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MLS Threatens Legal Action, Forces Housing 123 to Close
Almost a year after unveiling Housing 123, founders Kevin Lai and Travis Fielding have succumbed to the legal arm of MLS and shuttered the site. It's an unfortunate turn of events for a site many thought offered a much more user-friendly way to navigate MLS's extensive Toronto real estate listings.
A rational person might have predicted that MLS would have taken some lessons from these guys and implemented a similar Google Maps feature of their own. Or maybe they could have hired the duo to create it for them? But sadly, the Canadian Real Estate Association decided to take the legal road and fire off a cease and desist letter.
In a post made today to the Housing 123 blog, Kevin and Travis announce the immediate closing of the site and explain that they simply didn't have the time or money to see the legal battle through. While the site definitely offered a user experience and accessibility to listings unmatched by the official MLS web site, it was probably also undeniable that Housing 123 was in violation of the terms of use (copyright) by scraping the listings data without authorization.
A copy of the legal letter (excerpt at top) has also been posted to the blog.
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www.forsalebyownercanada.com
www.ownerlist.net
www.virtual-agent.com
www.bytheowner.com
and there are many others. MLS should either get with the program or get packing, just like the music industry and newspaper industry are, among others.
MLS are really short-sighted on this one.
Good news is on the horizon though, as MLS.ca is about to be rebranded and relaunched as REALTOR.ca and the new site will include some 'Web 2.0' features including, I'm told, a mapping feature using Microsoft MapPoint.
I am hopeful that things are moving more in the direction of what is available to consumers in the U.S. where they have dozens of excellent online tools that utilize information from the MLS database. With any luck, REALTOR.ca will closely resemble REALTOR.com which blows the current incarnation of MLS.ca out of the water in terms of functionality and access to usable information.
The new REALTOR.ca site launches July 2 and eventually the MLS.ca domain will be phased out entirely.
This not only is unethical, but ends up driving up the cost of the housing market as a whole.
People, parinoid that they'll miss an opportunity in the booming housing market (made worse if someone's already missed a few chances), will not only add the 10,000 per bidder (real bidder or otherwise), but then proceed to add as much as they can afford to on top of that to ensure they get the house.
Spending tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars more on a house than they needed to.
BUT, be careful what you wish for when it comes to hoping that the new site is as "good" as Realtor.com.
Realtor.com is the bastard son of an unholy alliance between The US National Assoc of Realtors and a private company called Move Inc. Under this *wonderful* deal, Move has been granted free access to the NAR affiliated MLSs in the US, which is almost all of them. THEN Move Inc turns around and sells the brokers and agents WHO PROVIDE THE DATA "preferred placement" on Realtor.com.
Now think that one through: THe NAR did a deal that enables a orivet, 3rd party company to blackmail Brokers and Agents using the data those same brokers and agents generated.
Oh, and did I mention the site sucks comapred to real Web 2.0 sites like Trulia.com? Since Move Inc wants the amount of the blackmail to determine what listings you see, there is no search engine where you can use keywords to find what you want like Google, so there is no sense of relevance or accuracy. Think about it: If you could find what you want quickly and easily you would look at fewer pages. Fewer pages = fewer blackmail opportunities and fewer pages on which to plaster irrelevant display advertising.
So good luck with Realtor.ca -- hope you didn't follow the NAR's lead in the US.
When I look for a property on MLS, I immediately would like to see its location on a map and its relation to others. MLS has never provided this. Housing 123 provided an important shortcut MLS has been missing since 2006.
I also noticed that MLS has been touting a Microsoft-based map that was supposed to debut on May 28, 2008. The deadline that MLS set for itself was missed. Thus, the only change to the MLS site was that the banners advertising this "new" feature were hastily removed after May 28th. I was waiting to see if I could start using your site exclusively, but I guess I'll have to hold my breathe now that CREA & MLS have failed to deliver AND killed a free site offering the service-as-a-gateway-to-MLS that is sought by everyone my age who is looking for Canadian property. There has been no mention of a subsequent date that your site will join the dozens of other mashups like:
http://www.programmableweb.com/tag/realestate
or
http://www.trulia.com/
I see that a real estate agent above posits a new July 2nd date for the launch of Realtor.ca. Sure.
Going forward, people will only use MLS because they have a lock on the data; Primarily because they are not actually helpful or useful, because MLS actively tries not to be helpful. MLS has become a digital tyrant, capitalizing on the facts that 1) there is not enough money to be made fighting a false data monopoly and 2) Canadians are too complacent about net neutrality. Canada MLS needs to get over its fear of technological change (which occurred over 2 years ago everywhere else) and embrace innovation and helpers like H123, or they will find themselves reviled. If MLS shows no mercy to those that help, heaven help MLS when there is a paradigm shift, because no one will have sympathy for a deposed tyrant. No one will help MLS innovate to accommodate these technological changes, since they have set a nasty precedent of attacking helpers.
I wonder whether MLS would not make more money -- and better meet its mandate -- by selling API access to its data monopoly, rather than trying to leverage its data monopoly into an interface monopoly, too.
It would be really interesting to read an interview with MLS's digital strategy folks, or whoever carries that file there, to get their take on that kind of shift.
I agree with the statements that the existing real estate industry is a backwards dinosaur. I also think that OREA, the TREB (Toronto Real Estate Board) and the rest are digging their own graves. I'm acutely aware that what the current site(s) offer is on another planet from the one that Facebookers and their ilk live on.
This is not the first decision that has been made, in and out of the courts that is a sign that the real estate industry is prepared to alienate their next generation of customers in the interests of immediate victories. RealtySellers also got hit, and shut down, and the crux of the judges decision is revealing: essentially, they were prevented from doing some of what housing123 were doing, because they did not have offices, desks, a physical location. The judgement is here:
http://canlii.org/eliisa/highlight.do?text=mls&;language=en&searchTitle=Search+all+CanLII+Databases&path=/en/on/onsc/doc/2007/2007canlii50283/2007canlii50283.html
Now, ask yourself, where are we if a company is not seen as a legitimate operating entity because it is, essentially, virtual (section 14)? This is a problem of the courts, not of the MLS or TREB per se. The judge acknowledges that RealtySellers was using the material that they are allowed to distribute, but the decision went against them basically because of the 'virtuality' of their operation. Bricks win!!!
The reality from where I sit is that the attitude that OREA, CREA and TREB take is unlikely to get much resistance from within: most real estate agents are older, did not grow up with the technology, and have not seen an example of its utility that they can relate to their own experience as agents. There are, as far as I can see, on advocates for Web 2 within the existing power structure.
That said, the organized real estate industry does have some very legitimate points to make. The most credible of these is not proprietary information: virtually everything on the MLS exists in public records, notably the land registry, where prices, lot sizes, etc are all available.
The real point is the privacy one. Regulations exist that allow a seller of a house to decide whether or not they are prepared to have their listing, and in particular its address made public. There are good reasons for this. A person who is afraid of being traced by another party -- an ex spouse for instance -- ought to able to have their wishes followed. The whole point of being an agent, after all, is that you are acting on behalf of your client, ie you are required to act in their interest and on their instructions. If by listing your home you cannot have your privacy respected, MLS and organized real estate are right in saying that the credibility of their service will be eroded.
The problem with that stand is that MLS does very little, basically nothing, to actually protect that privacy. this is what realty sellers exploited. While you may have instructed your brokerage not to publicize your address, if housing 123 ignores that request, then the point is moot, much like protecting your PC from viruses that harvest your email is useless if your friends unprotected computer provides the same info. As an agent, I'm free to send you information that you can redistribute -- you have no contract with me, or the MLS -- against the original wishes. and from their point of view, housing 123 and RealtySellers in are doing this on an industrial scale.
I know this is long, but I will continue a little longer. From my point, the comments against agents are stinging, because this issue of information monopoly pits me against my potential clients. The irony is that the way the MLS sets it up, they make agents into purveyors of information that, from the point of view of many is artificially withheld to artificially raise the value of the agent. The problem there is that my primary value is not as a librarian, but as a negotiator. When I deliver value to my clients, it's not (just) because I looked up past sales on the MLS, but because I protected their interests in a negotiation, and knew what pitfalls that real estate sales have to watch for. By focussing the public and agents' attention on the information services, they make it harder to communicate what I do that justifies the commissions I earn.
The next wave is clearly going to be a P2P style mutual sharing with anonymous contributions by users, which the industry will have much less success thwarting. But the privacy issues will remain, and I don't see housing 123 as a victim in that regard.
neighbourhood information... that is why I launched:
http://www.homezilla.ca/ a one-stop shop for neighbourhood information.
We are going near MLS but we do want to make it faster
for people to buy a home! (sorry for the shameless plug)
Actually copyright violation in this case has to do with a database, not each discrete datum within the database.
I believe the relevant legal court rulings (in Canada anyway), are located here: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications_v._Rural_Telephone_Service#Other_countries";>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications_v._Rural_Telephone_Service#Other_countries<;/a>
So I'd imagine that merely plotting the addresses which are available on a map, and perhaps their prices, might be fine, but pictures and descriptions may not be fair game.
Perhaps someone could make a greasemonkey script to convert REALTOR'S UPPER-CASE LISTING DESCRIPTIONS INTO READABLE ENGLISH?
1) Turns the listing's address into a google map link (which itself includes the MLS number and price for handy bookmarking)
2) Replaces the "More.." button with the remaining images (including links to their large size)
I've been using this just for my own purposes but after hearing about the closing of Housing 123 I decided to post it so that others may use it.
http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/28825
NOTE: you will need the greasemonkey Firefox plugin installed before this will work. You can get it here:
http://www.greasespot.net/
Maybe they should employ these guys or buy the site. It wont be long until someone comes up with another solution
What's funniest about that letter is the, "CREA went to great expense" nonsense. If they actually paid for that heap of crap website, then they got horribly ripped off.
So what if two of the three bedrooms are in the basement...you are an opportunity for the Brokerage/agent on another sale...does this sound too much like bait and switch....that's usually what happens when you call a Realtor about a print ad that you saw...the "oh no, sorry, that one is sold, broken, located in Ohio" or some other BS..."but I got a another one you would probably love!"
Here's a game to play...ever seen the same property posted twice by two different Realtors in a popular resale homes advertisment publication? Which one is the agent for the listing...which one repreesents the seller...the fact is...neither of them may be the listing agent...Why...Realtors can and do "share properties" for advertising to draw in buyers.