Portals are shifting from being competition to valuable partners

Tom Demos (TD), Constellation1:
Yeah. We’re one of the first on the MLS side of things. Everybody has brought up some things that really hit home. Marilyn, you brought up the fact that things have changed. The position has changed for the MLS, right? At first when these portals were created, the thought process was, oh, no, this is going to be a competition to my brokerage, to my agents, to whomever.
And that’s really not the case anymore. It’s a partnership. So they’re actually looking at it as a lead source. And really, we focus in on that with the MLS portals that we create. So, the systems that are created are really centralized to become a local hub. And like Audrey was saying, it’s about telling a story.
So, when we’re telling a story, the story is: buyer-seller comes on, they’re looking for a home. They can find obviously all the data, all the information. They get into a particular listing. When they get there, they can then see insights into that local area. Then they can see market information in that local area. Then they can also run searches with members that are in that local area. So they can really tie together that local feeling. It has a lot more emotional ties to it because it provides more value for that member. That’s the specialist. That’s there. That knows the area. That knows what’s going on.
In our case, we use location insights directly on the listing detail pages to make it easy for people as they’re going and looking at various listings to really be able to delve into it.
MLS is one to provide more resources. Consumers are pretty smart these days. They have access to all this technology. So, having that access for the agents or for the members themselves on here helps as well. Again, it provides more value. And it shows that they’re the experts and can answer questions and provide information also for the consumer side of things.
AW:
And I think what’s brilliant for Valley is that they do it on the consumer-facing side and through Paragon on the back side, so that it was very important to speak on behalf of Valley, that it was a synchronous experience, that their agents were never at a default, that an agent could say, my consumer found it, but I don’t know where to find it.
MW:
Eric said the same thing. I agree with you that if anything you want the agent to have more information than the consumer. But minimally, at least as much. Different ways for that to become kind of a natural part of the conversation.