A Northern California multiple listing service with more than 15,000 members has joined a revenue-sharing program from data aggregator CoreLogic.
Sacramento, Calif.-based MetroList Services Inc. has signed an exclusive agreement to license listing data to Partner InfoNet, which creates analytics products for risk managers such as lenders and government agencies. The analytics are based on MLS and public records data, and CoreLogic offers partner MLSs a cut of the revenue generated from analytics sales with bigger splits for those that provide data on an exclusive basis.
The deal puts the number of real estate professionals represented by MLSs participating in Partner InfoNet at more than 500,000, a milestone CoreLogic MarketLinx CEO Ben Graboske called "a major achievement."
"Our Partner InfoNet-enhanced risk management products become more useful and more attractive to risk managers of major lending, servicing and capital markets institutions with each successive Partner InfoNet MLS addition," Graboske said in a statement. He is also senior vice president of real estate and financial services, data and analytics at CoreLogic.
Last week, Graboske told Inman News that 87 MLSs representing about half a million real estate agents and more than 1 million active listings were feeding data to Partner InfoNet, with 51 of them on an exclusive basis.
"Through Partner InfoNet, we are working to increase the rate of return on our MLS content," said Tom Beede, MetroList’s president and CEO, in a statement Wednesday. Beede confirmed the deal was exclusive.
Partner InfoNet will provide Metrolist subscribers access to tools the company typically offers its exclusive partners: an AVM that incorporates MLS data, called RealAVM; listing and market activity reports; and a data licensing monitoring service that looks out for unauthorized data scraping.
"When we have an exclusive MLS participate, then we have the ability to determine if there are violators of that MLS’s data rights, whereas if it’s not exclusive if we come across that MLS’s data in the market it’s impossible for us to know whether or not that data is being legitimately distributed," Graboske said.
Beede noted that the security of MetroList’s MLS content was a key consideration in striking the deal. MetroList currently has nearly 5,000 active for-sale listings.
"CoreLogic’s comprehensive data protection program and reputation for vigorously asserting its customers’ rights was an important factor in the decision to join Partner InfoNet," he said.
The exclusive agreement takes MetroList out of the field of possible partners in a rival initiative from a subsidiary of the National Association of Realtors, Realtors Property Resource (RPR). Like Partner InfoNet, RPR creates analytics to sell to third parties based on MLS and public records data, but instead of offering to split revenue with MLSs, the company offers Realtor members of MLSs a national, parcel-based database at no charge with the aim of helping them do business.
Thus far, NAR has spent nearly $58 million on RPR and generated very little revenue from sales of analytics, at least partially due to coverage gaps resulting from Partner InfoNet sewing up MLSs on an exclusive basis in key major markets.
Graboske declined to disclose how much revenue Partner InfoNet has generated, but said the program has been cutting checks to MLSs every month since February 2011.
MetroList is owned by five local associations in California’s Central Valley and a mutual benefit corporation, California Real Estate Brokers Inc. The five associations are the El Dorado County Association of Realtors, Lodi Association of Realtors, Placer County Association of Realtors, Sacramento Association of Realtors, and the Yolo County Board of Realtors.
