February Board Report
February 18, 2011 BAREIS MLS® Board Meeting Report
Membership for October is 7,783 (210 less than December) and 450 Assistants (32 less than December). The books of the corporation are currently in audit, so a financial statement was not produced for this meeting. A statement for January and February will be presented to the board in March. While membership is declining, we are still maintaining a positive financial position.
The Board of Directors approved a planning retreat for the October 21st meeting. The retreat will be in Napa, and the keynote speaker will be Darity Wesley, our privacy attorney. Darity will talk about “walking the social media tightrope” and “the listing explosion”. Leadership from the associations will be invited to join the BAREIS MLS® board for breakfast and the keynote presentation. The board approved the budget for the meeting.
The MLS Committee reported the Napa brokers have reached a consensus, and are requesting that Circle Oaks and Berryessa be removed as cities from the Napa county database and be added as an area of the city of Napa. The MLS Committee has reviewed and approved that change.
Four recommendations were submitted to the Board for Board approval:
1. A recent suit (Holmes vs. Summer) has created quite a bit of discussion in the industry. The decision states that the listing agent has a duty to the buyer to disclose the potential for the property not closing, particularly in cases of short sales. There is a question whether the MLS will eventually have to allow this type of information in the public/property description remarks. This issue was referred to the Board for discussion. The Committee does not have a recommendation.
2. The Committee recommended that the Board approve:
a. Making the field construction type required.
b. Adding the choice “unknown” to the field construction type.
3. The committee recommended that the Board approve that the following fields that would be required if the sales concessions equals yes:
a. Concessions, total amount
b. Concessions, description
4. The committee recommended that the Board approve adding the field “city’ to the radius map search criteria screens.
The board approved the recommendations by the MLS Committee. The Board will continue to research the Holmes v. Summer case to determine what role the MLS needs to play if any, in the disclosure requirements between a listing agent and a buyer’s broker’s client.
The Communications Committee is beginning to restructure. The focus is to add members to the Committee to serve as spokespersons in each of the regions we serve. These spokespersons many times are the coordinators for tour groups, and/or involved in presenting information to tour groups. On a regular basis we will provide these spokespeople with “what’s new” recaps including the Top Ten Items accomplished from the focus groups so that they may present it to the various meetings.
The Rules Task Force is comparing our rules and regulations to the California Association of REALTORS® Model Rules. We are currently one-half of the way through the rules. The meetings have been very productive and it is estimated that we will have two to three more meetings before the task is completed.
The Board clarified the effective date for reduction of the fine for Rule 9.14.3 (property description rule) from $500 to $300. We did not set an effective date during approval. Since the change results in a reduction of the fine, the board established the effective date as February 22nd.
The tech and training staff of BAREIS is reviewing the products and enhancements of the four key MLS systems that are available. We have already met with Tarasoft and CoreLogic, and will be meeting with Rapattoni next week. At a later date, we will schedule a meeting with MarketLinx. The staff is focusing on the infrastructure and features of each of the products, and evaluating the functionality of the systems. Following their review, we will request the Research and Technology Committee review the systems.
The lockbox reciprocal program is on hold, and hopefully we will be able to take action in April to move forward with that project.
The Board discussed a problem with properties that are not properly excluded and sold off line. When we fine the agent for not properly excluding the property, we do not require them to enter it into the MLS as a comp as part of the fine process. It is the only area where incorrect data is not corrected. The issue was referred to the Rules Committee.
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