On June 11, 2019, 16 real estate agents from across the state of Louisiana gathered in Baton Rouge with no real estate agents’ association or listing service employees in attendance and decided it was time for a consolidated MLS.
Brokers with multiple MLS wanted to be able to train their staff on one MLS system, not two or more, and didn’t want to pay up to four MLS fees to do business in geographic areas, according to Craig Mirambell, broker owner from Mirambell Realty in Metairie, Louisiana, who attended the meeting.
“For years, brokers have always wanted a uniform system with uniform rules,” said Mirambell Inman in a telephone interview.
Source: Roam MLS
So the idea for Roam MLS was born. Launching sometime this summer, Roam is a new mega MLS formed and jointly owned by four local brokerage associations that operate their own MLS: the Gulf South Real Estate Information Network (GSREIN) of the New Orleans Metropolitan Association of Realtors, the Greater Baton Rouge Association of Realtors, the Greater Central Louisiana Association of Realtors, and the Bayou Board of Realtors.
The New Orleans Association has 7,183 members, the Baton Rouge Association has 3,627 members, the Central Association has 446 members, and the Bayou Association has 416 members, according to a Roam FAQ. That means that when each association’s MLS is aggregated into a database, Roam will cover nearly 12,000 of the state’s 15,000 brokers, making Roam the largest MLS in the state by far, spanning listings from Central Louisiana to the Gulf Coast.
Source: Roam MLS
Mirambell credited “eliminating fear” for the Roam’s imminent launch after years of brokerage calling for a unified database.
“There was a fear, how could New Orleans work well with Central Louisiana and not make Central believe that they are being consumed or merged or devoured?” Mirambell said, although he made it clear that it wasn’t just the central association that was afraid.
“There was fear and no roadmap on how four existing MLSs could work together, combine data, rules, staff, and so on. It was an overwhelming task, but it was completed for our members, ”he said.
The eight-member board of Roam is composed in such a way that no club owns a majority. Currently, the New Orleans Association has four managers, the Baton Rouge Association two, and the Central and Bayou Associations one each.
Roam operates on a wholesale model, so the associations each sell access to Roam separately and set their own prices.
“We wanted to take into account the fact that most brokers are from a local association and wanted local staff and a local CEO and MLS director,” said Mirambell, who is also President of Roam.
For example, GSREIN, the largest of the four companies, will become “GSREIN powered by ROAM” and GSREIN members will have access to all of the additional services GSREIN offers, said Rosemary Scardina, GSREIN’s vice president for MLS and Professional Conduct.
“The [Roam] MLS will provide the core services on its own and because of its economies of scale it will be able to offer additional services to shareholders based on their number and each of the shareholders will be able to be their own service center, “she said in a telephone interview.
When Roam starts, agents and brokers do not need to join a new MLS – the switch is automatic – and they do not need to change the MLS system they are currently using to be part of Roam, which is initially CoreLogic’s Matrix system and Black Knight’s Paragon system, according to Scardina. Roam will have a set of MLS rules, fines, and data requirements for all associations enforced by Roam.
“Our primary goal is to deliver the benefits of consolidated MLS services with the least disruption to the established business practices or routines of brokers or agents,” explains Roam on his website.
Rosemary Scardina
According to Scardina, one of the biggest advantages will be an expanded listing footprint.
“If I log into Matrix and want to enter a list, I can put it in the bayou area and it will come up when I search the bayou area because you can do a search based on maps based on the zip code and it will show up, ”she said. “And that’s the nice thing about it. That you can see this without having to join another MLS, pay double the fees, learn a new system, be accountable to two different sets, or three different sets of MLS rules.
“These are all pain points that the brokers… brought the MLS to their attention. It has been a long, long time and a lot of work to get to this point. It doesn’t happen overnight and it looks really good and I’m really looking forward to it. “
Roam subscribers will have access to residential inventory from all four MLSs this summer and will have access to all remaining property types, including commercial and rental, sometime in the first quarter of 2022 when Roam will be fully operational.
There are at least two other Louisiana companies competing to become a statewide MLS: Greater Southern MLS owned by brokers and LA State MLS owned by a software company. But, according to Mirambell and Scardina, neither has one major advantage that Roam will offer: historical listing data compiled by the vast majority of brokers and agents in the state.
“I am an independent broker in New Orleans [and] I did not join [Greater Southern] MLS, so they will never have my historical data from my company that we produced over the past 12 or 13 years, ”said Mirambell. “[Roam] will contain all historical data to make it easier for reviewers to find it [comps] in the Roam MLS. “
Editor’s Note: This story has been updated with an additional comment from Mirambell to clarify that agents and brokers do not need to change the MLS system they are currently using to be part of Roam; an earlier version of this story said the vast majority did not have to.
Email to Andrea V. Brambila.
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