RIMS, Secondary Websites, and Other Company Musings
I had this email conversation over a few weeks with an agent team that I won’t name until they give me permission. I feel it summarizes our current situation quite well (and may again explain where the majority of my time is going).
Begin
1.) Is there anything news from the MLS regarding Host Harbour and allowing us to go back to using Tom’s search engine?
Tom can best answer this question. The short answer is you can go back to him but you must pay to join CMLS a second time to gain another idx feed. You will no longer be billed through RE/MAX Executive.
2.) Do you expect there will be in the near future?
In the near future, we will have another option for a second feed and idx enabled websites. I hope to make an announcement by this week. We are awaiting written CMLS approval. We need it in writing because CMLS has changed decisions on us in mid course numerous times.
3.) Is this something our company wants to see happen or are they happy the way it is?
We are not happy and we are working our tails off trying to fix this mess. RIMS came upon on us with promised functionality that has yet to be delivered. When we find a work around to achieve our goals, it is either rejected by our CMLS, RIMS, or both.
Background:
No matter if we accepted regional’s terms or not, every RE/MAX agent in the state would pay an increase of $35/month ($25 for the site, $10 to an advertising fund) to pay for RIMS. If we did not opt to use RIMS, we would lose any leads the system generated. In essence, our agent’s fee increases would pay for other agencies’ increased business through the system. In addition, our mls board only allows ony idx feed per company. We could either give our idx feed to RIMS or to Host Harbour, because we were promised the exact functionality we had in Tom’s site, we opted to go with RIMS.
Since then, RIMS has made one attempt to implement their promised upgrades. The effort was quickly recalled by regional because the entire NC/SC map was not RIMS enabled. All upgrades would need to wait. In other areas of the state where companies are allowed multiple IDX feeds, this has not impacted business as usual. This is not the case in Charlotte.
We have petitioned CMLS twice. Once it was denied because of procedural reasons (ironic we were following CMLS’s advice on how to file). The second time it was tabled for more study by the CMLS staff. That is still the current status. We hope to change the matter when the board has three of our Realtors sitting on it next year.
We have tried NUMEROUS solutions with Tom Baucom and Host Harbour…each shot down by CMLS. Tom will continue to offer hosting services and is working on establishing billing relationships with individual agents. I hope to ge this setup by January’s bill. We have just received the billing data from Tom dating back to March of this year and there is
much to review.