CoreLogic will be performing system maintenance on the early morning of Tuesday, February 23, 2016 between 1:00 pm and 5:00 am. Realist may be intermittently unavailable during this maintenance period.

Schedule:
1:00am – Realist unavailable
5:00am – Realist functionality restored

Back To Top

02/19/2016

The Columbus REALTORS® Recognition and Sales Awards Committee is seeking nominations for Broker, Salesperson, Affiliate, Rising Star, and Citizen of the Year, and we encourage and welcome your suggestions!

As an association member, you have a valuable opportunity to assist Columbus REALTORS® in recognizing one of our own, and quite possibly an individual you work with every day. Please take a moment and think about someone you feel has and continues to make a difference to both the central Ohio and Columbus REALTOR® communities, and then nominate them.

The deadline for nominations is Monday, Feb. 29, 5p. Please contract Lynn Hackworth at (614) 475-4000 ext. 248 or lhackworth@columbusrealtors.com with your nominee(s).

Back To Top

02/12/2016

*Edit – 11:09* – CoreLogic experienced network issues this morning which affected CoreLogic applications including Realist.  Thank you for your patience while the CoreLogic technical teams worked on this issue.  Realist service has now been restored.

*Edit – 11:06am* – We are seeing service seems to be restored, but we have not received an official update regarding their system being back in full capacity.

MLS Technical Support has seen that Realist is completely unavailable at this time.  This outage is unexpected and not planned maintenance.  Auto-population of tax data for new listings is included in this outage.

We will update this post when Realist is restored or when more information is available.

Back To Top

02/08/2016

The annual tax roll updates in Realist have been posted for Franklin and Delaware counties.  This means that all parcels in Realist for these two counties should be displaying the 2015 taxes. This includes autopopulation of the 2015 tax data for these counties.

All other counties in Realist are still operating on 2014 tax roll updates.

Back To Top

02/02/2016

Update:  Portal Change 2 (client’s email address to be used as username for the portal) has now been installed.  It was previously delayed from the January 25th expected installation.

Original Post:

On January 25, some important changes are coming to Flexmls Portals. These changes include simplifying and enhancing Listing Collections for favorite listings and a new login process for existing customer portals. These changes are being made in order to pave the way for a new Consumer version of Flexmls for iPhone.

Portal Change 1: New Terminology – Save and Hide
The first change is a simplification to how consumers save listings. Previously, users had three choices to flag a listing: Favorite, Like, or No Interest. In gathering feedback about this feature from consumers, we’ve found that most don’t differentiate between Favorite and Like, so we were offering unnecessary choices. To fix this, we’re reducing the options to just two: Save and Hide. Our research has shown that these two choices are easier for customers to understand and use.

Below is a screen shot showing what your contacts will see when they log in to the Portal, what you’ll see when you Work on Behalf of a Contact, and what you’ll see when you View Portal from the Contact Management page. The terminology changes will also carry over into the iPhone and Android apps as well as the mobile version of Flexmls. The Favorites collection will now be called Saved, and the No Interest Collection will be labeled Hidden by Me. Listings that you, as the agent, mark as Removed will now be in the Hidden by Agent collection. Hidden listings will not appear in the News Feed nor in contact’s portal searches. For existing portals, the Likes collection will be relocated to the Custom Collections and relabeled as Archived Likes.

Importantly, we know these changes may cause confusion for existing portal users and we apologize for any inconvenience the change causes, but we’re confident that in the long run, users will find these simplified options easier to use and understand, especially once the new iPhone apps are released.

DELAYED TEMPORARILY – Portal Change 2: Login with Email Address and User Defined Password
Currently, consumers login to the customer portal with a username and password the agent sets up for them. There are three problems with this: (1) agents are required to manage usernames and passwords; (2) consumers cannot easily control and reset their own password; and (3) usernames and passwords change per agent instead of sticking with the consumer. Allowing consumers to manage their own account and preferences when interacting with Flexmls products will allow future consumer-focused improvements, like the upcoming Flexmls consumer app for iOS.

With this update, to make the login easier to remember, the client’s email address will be used for the username. When existing users log into the portal, the system will prompt them to confirm the email address they’d like to use as their username and to set a password for that email.

As they are in control when setting their new username and password, customers will only have to remember their email address and the password they set themselves, which should make it easier to remember.

If they forget their password, they can click the Password not working? link on the portal login page. If they ask you to reset their password, access their record in Contact Management, go to the Portal tab, and click the Reset Account option at the bottom of the screen.

To invite an existing contact or a new contact to use the Portal, select the contact in Contact Management and click on their Portal tab, then click Invite to Portal.

A popup text box will open, allowing you to add additional text to the Portal invite; however, it is not required for you to add any additional text. Notice, you no longer have to set a username and password. Click Invite to send the invitation.

Your contact will receive an invitation to the portal in their email. If you added additional text when sending the invitation, it will appear immediately after the contact’s name. When they click the My Portal link, they will be able to set their email username as well as their password.

Why make these changes?
The Portal changes described below are needed in order to release a new consumer version of Flexmls for iPhone in February. Expect a full announcement detailing the consumer app in a few weeks, but until then, know that the app will allow your contacts to receive push notifications for new listings on their iPhone, manage their subscriptions and news feed, and keep track of their favorite listings.

We hope this new app allows you to engage your customers faster, easier, more completely than ever before. However, before the app is released, we must first make the following changes for Portals in Flexmls.

Back To Top

02/01/2016

Two feature improvements will be released for Flexmls:

1) expiration notices for expiring listings will be sent to you daily up to one week before the expiration date on February 4.

2) the latest version of the Flexmls app has been relabeled as Flexmls Pro on January 25.

Expiring Listing Notifications Sent Daily
If you have turned on notification emails for expiring listings, these notifications will be sent to you once per day, for up to seven days before the listing expires. If you set the expiration notification to send more than a week before listings expire, it will send once on the requested date, then once per day starting 7 days before the listing is set to expire. To access this preference, go to the Preferences menu and select General Preferences.

Then, under Expiring Listing Notifications, check the box to Send email notification of expiring listings once per day for X number of days before the expiration date. The default is to start sending notifications seven days before the expiration date, but you can set the number of days by clicking in the box and entering a new number.

Expiration notifications will be sent daily, for up to seven days before the listing expires.

If you set the number of days before expiration to 8 or more, you will receive one expiring listing notification the set number of days before listings expire. Then, 7 days before the expiration date, you will begin to recieve daily expiration notifications.

Flexmls iPhone and Android App – Renamed Flexmls Pro
The latest version of Flexmls for Android has been relabeled Flexmls Pro in the Google Play Store and on your Android devices. Beginning January 25, the Apple App Store will also display the app as Flexmls Pro. This change will differentiate it from the upcoming consumer version of the Flexmls app. Expect a full announcement detailing the consumer app in a few weeks, but until then, know that the app will allow your contacts to receive push notifications for new listings on their iPhone, manage their subscriptions and news feed, and keep track of their favorite listings.

Back To Top

01/29/2016

An updated version (20160101) of the MLS Policy Violation Manual is now available. You can download the PDF from the MLS Reference Materials section of the Columbus REALTORS® association website.

Download the MLS Policy Violation Manual Now

You’ll be asked to provide your License Number (Generally a 6 or 10 digit number, example of 455688 or 2015000001) and MLS Office ID (5 Digit number, example of 01455) in order to login and download the manual.

Back To Top

01/27/2016

The MLS committee has changed the MLS photo policy to require a primary photo on all listings within 5 business days.  With the proliferation of digital cameras and cell phone photography, the previous requirement of 15 days was deemed too long.  Only a primary image is required by policy.  The auditor photo (public domain) can be used if no other image is available.

It is always a good idea to upload at least a primary photo to a listing prior to upload.  There is no limit to the number of photos that can be uploaded prior to going live on the MLS.  There is a stigma for listings with no photos (or even “not enough” photos).  Adding 10 or more photos to your incomplete listings prior to activation ensures that your listing will not be “skipped over” because it has no photos for the property.  Assumptions are often made by other agents and even clients that property with limited photos has hidden damage or poor quality.

This new “primary photo required after 5 days” policy is in effect now.  Warnings and data maintenance fees for missing primary photo will be assessed after 5 business days.  The photo waiver form is still available if your client chooses to have no photos on the listing.  The photo waiver must be provided to the MLS within the same 5 business days.  Upon receipt, the placeholder image “photo waiver on file” will be uploaded by MLS staff.

Back To Top

01/25/2016

It’s that time of year again to update your listings with the latest property tax information for the 2015 tax year.    Most county auditors have updated their tax records for each parcel in their taxing districts for the 2015 tax year.   Voter approved school and bond levies impact those figures each year along with auditor reassessments or owner appeals of property valuation.

Most real estate taxes change annually.  It is important that REALTORS®, clients and even sellers be kept apprised of these ever changing figures.   While Realist can auto-pop the Yearly Taxes and Tax Year for you when you first enter the listing,  it cannot automatically update them when those figures change.

This routine remains an important manual operation for REALTORS® to complete at the beginning of each year.

Back To Top

The new area code 380 will overlap the existing 614 area code.  This change will occur on January 30, 2016.  All telephone numbers in the 614/380 zone will be required to dial all 10 digits of the telephone number at that time.  It was previously possible to omit the area code when dialing.  This was referred to as “permissive dialing”.  Mandatory 10-digit dialing will begin January 30, 2016 for the 614/380 area code.

Read more about this telephone area code change here in the Columbus Dispatch:

http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/business/2016/01/05/new-area-code-hits-central-ohio-january-30.html

Back To Top

01/22/2016