Consumers now have access to the first regional multiple listing service website in the New York Metro area. It”™s called OneKey MLS.
Jim Speer, the CEO of OneKey, said that the idea was born about three years ago when he and Richard Haggerty, of the Hudson Gateway Association of Realtors (HGAR), had a conversation and concluded that “it made sense for the two largest MLSs, the Multiple Listing Service of Long Island and the Hudson Gateway MLS to come together to better serve our Realtor community and the consumers they serve.” Realtors have had access to the site since March.
The new listing search portal offers consumers 40,000 property listings and covers about 500 communities throughout the New York metropolitan area, making it the largest selection of “for sale” and “lease” listings from Realtors in New York state.
OneKeyMLS.com allows searches to take place in 21 languages. Consumers are able to save their searches and listings, share the information, and sign up to receive alerts when new listings are added and open houses scheduled.
“In this day and age, data is everything. Accurate data is everything,” Haggerty said. “I think that what we”™ve achieved, especially with the help of our board of managers for OneKey, is we are successfully creating that vision of offering that accurate data on that consumer-facing website.” Haggerty is president of OneKey MLS in addition to being CEO of HGAR.
Speer said that part of what they wanted to do in creating OneKey was to make the buying or leasing process easier for consumers.
“We are thrilled to reach this next milestone in our rollout and look forward to consumers making OneKeyMLS.com the one site they use to find their new home,” Speer said.
Among the features of the platform are a map-based search feature, property images and descriptive text so consumers can learn all there is to know about each listing.
Listings are accompanied by information about nearby properties and recent sales in the area as well as extensive demographic, school and lifestyle data from more than 100 sources. The site is updated every five minutes to help ensure that listings are always accurate and timely.
Leah Caro, chair of the board of managers of the OneKey MLS venture and president and owner of Park Sterling Realty in Bronxville, said that the data are extraordinarily deep.
“There”™s demographics; there”™s neighborhood information. One of the biggest, most exciting features of our new consumer-facing MLS is apartment building and unit data from New York City, which we all know is not just hard to get and extrapolate but deliver.”
