by Karen Kage, Chief Executive Officer

On Tuesday, March 15th, the Compass MLS system (also known as PC Access) was permanently retired. As we have published many times, the technology behind Compass is being phased out by the vendor. We have received a number of different responses to this change and most have been positive in nature. Many of the calls that are now coming into our Customer Care Department are “how to” questions for Realcomp Online^®. We will continue scheduling as many Realcomp Online^® training classes as necessary to accommodate requests for training. To register for a class, please visit our new corporate web site at: www.realcomp.com and login under your Realcomp Online^® Agent ID and password. Once there, click on the “Training” and “Register for Realcomp Training Online” links or call us at 248.553.3430, ext. 4.

So what’s next for Realcomp Online^®? Our first priority is to improve the response time delays that occur at different times of the day. Many of you have called or sent an e-mail to report that Realcomp Online^® is not running fast enough. Our attention is focused on this and we are looking at both hardware and software solutions to make improvements. We have recently upgraded our load balancer which is the hardware that equally distributes usage over several servers. This did result in a small improvement. We are also reviewing programming code for the Realcomp Online^® application. This task is very time consuming since the code is massive and intricate. We will continue working diligently and carefully to deliver results to Realcomp Subscribers. The bottom line is this: If we are not able to make Realcomp Online^® perform the way our customers need it to perform, our next step is to find another computer system that will. So, as we work toward making improvements, we are also reviewing other options. We will keep you informed of our progress either way through all of our regular communication channels.

Another hot topic from this past month was the decision to no longer make off-market listings available for e-mailing except when performing a Comparative Market Analysis (CMA). The Realcomp MLS Rules and Regulations state that off-market listings are intended for the sole use of REALTORS^® and may not be provided to home buyers or sellers except where included in a CMA. Realcomp Subscribers can continue to e-mail CMA reports to their clients. However, the off-market properties will no longer be included in other e-mails (including Prospect e-mail updates).

Why was this change made by the Board of Governors? There was a lot of discussion on the subject and the decision was initiated as a measure of protecting off-market data for REALTOR^® use only. Realcomp’s Board of Governors is focused on data security as one of their charges this year and will be taking steps to implement best practices for keeping MLS data within the control of REALTORS^®.

There are a lot of changes happening at Realcomp and we want your feedback. Please let me know what we can do to improve our services. I can be reached by phone at 248-699-9120 or by e-mail.

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