September 29th, 2009

Introducing MLS OneSource - The One Stop Shop for Today’s MLSs and REALTORS

By Megan Murphy, Marketing Manager

From shopping for clothes, to cars, to homes, online purchases have been growing at an exponetial rate over the past 10 years.  The Nielsen Company did a survey, which suggests that around 85% of online surfers have used the internet for shopping.  Out of those, 94% of all buyers aged 25 to 44 years used the internet to search for a home - NAR Annual Study 2008.  

With that kind of percentage of people (and climbing) utilizing the web for home search, I’d say it’s pretty important for agents to have access to the most accurate local content and innovative technology possible.

 They need engaging information on their websites and in their reports and presentations that goes beyond bed, bath, and square feet. They need access to tools that give invaluable insight into their local communities with just a few clicks. The flexibility to customize, brand and tailor their websites and sales materials to meet each of their customer/prospect’s needs. The content that increases their search engine placement and costumer engagement. They need to be a local expert, a resource, an authority on  local stats and ‘in the know’ information in order to attract, retain and drive quality lead generation.

Technology-driven tools for agents and the need for outsourced data and content used to be something that only the most tech savvy and prosperous companies were involved in. Now, especially with the economic state, it’s a ‘must have’ ‘gotta do’ business move not only to get onboard but to find the highest quality, most efficient, and most cost effective solutions possible.

We started meeting this demand roughly a decade ago when it all started, fine tuning and perfecting the art of data aggregation. Over the years we’ve made it our goal to produce the most accurate and trusted localized content to some of the most established information resources in the country; Coldwell Banker Real Estate Corporation, Century 21, NRT, Realtor.com, Long & Foster, The New York Times, WashingtonPost.com, CNN Money Magazine, and many more.

MLSs and REALTORS®  also have a major responsibility to provide their agents with easy to use tools and accurate local information and have shown an increased interest, over the the past year or so, in the solutions and services we can provide.

We decided to answer the call with our new solution, MLS OneSource.

“Creating the MLS OneSource platform was a natural progression for us. “With an influx of calls and interest stemming from the increase in pressure on agents to enhance their value proposition to consumers, it just made sense for us to formalize a platform. MLS OneSource is specifically designed to help MLSs and REALTORS® engage their consumers by providing relevant and insightful local content and easily integrated solutions that fit their individual business models.” - Marc Siden, CEO, Onboard Informatic

We are excited to launch and introduce MLS OneSource at the CMLS 2009 event this week in Lake Tahoe, California. The platform contains a suite of cutting edge products and services giving full access to our localized content for both agent portals as well as consumer-facing websites. Content categories include detailed information such as home sales, trends, school profiles with GreatSchools.net ratings, demographics, local amenities, and neighborhood boundaries.

The suite of products and solutions offered in the platform range from customizable reports and presentations, easily integrated plug and play neighborhood search tools, standardized web services, to fully tailored delivery of all Onboard’s data, providing complete control over design, development and integration. These tools play a major role in adding value to real estate websites through increasing search engine placement and customer engagement all while building credibility and quality lead generation.

Now is the time for not only real estate but all industries to realize the importance and value in innovative  web and technology solutions. The number of buyers using the internet to do their own research is only growing by the day.

Online shopping trends are showing a consistent rise due to the great response from people. In the coming years, the numbers suggesting the development of the online shopping trends are expected to rise alarmingly.

Kim Cipriano Prior, Onboard’s National Sales Director, is solely devoted to understanding and addressing the MLS sector’s unique set of needs. Kim has over 15 years in strategic business development and sales and marketing experience with 10 years specifically dedicated to the real estate industry and working with MLSs.

If you are interested in learning more about Onboard’s MLS OneSource platform, please email Kim Cipriano Prior at kprior@onboardinformatics or call 646-747-4396.

Tags: CMLS 2009, community reports, data, MLS, neighborhood data, Real Estate, realtors, school profiles, technology tools.

May 4th, 2009

Did You Know?

By Colleen McKeating, Product Manager

Now that activity seems to be picking up in a number of markets, time is in short supply for agents. There is a need to supply clients, or potential clients, with as much information as possible without spending an inordinate amount of time trying to do so. The demographic, school, nearby establishments and home sales information is the exact type of information that home buyers are looking for.

Well, how about being able to place an API on your site where a visitor can enter their name, email address and zip code to receive all of this information? And how about being able to accomplish this in 3 easy steps? The above can easily be accomplished by utilizing the API from our CoPilot product.

A little background first for those of you who are not familiar with our CoPilot product. CoPilot provides customized reports for relocation purposes or for agents looking to provide home buyers with location specific information. Reports can easily be customized with the broker’s logos/headers. Agents can even choose what data sets that they want to include, whether that be community information, school reports, nearby establishments or recent home sales transactions. One of the best feature is the ability to collect client information and track whether they are opening the reports, and even how many times they have accessed the report.

The API functionality and instructions can be found at My Profile –> API. The three steps that would be required for this type of set-up include:

1. Create your default report template. Instructions are included for this in the Administrative system.
2. Add the lead form to your website. The lead form HTML is included so all you need to do is copy and paste.
3. Customize your landing page. The landing page HTML is included so all you need to do is copy and paste.

Upon entering their information into the Lead Form, a report is emailed to the user. An agent can then follow-up accordingly.

By posting this simple API to a website, all of the hard work is eliminated from having to create individual reports each time a client makes a request for more information. Reports can even be emailed detailing recent API activity – contacts created, reports created and reports read.

This is a great way to easily distribute all of our excellent data to your clients. If you are currently one of our clients on the CoPilot platform we strongly encourage you to take advantage of this very powerful feature. For those of you who do not utilize CoPilot at the moment we would love to talk to you about it.

If there are any additional questions please feel free to reach out to me at cmckeating@onboardinformatics.com or to our Product Support team at support@onboardinformatics.com.

Let us know any feedback you may have on the API functionality.

Tags: API, copilot, Products.

March 5th, 2009

Community 2009 CoPilot and Navigator Release

By Colleen McKeating, Product Manager

Today we released the Community 2009 data into our CoPilot and Neighborhood Navigator products. As we communicated last week the changes will add new reports to both.

Fair Market Rents was added to both CoPilot and Navigator and Smoking Ban was added to Navigator. To see the full details please refer to the following post: http://blog.onboardinformatics.com/2009/02/changes-navigator-and-copilot-community-overview-2009/.

If you do not want to display either of these reports on your Navigator please contact our Product Support team at support@onboardinformatics.com.

Tags: community data, community information, copilot, data updates, neighborhood navigator.

February 27th, 2009

CHANGES - Navigator and CoPilot Community Overview 2009

By Colleen McKeating, Product Manager

Onboard Informatics will be releasing the Community 2009 update to our CoPilot and Neighborhood Navigator products in the coming weeks. For the CoPilot reports we will be including HUD Fair Market Rents. We have added two new reports to the Community Profile in Navigator:  Smoking Ban information and HUD Fair Market Rents.

If you do not want to display these reports in your CoPilot or Navigator products please contact our Product Support team at support@onboardinformatics.com.

CoPilot

As was messaged last year, Onboard will no longer support certain debt/net worth fields. As a result the following tables will be eliminated from all CoPilot reports (both new reports and reports that were previously created and saved):

Financial Report:

Now included in all CoPilot reports is a report on Fair Market Rents:

Neighborhood Navigator

1. Smoking Ban data – This data will be provided at each geographic search level within Navigator. The data indicates whether an area has a smoking ban in place for the following:

• Workplaces
• Restaurants
• Bars

A report will look like this:

2. Fair Market Rents – These estimates will also be provided at each geographic level. Navigator will show estimates for the following:

• Studio
• One Bedroom
• Two Bedroom
• Three Bedroom
• Four Bedroom

This Fair Market Rents Report will look like this:

Onboard’s data team works diligently to estimate FMRs for our place, zip and county level data (not all counties are identified in HUDs base data). Please note that FMR values typically occur at a county or Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA).

The definition of FMR from the HUD website states:

“FMRs are gross rent estimates.  They include the shelter rent plus the cost of all tenant-paid utilities, except telephones, cable or satellite television service, and internet service. HUD sets FMRs to assure that a sufficient supply of rental housing is available to program participants.  To accomplish this objective, FMRs must be both high enough to permit a selection of units and neighborhoods and low enough to serve as many low-income families as possible.  The level at which FMRs are set is expressed as a percentile point within the rent distribution of standard-quality rental housing units^[1].  The current definition used is the 40th percentile rent, the dollar amount below which 40 percent of the standard-quality rental housing units are rented^[2].  The 40th percentile rent is drawn from the distribution of rents of all units occupied by recent movers (renter households who moved to their present residence within the past 15 months).  HUD is required to ensure that FMRs exclude non-market rental housing in their computation.  Therefore, HUD excludes all units falling below a specified rent level determined from public housing rents in HUD’s program databases as likely to be either assisted housing or otherwise at a below-market rent, and units less than two years old.”

^[1] Standard-quality rental housing units have the following attributes:  Occupied rental units paying cash rent; Specified renter on 10 acres or less; With full plumbing; With full kitchen; Unit more than 2 years old, and Meals not included in rent.

^[2] FMRs were initially set at the 45^th percentile, but were reduced to the 40^th percentile, beginning with the FY1995 FMRs. The vast majority of areas remain at the 40^th percentile rent. However, certain areas are assigned the 50^th percentile rent. Fiftieth percentile FMRs were established by a rule published on October 2, 2000, that also established the eligibility criteria used to select areas that would be assigned 50th rather than the normal 40th percentile FMRs. The objective was to give PHAs a tool to assist them in de-concentrating voucher program use patterns. The three FMR area eligibility criteria were: 1. FMR Area Size: the FMR area had to have at least 100 census tracts.  2. Concentration of Affordable Units: 70 percent or fewer of the tracts with at least 10 two-bedroom units had at least 30 percent of these units with gross rents at or below the 40th percentile two-bedroom FMR; and, 3. Concentration of Participants: 25 percent or more of the tenant-based rental program participants in the FMR area resided in the 5 percent of census tracts with the largest number of program participants. The rule also specified that areas assigned 50th percentile FMRs were to be re-evaluated after three years, and that the 50th percentile rents would be rescinded unless an area has made at least a fraction of a percent progress in reducing concentration and otherwise remains eligible. (See 24 CFR 888.113.)

Tags: community information, copilot, data, HUD, neighborhood data, neighborhood navigator, Onboard Informatics.

November 6th, 2008

A Good Product Mix

By Colleen McKeating, Product Manager

One of our clients, HomeServices, is a perfect example of a client who is taking advantage of multiple product offerings from Onboard Informatics.  While a number of their websites are powered by our Content Services and Navigator products, their agents also benefit tremendously from our CoPilot product.

Agents have been able to run numerous customized reports for their clients.  Popular reports have included Relocation, School and Community Comparative Reports.

When HomeServices added a new office they were easily able to add new branding (headers/footers) to their reports.  While doing so a HomeServices agent worked closely with a member from our Relationship Management to make sure that everything worked with the branding.  Our Product Support team was also integral in ensuring that everything functioned properly.

In addition, we have updated our maps in CoPilot.   Those who have previously run reports will notice the big change we have made in this area.  We realize the importance of being able to visualize where the location being searched for is located on a map.

Tags: community data, copilot, data, demographics, Onboard Informatics, real estate data, real estate reports, real estate tools.