Comments on: MLS Search Not Working

By: Bruce Lemieux

Bruce Lemieux — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 23:45:04 +0000

Alex – thanks for the response. I’m sure you have ton of features that agents would like incorporated into the product — it’s the nature of software development and having customers. I don’t have an expectation that you guys would jump on my request. I would, however, like a forum/path to have this dialog directly with DS. This is the first response to my request that I’ve received in any form, so I didn’t know if you had it or not.

Again, I appreciate the response, and I do like the product. I know that you have a very close relationship with bloggers like Jim and Jay Thompson. By opening up the product development conversation with your larger customer base (for those that care), you’ll have even more raving fans.

Jim – thanks for hosting this conversation. BTW, I’m having trouble getting my 13 year-old daughter to stay up on her math homework. I keep talking, but it’s not registering. Perhaps I should get through to her by commenting on one of your other posts?

By: Alex

Alex — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 21:21:17 +0000

@ Pavel – Unfortunately Charlottesville Area AOR does not give us access to those geocodes in the RETS feed. Whenever possible we use the geocodes from the MLS for that reason. If you have a dsSearchAgent IDX we give the agent/broker the ability to map their own listings if they are not mapped or in the wrong place.

@ Bruce Lemieux – I was looking through our suggestion list and I see that you made this suggestion a few weeks ago to someone on our staff. We understand exactly what you are referring too and I agree. With an MLS of that size I can see it getting a little overwhelming. But as with all suggestion they’ll be evaluated, get put on to the development list and then they will be implemented. This does take time though. So please hang in there.

We are actually almost done with a Feature Request / Suggestion System that will allow users to submit their ideas and allow other users to vote on it with points they accumulate every month that they are a customer with us. This will give us and the agent/broker a better incite to what the rest of our users think about the idea.

Alex
Diverse Solutions

By: Bruce Lemieux

Bruce Lemieux — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 03:19:15 +0000

Jim – I appreciate this isn’t a dialog on DS functionality, *but* I would appreciate your thoughts on what I think is a basic usability issue. My MLS – MRIS in the Metro D.C. area – is a huge area with many counties across a couple states. Because there is a single entry for ‘area’ for zip codes, neighborhoods and communities, a visitor can be challenged to pick the correct area(s). This is the same with schools since all schools for all counties are available in the single school field.

I really like the stream-lined selection criteria of DS — I think this is one of their strengths. But I believe giving the visitor a selection criteria for County first, and then have DS constrain the valid ‘Areas’ and ‘Schools’ for those counties would dramatically improve basic search functionality by eliminating those areas/schools in counties not selected. I had to do a tutorial video on my site after a couple of my clients had challenges with the ‘areas’ — didn’t have to do this with my last IDX provider.

I know you don’t speak for these guys, but I would be interested to see what you think. I’ve tried a couple of communication paths with DS, but get no where. I do like the product. I just wish they had a structured, direct forum for customer feedback.

By: Jim Duncan

Jim Duncan — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 02:47:07 +0000

Pavel –

Yep, it’s a temporary limitation, but easily circumvented by searching by multiple school districts …

By: Pavel

Pavel — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 00:26:44 +0000

Did you notice the limitation DS has – when one of CAARMLS properties is custom mapped to a location (which is fairly common on streets that are not currently in the map database)? Whenever a property is “custom mapped” in CAARMLS it shows up as “un-mappable” in the DS results. So if one were to strictly use the map based search (and not the reference list on the left) properties are missed. Other than that DS is definitely top-notch!

By: Jim Duncan

Jim Duncan — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 19:59:08 +0000

Bruce –

Thanks for commenting.

Candidly, I’m more upset/concerned about the fact that my local MLS provide apparently didn’t know that some of their feeds hadn’t been updated for days until I told them. At least DS knew about their problems and reached out …

As for DS, I’ve been nothing short of thrilled with their service, and don’t have anything ther than good things to say about them.

By: Bruce Lemieux

Bruce Lemieux — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 19:43:01 +0000

As a Diverse Solutions customer, I wasn’t aware of this outage until I read it on your blog. A couple of you guys get white-glove service. The rest of us, not so much.

By: Kevin Curtis @ MN MLS

Kevin Curtis @ MN MLS — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 13:47:46 +0000

I am amazed how often I hear about MLS systems being down or not working properly around the country lately. I know our Minnesota MLS has undergone a ton of changes lately including new security measures for log in and new search features for lender mediated transactions, but we have not had any down time thank goodness.

By: Jim Duncan on WINA radio discussing Charlottesville and Central Virginia real estate market | Real Central VA

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 11:30:49 +0000

[...] The referenced discussion with Michael and Greg. – Search site is fixed (it was broken) – The Charlottesville real estate market update for 1st Quarter 2009 – Charlottesville does seem [...]