What is the MLS
MLS (Multiple Listing Service) data refers to the main source of property information for real estate agents who work with either home buyers or real estate investors.
How to Access MLS Data
Each MLS is independently managed and there are now well over 600 local MLSs. These are private databases. MLS access provides a centralized and comprehensive database of real estate data exclusive to agents, brokers and professionals with a real estate license. This can help agents find property listings that meet their clients’ requirements and preferences.
Additionally, MLS data often provides insights and other data points into the real estate market. These can include trends in property prices, recently sold listings, and days on market – key data points which can assist retail real estate agents and real estate brokers in finding and suggesting properties to their clients.
Overall, MLS data can be a useful tool for retail real estate agents and brokers to enhance their market knowledge and make informed decisions when advising their clients on buying or selling properties.
How do Agents and Brokers use MLS Data to research and find investment grade property for a client?
As a client, the first step is to find and work with a knowledgeable brokerage or agent. Once you have an agent to work with, they can certainly run a quick search – generally using the MLS portal – with your criteria to find and share properties that match.
Agents can also help conduct the analysis. Most agents will select and create reports within the MLS. The system has pre set templates and pre set calculations. This can then be exported into a PDF to be shared with the client. While this is faster, it’s also limited and doesn’t offer flexibility for your own analysis. Agents that want more flexibility can export the MLS data into a spreadsheet to calculate and compare key metrics.
Metrics that are valuable to investors include number of bedrooms, bathrooms, days on market, and square footage price, just to name a few.
The square footage data is the basis of defining your criteria and one of the most important pieces of the puzzle when trying to calculate a good price. It sets the baseline for how much you can pay for a given property. This is just one example of a metric that an investor will analyze differently than a retail buyer.
Lastly, this process has several key challenges for a agent or broker conducting the analysis including:
- Data sourced from Zillow or Realtor is not always complete and difficult to export for analysis
- Data sourced from the MLSs is often not unified across each MLS and is also difficult to compare
How Bold Street’s MLS Listings Helps Agents Select the Right Properties
Access to historical and off market data
Bold Street offers MLS data – specifically a backoffice feed – that consolidates data across multiple MLSs into a single endpoint. This is valuable for investors and agents or brokers who reference and compare data across multiple MLSs. Rather than relying on an IDX feed which only gives active listings – the MLS and its backoffice feed provides all fields as well as historical listings.
This data feed is extremely valuable for agents, brokers and investors that are looking for the most comprehensive real estate data that is not constrained by needing to post listings publicly for buyers.
Standardized Data Mapping in a Single View
Another challenge faced by real estate professionals and investors is unifying and standardizing data pulled from different MLS sources – even for data sourced from multiple MLSs that are using RESO compliant data schemas.
This is because data fields are often stored differently across MLSs, even with the same schema. Bold Street unifies this data so that agents and brokers only need to pull data from a single source – without needing to do any manual updates – in order to compare data across properties.
Data Accuracy
Bold street audits data returned by the MLS to ensure it is accurate and correct so your analysis for real estate investing is based on the facts.
After mapping the data and integrating an MLS, Bold Street audits the data over time to make sure that the data is correct, the data types are aligned with what is expected, empty values are treated appropriately, and there are no edge cases or unexpected variations. We also provide an option for our customers to report data discrepancies in real time for specific MLS listings.
Data Timeliness
Our timely data updates help your analysts be first to the best listings.
Time is of the essence with underwriting for identifying and moving on deals fast. Bold Street offers data updates every 5 to no more than 15 minutes from when the MLS is updated. Instead of using a “one size fits all” approach, Bold Street optimizes our systems to each individual MLS and their specific technology platform to gather listings at the fastest rate possible.