Real Estate websites require displaying some 500K+ real estate listing pages. This at least doubles the cost to build and maintain the website as it requires yet another technology vendor and integration.
  • Additional paperwork, approvals, legal requirements abound and differ based on client location.
  • Terrible and heartbreaking compromise in design, functionality and usability is required to shoehorn a 3rd party IDX into even the most thoughtful and carefully considered website design. The property listing sections of the website appear bolted on – Frankenstein’d Featured Listings, Widgets, Autofill Search, Search Results pages, Wonky Map Search Results. Mobile compatibly is a nightmare.
  • Compromise, Cost, and Development Time reflects poorly on Developers / Designers.
  • Client communication can be a real challenge. Real Estate Agents often can not dedicate an employee to the project. They have inconsistent availability and may go completely dark for periods in which transactions demand their full attention.
  • Budgets and timelines are dissimilar to most small business websites and a project can quickly become unprofitable.