A: YES! THE ANSWER IS "YES"! Realcomp Online^® offers a great many “bells and whistles” for serving-up MLS data in a great many ways! However, some of these options aren’t absolutely necessary and can actually result in your searches being slower.

• Recommendation #1 for Streamlining Your Searches:
  In the old Compass system, users typically ran searches and displayed initial matches in a one-line summary format. Users didn’t have multiple report choices for the initial display of matches, unless they knew how to create a custom report. Today, with Realcomp Online^®, each user has the option of choosing one (of 10 different reports) as their default summary. When a photo or map report is selected as the default, thumbnail photos and/or maps are included in the data that’s rendered on the screen – this is actually more time consuming. The amount of additional time actually depends on many variables. However, to ensure that your initial list of matches is displayed as quickly as possible, you will want to choose a simple report, without photos, maps or a great deal of information.  To do this, use the “My preferences” module and modify your “Report I use most often” setting to a simple text-only report (i.e. One Liner, One Liner #2, etc.). This change should improve your search times significantly.
• Recommendation #2 for Streamlining Your Searches: Another setting on “My Preferences” that can actually slow users down is “# of items displayed per report”. Users who have this option set to a smaller number of listings (i.e. 20 or so) need to click on “Next” each time they are ready to view the next batch (i.e. 20) of matches. Each time this is done, the system is actually re-running the search which takes additional time. To streamline your searches and settings, expand this number to 250 or more. Instead of clicking “Next” to view additional matches (which is time consuming and requires system resources), all you’ll need to do is simply use your mouse to scroll down the list. This will be much faster for you.
• Recommendation #3 for Streamlining Your Searches: If you’re searching an entire county, you will retrieve search results faster by using a wildcard with the area (such as 02* for Oakland county) rather than clicking on the area view list and selecting all areas within the county. ^{Note: When searching any county, to include listings being shared with Realcomp from the Ann Arbor Area Board of REALTORS®, be sure to additionally include their area numbers.}
• Recommendation #4 for Streamlining Your Searches:  When your search includes a field with the search options of Exact Match, Starts With, Contains, Ends With, and Custom Advanced, “Contains” and “Custom Advanced” will be the slowest.  Exact Match will be the fastest.
• Recommendation #5 for Streamlining Your Searches: While you’re online reviewing matches and the photos of those properties, rather than clicking on the MLS number hyperlink (which opens a full page flyer), click on the “P” (for Photo) or “A” for (Additional Photos) hyperlink options. These will allow you to view the photos of these properties in a much faster way and allow you to save time.

As additional recommendations are available, we’ll be sure to share them with you. If you have any questions about these items, please contact Realcomp’s Customer Care Department.