Serena, Mary,
My apologies for getting back to you so late. Things have been very hectic for me the last couple days (not due to appraisal business).
OK, first off... I met Scott Howarda, VP MLS Processing. Scott was extremely nice although his presentation was totally geared toward the real estate agent side of the MLS and not working with data in the manner that appraisers would expect to use it. Next was Rick Baumann, VP Information Services. From what I could gather, Rick is actually the most involved in implementation of the new MLS and troubleshooting the system. I approached Rick at the break and asked him your question flat out...Rick's answer was most disturbing...
Rick: That data is not correct.
Me: What do you mean the data is NOT CORRECT.:Eyecrazy:
Rick: We have noticed that when running certain queries, the data is incorrect regarding price statistics through the MLS. We are in the process of trying to fix it, however, I wouldn't rely on any of this data for now.
Me: When do you think it will be up and working?
Rick: Not sure. We have many implementation issues we are trying to resolve right now. (In other words... you appraisers are last on my list)
So, YES I did walk through how to query certain data for analyzing markets, however, the data is totally useless at this point in time.m2: I kind of got the feeling that the GRAR seems to put appraiser issues on the back-burner (so to speak) and resolve agent related issues first. It's hard to blame them when probably 10% of the paying members are appraisers, but we are paying the same MLS dues as agents, so it is very frustrating to say the least.
It would be very difficult for me to actually type out the instructions for performing the query and I'm not sure how easy the instructions would be to follow... so I would be happy to sit at my computer on speakerphone with either or both of you early next week.
In the meantime... I'm still playing around with the data searches myself and trying to verify the CMA summary and AVM models with the actual data sets from the MLS.
Overall, I think Solid Earth's List-It MLS will be an improvement over the old system and we should be able to perform EVERY task the old system could do and then some. The new system is definately more beneficial for the agents and many of the improvements seem to be for this reason alone.
Sorry again for the delayed response and please PM me if you are interested in the conference call thing.
