The new year is here and already it has brought about huge changes! Earlier this month, RESO Chair Michael Wurzer wrote an open letter to Yahoo!, Google, Trulia and Zillow to get them to support RETS as a common data standard for everyone in the industry. I was going write about this topic anyway but a recent press release makes it even more relevant. Today, Yahoo!, Google, Trulia and Zillow as well as several other aggregators have all agreed to work with RESO to adopt common data standards to make it possible for brokers to send a single listings feed to multiple web sites.
This is a big win and opportunity for RETS. With the influx of a large amount of new blood into RESO, The RETS schema has the potential to grow into THE data standard for real estate data sharing. But I also see a danger here for RETS. If the RESO and the RETS community does not seize on this opportunity and run with it, these companies will work together and create something else. The reason they are all willing to work together on this is because there it a huge need, and if RETS is unable to fill that need, something else will. So, lets hope that RESO and the RET community see this opportunity seize the data!
