Table of Contents
How Does Universal MLS Work?
How Does Universal MLS Improve My Marketing?
Is the Universal MLS Really Different From Other Real Estate Sites?
Tell Me Again Why Someone Would Download Data From Universal MLS?
Where Are the Homes on Universal MLS?
How do Users Download the Information?
What’s a Sellers Cost to Use Universal MLS?
What’s a Users (downloader’s) Cost to Use Universal MLS?
What’s a Bulk Upload?
Who Can Input Data Into Universal MLS?
Who Can Extract Data From Universal MLS?
Is This Safe?
Can I use Universal MLS if I list my home with a regular broker?
How Does Universal MLS Work?
The whole concept is based on your needs: you’ve always wanted a more effective and less costly way to sell your home, and this is it. The Internet has created your opportunity to tell the world about your home. Right now you can use the power and technology of the Internet to sell your home and save a lot of money.
You place your home’s information into Universal MLS just once, and then the entire world can extract that data and publish it on web sites all over the planet, in every country and language there is.
Your property’s information won’t be on just one website; it may well be on thousands of websites across the globe, and advertised in dozens of different languages. No other MLS service on the planet does this for you.
This is really different from how you’ve heard real estate is sold. So please first understand that our purpose is to distribute your property’s information throughout the planet, not hold it at a single website. We do this by allowing anyone to place their property’s information in our system, and by allowing anyone to download the data for their individual or business use. Our goal is to give sellers the maximum possible exposure to the planet, and allow buyers the absolute most information possible on all homes on the planet. We do not hold information to a single site as that would harm you.
Helping You Understand
To help you understand what Universal MLS does, think of how websites like Travelocity.com, Orbitz.com, or Expedia.com changed how you buy airplane tickets or reserve hotel rooms. Years back you drove to a single travel agent and sat behind their computer while they searched for your travel options. You received only the information this one source gave you and paid their commission through the price of your tickets.
Today, you open up sites like Travelocity, Orbitz, and Expedia and look through all the options available. Fueling these travel sites is an information database of plane schedules and hotel openings. Think of Universal MLS as the data source or database that fuels real estate websites. It’s similar to the database Travelocity or Orbitz may draw from in the travel industry. Business owners create websites and advertise your home to build their own businesses like Expedia does in the travel industry.
In another example of how the Internet changed the world, think how stocks used to be sold. You had to drive down to see a “stock broker”, open an account there, and sit by their desk while they retrieved data on their computer system. Then you had to tell the broker which stocks to buy or sell, and finally pay them a large commission. Today, you go to Schwab.com, Etrade.com, or Scottrade.com, do your own research using their tools, decide what to buy or sell, click a button, and pay something like $9.
The Internet allowed innovative stock brokers to create businesses, design incredible tools for you to use, and cut your costs to nearly nothing. Once again, try to visualize the database of stock information these companies use to fuel their websites. This is what Universal MLS is to the real estate industry—the data source that allows innovative businesses to create wonderful tools and websites using your home’s information. It’s good for them, it’s good for home buyers, and it’s really good for you.
Now visualize perhaps thousands of businesses, creating thousands of websites in all the languages of the world, and offering specialized services to home buyers using your home’s information. The key part of the story: your home gets more marketing exposure than has ever been possible before, sells for the maximum price the market will bear, and saves you a ton of money.
How Does Universal MLS Improve My Marketing?
The world has changed; you have the power to tell the entire world about your property for sale via the internet. The secret is to let the entire world know about it and then allow the whole world to sell your home; don’t just allow your home to be marketed by one company at one internet site. There are just too many sites out there for the buyers to find it. For example, a google search in August 2007 for “real estate New York” came up with 129,000,000 links. What if your home is on just one of these?
Universal MLS provides an easy to use, yet detailed format for you to input as much information about your home for sale (or lease) into the system as you wish. To get the maximum price the market will bear, you want everyone on the planet to know about your home; Universal MLS does just that. For in a competitive market, the more people who know about your home, the better the chance to maximize your price. To sell your home in the quickest time possible, you again want everyone on the planet to know about your home; Universal MLS does just that. And your cost?—cheap: $30 per month; that’s like the daily price of a three-line classified newspaper ad.
Is the Universal MLS Really Different From Other Real Estate Sites?
We’re so different in fact, that we have a patent pending for our business system.
We are pretty much the exact opposite of every other real estate site on the internet. Most sites’ goals are to get as much information on homes as possible, use that information to attract buyers, use those viewers to attract advertisers, make their money from advertisers paying to be on their site, and never allow others to download the data they’ve spent their time and money to capture. Wow, long sentence—but true.
The Universal MLS system is pretty much exactly the opposite of that. We let anyone input data about homes for sale or lease into our system. We then format that data into the easiest information to download and share, and we let anyone download and share all of your property’s information. We don’t have advertising on our site or collect fees for such, and we don’t have what we call a “retail” site where you view homes. We make available the data and let the world provide the information and services without restrictions (well except for our operating agreement designed to help protect everyone involved).
When a property is entered into our system it is then shared with anyone wishing to down load the information and advertise the home. The data is shared with everyone; it’s not just viewed by anyone—but is downloaded by anyone and published across the globe. This is REALLY different than anything you’ve seen before and makes your home’s information available to thousands of websites across the globe in a multitude of different languages; you receive true world wide exposure for a tiny fee.
Universal MLS is not an end-user site. You input your home’s information here and we share the data with the world. Your property’s information goes to the world’s websites using Universal MLS as the data conduit. This allows anyone to promote their property’s information, and provides buyers and sellers the greatest amount of information and the best services for the least cost. Good idea, huh?
Tell Me Again Why Someone Would Download Data From Universal MLS?
It depends on who the user is. For business owners such as innovative real estate brokers, specialized niche internet brokers, anyone wishing to offer broker-type services, attorneys, or specialized service providers, the Universal MLS database allows them very economical data that they can utilize to build their own businesses.
For example, if a broker wishes to specialize in homes for sale within a particular community, they can extract that data and advertise it to attract buyers (their clients). Or if a broker-type business wants to offer homes for sale for an entire region of the country covering 15 states, they can extract that data and publish it for their clients. Or if an attorney wishes to represent buyers of commercial properties they can advertise the buildings along with their services. Or if someone with a beach house in Florida wants to rent it out to vacationers (remember, we do have “for lease” properties in our database) they simply list their property. Or—now hang on, if a broker in Britain wants to specialize in offering U.S. properties to buyers in his home country and manage all of the technicalities of such a complicated arrangement, they can do so using Universal MLS information. The same is true if a business person in the U.S. wants to offer specialized services to citizens in the U.S. to buy Costa Rica resort properties and manage all the technicalities of those transactions. Or even if an auction company wants to offer your home on their site, get the highest possible bids, and then present them to you for consideration. You can then decide if there’s one you like, pay them any referral fee there may be (often times it’s the buyer who pays all the auction fees), and have your home sold. Everybody wins.
The Universal MLS system allows real estate service providers in any country to create websites offering specialized services using your home’s data. They can be service providers in your city, or may be someone in Japan who wants to sell American properties. In this case, this service provider will create a specialized website in Japanese, and actually sell your home.
You get the idea: the possibilities are endless for buyers and sellers and service providers to get together using the Universal MLS database for their various purposes—all for really cheap! This allows people from all over the planet to search and re-publish your property’s information in any location and in any language. You can’t get more market exposure for such a tiny cost.
Where Are the Homes on Universal MLS?
We assume you mean that you don’t see a list of properties to view on our website, and you won’t. Our goal is to format and make available information on sellers’ homes to as many websites, business owners, and users as possible; but we’re not an end-user, “retail” site. We take in information from sellers, convert it into the easiest to use data possible, and let people and businesses download the data for their use or business purposes.
Think of us as a giant electronic warehouse full of the best properties on the planet. Somebody “orders” the data and we “deliver” it via a downloaded file. Regular home buyers can download the data, as can brokers, other business people, investors, and anyone wanting to utilize the data to purchase a home or offer business services to the world. And this means a home’s information may well end up advertised in dozens of languages, hundreds of countries, and thousands of websites.
How do Users Download the Information?
It’s very simple: from a list you click on which kinds of data you want along with the location(s) you want; from a list you determine how you want the data formatted; with a browse function you tell the system the location on your computer that you want the data downloaded to; and then hit the download button. You’re done, and can now manipulate, format, utilize, and re-publish the data if you wish.
What’s a Sellers Cost to Use Universal MLS?
Your cost to place a property’s data for the world to find is $30 per month, or $75 for 3 months. That’s it—it’s that simple and cheap.
What’s a Users (downloader’s) Cost to Use Universal MLS?
Your cost to download any data you wish from our database is $30 per month, $75 for 3 months, or $250 for a year. That’s it—it’s that simple and cheap.
What’s a Bulk Upload?
Some of our very large clients literally upload thousands of homes at a time. We have a special system for these clients. If you are listing more than five homes in our database, click on the “contact us” link at the top of the page and we’ll help you.
Who Can Extract Data From Universal MLS?
Anybody. Well, anybody willing to agree to our operating agreement
Who Can Input Data Into Universal MLS?
Anybody. Well, anybody willing to agree to our operating agreement
Is This Safe?
We’ve actually really thought about this one a bit. And we’re sure that by the time you read this an attorney will have convinced us to put a long disclosure and operating agreement up on the Universal MLS site. Here’s our thought: the data in the Universal MLS is open to anyone to input their property data into and for anyone to download. The vast majority of the users simply want to sell or buy a home, or offer business services utilizing the data. We’ll make everyone “sign” an operating agreement essentially stating that their purposes are legitimate, and that they will abide by “the rules”. If they don’t, we’ll kick them out. Furthermore, we are using a flagging system so that anyone who downloads the data and finds faulty information can tell us, and we’ll remove it. Also, anyone who downloads the data must abide by the operating agreement or we will stop them from using the data. So we feel it is safe to place your data into the system
Also, we do not store any really personal information in our system like social security numbers, credit card data, or anything financial in nature. So really the most top secret information any major “hacker” can get is your email address. And we’ve built up a substantial “firewall” and keep the actual database very separate from the website; so even that is unlikely. Our server also has full redundancy built into the system, so even if one server is crashed, the other simply picks right back up.
Is it possible some scam artist will infiltrate the system? Yes, but probably not more probable than any other system for real estate sales up on the internet. So use your best judgment with who you do business with. Check out their references, get legal assistance, use some of the service providers who will offer their skills to you; just be smart as you would in any other business or buying/selling situation.
Can I use Universal MLS if I list my home with a regular broker?
Yes. In fact, depending on how comfortable you are with managing a real estate transaction, you can use Universal MLS in a great number of ways to maximize your marketing.
First, let’s say you want to hire a full-time, full-commission broker, and have them represent you in the sale of your home. Simply have them do all the regular work a broker does, and in addition have them enter your home in Universal MLS. They still take all the calls, emails, and leads; you get the same service from them you expected, plus a bit extra because of Universal MLS. It’s cheap advertising for your broker.
Secondly, you can go the other extreme end of the scale and completely represent yourself as a for-sale-by-owner and get superior market exposure for nearly no cost. You will also receive service offers from brokers, title companies, and alternative-broker service providers. Don’t think of this as spam; think of this as the best service providers offering you a wonderful range of services and allowing you to pick the best at the least cost—nice. You can then consider having a broker or attorney draft the contract for you and perhaps manage the contingency process for a set fee.
Thirdly, if you want to see just how well Universal MLS works, and take a chance on saving a lot of money, you can hire a broker as either an “exclusive agent” or maybe an “open broker” listing arrangement. Allow them to place their sign, brochures, and your home’s information into the local broker MLS. If you find the buyer, have the broker either agree to substantially reduce the commission, or maybe get paid only a fee to write the deal up. If they find the buyer, then you’ll pay their agreed upon commission. The alternatives are endless if you think about it. (Because each state may have differing laws, please do your research on what is allowed and be sure to carefully review the agreement with your broker. We are NOT attorneys and are not offering legal advice).