Dear Fellow Association Members: To share or not to share, that has been the big question facing our MLS Board this year. As you may know, several adjacent (and some not-so-adjacent) MLS boards have joined into a Data Sharing agreement hosted by Northeast Florida MLS (NEFMLS). Under this agreement, members from participating associations are provided a link to the NEFMLS FlexMLS system so that they can search the database of several MLS systems in one search. Our Board has spent the last several months researching the pros and cons of joining this collaborative effort so that we can make a responsible, fully informed decision that results in the maximum benefit to OUR membership. During this time, we have solicited opinions from individual members and hosted a Broker Roundtable discussion so that we could understand the position of our Broker-Members. The majority opinion seems to favor data sharing in some form. At this point, IF we sign the agreement with NEFMLS to join the data sharing program, our members would still be required to link out to a 3rd party site (FlexMLS) just as we do now with the MLS Advantage platform. As part of our due diligence, our board ran side-by-side comparisons on listing reports from MLS Advantage and the Data Share portal. While the complete set of data from both systems was similar for the most part, we did find some limitations to the extent of data available through MLS Advantage, specifically Listing History and Attached Documents. This is important information that our members want and deserve to have. While the majority of member feedback supports our board joining the Data Share collaborative as it exists, we feel the need to take it one step further so that OUR members will benefit as much as NEFMLS members will from our participation. NEFMLS members don't have to link out to a different unfamiliar search interface that they would have to learn how to navigate, it all lives in the MLS system they are accustomed to using. Sweet deal for them; just pull up their usual search screen, highlight the MLS databases to include in their search and, voila, one set of results with listings from various outside MLS's that they can email to customers, add to 'Client Connect' feature, etc. This is indeed the ideal data sharing solution; no need to link out to an unfamiliar system to search or confuse our customers with emails from two different systems. This is the solution we want for OUR members. So, where does that leave us? In November, leadership representatives from our board and NEFMLS had a very productive meeting in which we discussed our willingness to create a better working relationship and create more synergies between our associations to the benefit of ALL members of BOTH associations. This was the first official meeting between our boards for a number of years which is progress in itself. Our proposal was to provide our MLS data into their system, in exchange for NEFMLS's data being integrated into our Paragon system. A truly equitable SHARING of data resulting in equal benefit to all members and creating a completely level playing field. Unfortunately, we received notice this week that NEFMLS was not willing to provide a feed of their data which confirms my suspicion that they are really only interested in data collection, not data sharing. That said, in the spirit of trying to accomplish something in this vain for the benefit of our membership we have come up with a mutually agreeable solution. Both boards have agreed to an exchange of data via our HomeSnap program. Soon you will be able to search in HomeSnap, both mobile app and desktop versions, and receive full display results with listings from both systems. We are also discussing a similar situation via RPR which will allow our members to work with a more complete set of data when preparing CMAs. While this is not the ideal solution I was hoping to announce as I complete my year as MLS President, it is more than we had before and hopefully a stepping stone to a better agreement in the future. It has been an honor to serve as MLS President in 2019 and I look forward to continue service to our association for years to come. Please feel free to call or email your thoughts to me at rob@thepremierproperties.com<mailto:rob@thepremierproperties.com> or (904)814-2006 Respectfully, Rob West, Your 2019 MLS President P.S. Please consider discontinuing the use of generic dial-up lockboxes, they are unsecure and expose you, your brokerage and sellers to unnecessary liability risks. Supra boxes are provided at no cost to our membership.