Charlotte Area MLS (Sarasota, Venice: real estate market, neighborhood, buyer)

[d4g4m]

The vote - Almost a week ago I stated that the fix was in, it's a done deal, there will be no changes. When 'the board' tells it's members - Inovia is gone, they are not and can not come back and if you don't approve our plan there will be no mls for the charlotte area, - how do you think the majority would vote without an operational mls to use. Intimidation, it's a great thing.

The e-mail notice from 'Bill' to his members.
Please Bill, with favors like this [the Florida Board of Realtors site] please don't do us any more favors.
If I was a RE person in the Charlotte area, I would be embarassed to suggest this site to my clients.
As being part of 'the public' looking to buy a house in the Charlotte area, you are insulting my intelligence linking your site to such an inept, poorly designed web site that gives us half the information we want to know.
I could better understand - We made a mistake. Before we threw inovia under the bus, we should have had a working web site first. And so why didn't you link to the mid Florida web site so we could view the actual listing for the Charlotte area like your associates are doing now. Is it one of those 'we are in charge now' things.

Concerning the message from 'Marty Hunt'. I have to think about my response and what to write without getting flagged for being offensive. Will write something later.

[Carbondated]

Any word yet on whether there will be some sort of zone or subdivision search tool on the public side of the MFRMLS website?

[SoFLGal]

Originally Posted by Carbondated

Any word yet on whether there will be some sort of zone or subdivision search tool on the public side of the MFRMLS website?

No response yet. I just sent them both the question again.

[Carbondated]

Originally Posted by SoFLGal

No response yet. I just sent them both the question again.

Thanks SoFLGal. If they don't respond, I'll take it as an answer, lol.

[enuf is enuf]

SoFLGal- You most likely will not get an answer from either Linda or Marty today as they are both attending an all day meeting out of town (Tampa I think).

For what it is worth, the public site that was under the Innovia system wasn't available immediately when the conversion to that system took place either. The initial Innovia public site was bare bones and developed over time. It was a work in process and became better as various features were added or tweaked, primarily the result of input from the RAs and the public. I honestly don't think anyone's intent is to hide information; I personally love to work with customers who have done their homework but many customers don't want to and that's ok too! I understand the frustration and your comments are being passed along to the appropriate parties; without this tpe of forum how would they know what you would like to see in a public site? As for the Florida Realtor site, keep in mind it is for the whole state and better than half of the state actually does have their heat on from October to May. FAR is located in Tallahassee and it does get pretty darn cold up there! Many homes in the southern end of the state do actually have fireplaces too. I am working in a model today and there are actually 2 fireplaces in this house. You would be surprised how many people want a home with a fireplace.

[d4g4m]

Before the people at mid florida decide about things like P, V, and E zones or sub-division names, they first have to look at a map to find Sarasota/Charlotte and our zip code boundaries.
You will hear, "P zone? we don't need no stinkin P zone"

And I'll bet there are a lot more people that would like to know, up front on a listing, much more important deal breakers, whether a house was in an extra $750 a year flood zone, or in an extra $1800 a year CDD, was on county water or well/sewer or septic compared to who cares if a house had a fireplace or gas heat. Besides there is no gas heat/cook in Sarasota/Charlotte unless the property owner installed a propane tank in their back yard.
I'm wondering if the super search developer/programmer in Orlando even knows there's such a thing as a 'flood zone' and will it be on the new form. What do people in Orlando really know about [can I still say] the suncoast?

For those of you looking forward to or hoping for a 'public view' site, don't get your hopes up too high. If you read the goobledegook 'Marty Hunt' letter a few times, you will read a lot of bobbing and weaving on the subject. To me, he's [he and his inner circle will make the decision] leaning towards 'broker control' and the 'public be damned'. Refer to his previous letter comments. He was dismayed and aghast and didn't know that 'the public' was viewing listings on charlotteareamls.
And IF, IF there is a public view site, there will only be just enough info divulged just like all the other usual suspects - realtor, trulia, zillow, remax, era, century21, coldwell, saunders, etc. etc. to make you have to call the lister with your 100 questions. It's the gottcha factor.

[Big House]

Well it seems like the exclusivity is firmly in the hand of this provider. Now it is up to them to step up and consider the client's (RAs) & their customer's. If they do it can/will be a significant benefit to all. If they don't get it right they will hear about it, and if they don't step up then they risk being cast aside for a system provider that will work.

I had to go through a number of web sites to search out helpful information. It took me weeks and weeks to do a decent job, we travelled down to inspect houses once we did enough research so we could range in our search, so as not to waste our time and travel expense and to not waste time of our Agent (who we are very greatful). She really was helpful!

your point is well taken! The exposure to the flood insurance is huge. If the property is not in the FEMA flood plan (that is a "grandfathered" area), the flood insurance can cost you not hundreds of dollars more but we were quoted $7,000-8,000 per year for a house which is about to reset because it was not in a "grandfathered" area. That would be a huge hit to an unsuspecting buyer. It caused us to change our position on a house we were going to make an offer on. Our agent did a great job for us! If not for her diligence we'd have been exposed. Think of that cost over say 5-10 years!

[Carbondated]

Originally Posted by d4g4m

For those of you looking forward to or hoping for a 'public view' site, don't get your hopes up too high. If you read the goobledegook 'Marty Hunt' letter a few times, you will read a lot of bobbing and weaving on the subject. To me, he's [he and his inner circle will make the decision] leaning towards 'broker control' and the 'public be damned'. Refer to his previous letter comments. He was dismayed and aghast and didn't know that 'the public' was viewing listings on charlotteareamls.
And IF, IF there is a public view site, there will only be just enough info divulged just like all the other usual suspects - realtor, trulia, zillow, remax, era, century21, coldwell, saunders, etc. etc. to make you have to call the lister with your 100 questions. It's the gottcha factor.

If that is true....my husband and I will just buy new directly from a builder and forget about a resale home. We will employ a real estate attorney and nothing more. I will then suggest to friends, family or any others considering the area, that they look at building in new developments only. Exclusion can go both ways.

[d4g4m]

I use to do a daily search that took about 4 minutes to look for new listing numbers of the specific kind of listing that interested me. Since Innovia got the boot, I've viewed many different sites trying to find one with the information I want. Each site is a 20 minute deal. Can't find any, the search being so frustrating, I stop looking. So I haven't been looking for a few days. This will not put 6% in any realtors pocket.
You would think that since real estate agents are last on a list with insurance sales, car dealers, lawyers, telemarketers and politicians, [google search - who do you trust/respect, most/least] that they would try to make even the smallest attempt to improve their standing with the buying public.
They haven't scored any improvement points with people looking to purchase a home in Sarasota, Venice, Englewood, Northport, Charlotte or Punta Gorda with their latest actions.
Seems they are more interested in their back pocket with referal fees than they are with having informed, satisfied buyers.

[SoFLGal]

Got an answer from Marty:

Sorry Shannon. As you know things were a bit hectic yesterday but today we can get back to business. Linda and I were both involved in an MFRMLS Board meeting this morning...I was on the road to Tampa at 6 AM.

If the question is are the P's going back on the consumer site, that's a no. If the question is about the agent searches in MLXchange, as you might now, Mary has done templates for your MLS members for their searches.

I agree zip codes are sometimes too big to narrow a search. The new consumer site will have map search capability and hopefully that functionality will be in Phase one.