The New York metro area, including Westchester and the Hudson Valley, is viewed as one of the leading real estate markets in the world. Doing business here, however, has historically been riddled with inaccurate data and numerous back-end systems.
In addition, this has been one of the only major metropolitan areas to not have a regionalized Multiple Listing Service. In fact, in the early 2000s the Hudson Valley was fractured into numerous real estate associations, each with their own MLS. For those of us who remember, it was neither an inefficient nor cost-effective way to do business.
The consumers have been really stuck. Everything that everyone takes for granted in other parts of the country — strong consumer-facing websites, MLS’s that have accurate data — didn’t exist in our area.
But things have changed. For a little over a year we have worked diligently to merge our Hudson Gateway Multiple Listing Service with the Multiple Listing Service of Long Island to create the first regional MLS for New York, which launched earlier this year for Realtors and a few weeks ago for consumers.
It’s a comprehensive MLS, and the goal is to empower our members to take advantage of the geography of New York City, the most powerful geography in the world. Consumers want to have access to a broader geography of data, and that’s what we’re trying to achieve. The platform serves Manhattan, the Bronx, Nassau, Suffolk, Queens, Brooklyn, Westchester, Putnam, Rockland, Sullivan and Orange counties.
We have entered a new era of real estate in New York with the launch of OneKey MLS. Featuring tens of thousands of listings from Realtors located everywhere from the tip of Long Island up to the Catskill Mountains, it will drastically change the way we do business. There are skeptics, of course. A lot of brokers are very entrenched in doing business the way they’ve done business for a very long time. Some are resistant to change, but that reluctance is eroding their business.
OneKey MLS will revolutionize the real estate industry in our market and make it easier for Realtors to succeed and for their clients to find their dream homes. Here are just a few ways a regionalized MLS will impact those of us who do business throughout the Hudson Valley.
DATA IS KING AND TIME IS MONEY
There is nothing your client will hate more than reading about a feature of a home on a listing and finding out it’s not true when they go to an open house. Easy access to clean and accurate listings data is critical for residential real estate professionals, and previously it has been impossible to ensure the information they were viewing was correct. With OneKey MLS, the listings are updated every five minutes straight from the MLS, so the information on every listing is accurate. This can save you time and avoid lots and back and forth on behalf of your clients, allowing you to focus on finding the listing(s) that work best for them.
BE FRONT AND CENTER
One of the biggest complaints we’ve heard from our members who are working throughout the New York metro area is that with other real estate platforms the listing agent is often not the agent featured next to the property. In addition to being confusing for potential clients, it can cost Realtors a hard-earned sale. The listing agent is the only agent that should be anywhere near a property.
GET YOUR CLIENTS ON BOARD
Accurate and reliable listings from the source are important for Realtors and for consumers. But there’s more consumers are looking for than just listings — they’re also seeking information that they won’t be able to find on other real estate searching platforms.
Features such as multilingual search, community guides that include details of the geographic area (especially school district information), and the ability to search for properties to buy or rent by country, neighborhood, city/town, ZIP code or by drawing a custom search on a map will make the searching process easier to navigate.
We are committed to making this transition as easy as possible for our current and prospective members who are now utilizing the platform. We have worked tirelessly to create an MLS that we hope will become the most trusted residential real estate data source for Realtors and their clients.
Richard Haggerty is CEO of the Hudson Gateway Association of Realtors and President and Chief Strategic Growth Officer of OneKey MLS, New York Metro’s first regional multiple listing service. For information, visit OneKeyMLSNY.com.
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