The Lending Industry XML Initiative (LIXI) is to develop common XML data standard for real estate conveyancing. The National Electronic Conveyancing Office (NECO) has developed this in conjunction with LIXI and it aims to have this complete and operational by 2010. NECO is a co-operative venture between state government agencies, conveyancers, banks and independent mortgage processors, which aims to build an electronic exchange by 2010.
Now wouldn’t it be great if all of the major real estate portals/franchises/independents got together and developed the same for real estate agents?
7 Comments
Glenn
Maybe the industry needs a truly independent body to sort this out rather than the REA and Domain sponsored groups.. In the US the National Association of Realtors has handled this role as well as many other technology issues with its NAR Centre for Realtor Technology http://www.realtor.org/technology/index.html
From what I can gather the general consensus on this site is that agents don’t believe that the industry associations are capable to take a leadership role on technology for the industry. Thats very disheartening really.
What is everyone’s opinion of why they cant do this… ?
Greed – They have shown they are interested only in creating property portals to compete with commercial interests rather than looking at the bigger picture of technology? They see the issue of technology as an income stream first and foremost.
Execution – They just don’t have the resources, financial funds and ability to conduct the research and development needed to handle the whole issue of technology? Maybe this relates to the poor saturation of membership throughout the industry from agencies and individual sales people
Knowledge – The industry organisations are run and staffed by people who barely understand technology issues let alone be leaders and innovators?
All of the Above ??
Paul D
All valid points Glenn. The major problems seem to be the personalities involved. Nobody can get agreement amongst all the states. For the most part they are afraid that they will be giving something away, when in fact they will be contributing for the common good. It’s EXACTLY the same as in politics or Local Government, the sensible and logical decisions are often foregone for political expediency. I guess it’s very easy for us to be critical too, because we are not in the mix. Your last point I think in many, if not most cases, relates to individual practitioners as well. That seems harsh, but in my experience it’s true. If the person who runs the business doesn’t know what he wants, what chance does that business have, until someone comes along, who does know ?
Paul D
Hey Peter !!! Your clock seems to be still in Daylight saving time. My last post was clocked in at 6:51pm. My watch says 5:51pm.
Peter
Will get this fixed Paul, hey only a few more months and it will be right again!
Peter
Glenn, I think you are spot on. I think all major bodies should be involved with this as well as input from real estate agents. It is far too important an issue for it to be developed by someone with their own interests in mind.
Glenn
Peter, if you thinking of trying to kick start something I think an open letter to the industry as a whole asking for expressions of interest would be one way to kick this off with hard copies mailed copies to all expected interested parties.
I reckon you could pull it off and it would have a huge benefit for the industry as a whole. It comes down to whether the the goal is just an industry data exchange standard or whether you try and go the whole hog and create (and fund!) a data repository. Funding means financial backing from the major players and thats were it might get tricky.
I like the concept of a repository but the task of implementing that is much greater. Imagine the day when agents, web designers and portals only have to connect to one source to receive or send their data rather than the current situation.
The problem that the major players like REA and Domain will have with such a system is that such a solution would make it easy for startups to access data. All they need to do is say pay a connection fee to the repository (it has to pay its way somehow) and get the agencies permission to download their data.. At the moment, the access to quality data makes it very difficult for new players in the industry like Myhome to gain a foothold.
It would be a lot more difficult to do this sort of thing without them but a carrot and stick approach might work. Cheaper connection fees for all those involved from the begining with the promise of higher costs if they come on board later.
Big project…!!!
snoop
I think the issue here is most major players have been aware of Lixi for some time.
The problem is no body can see a business benefit or income stream yet ,so this kind of thing is on the back burner for all of them.