Proptech Pulse

Proptech Pulse: The Future of MLS Technology with Jeremy Crawford

• Lone Wolf Technologies

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Episode Summary
 In this forward-looking episode of PropTech Pulse, host Jake Hamilton sits down with Jeremy Crawford, President and CEO of FirstMLS (FMLS) in Georgia, alongside Lisa Mihelcich, Lone Wolf's General Manager of MLS and Associations. The conversation centers on the newly announced partnership bringing Transaction Desk and Transact to FMLS members, while diving deeper into Jeremy's vision for the future of MLS technology in an evolving real estate landscape. With decades of industry experience, Crawford shares valuable insights on how artificial intelligence, interoperability, and consumer transparency are reshaping the MLS ecosystem.

Topics Covered

  • The partnership between FMLS and Lone Wolf to bring Transaction Desk and Transact to members
  • The impact of regulatory changes on MLS operations
  • How AI is transforming agent workflows and consumer experiences
  • The critical importance of interoperability in real estate technology
  • Training and support strategies for MLS members
  • The evolving value proposition of MLSs in today's market
  • Consumer transparency and the enduring importance of real estate professionals

Key Quotes from Jeremy Crawford

  • "We were founded in 1957 to help our brokers transact real estate and the best way to do that is to give the agents the tools they need to succeed and stand behind those tools."
  • "AI is not going to replace the agent. We think it's going to infuse the agent to be more powerful in front of their buyers and sellers."
  • "I think interoperability is key... The world lives in a Bluetooth environment of interoperability of many competitors that are out in the space."
  • "We believe in consumer transparency at FMLS... As much data we provide consumers in transparency, the professional is helping them along the way."
  • "Let's help our brokers and agents transact real estate in the most efficient way possible. They serve their consumers and the consumers continue to think the highest opinion of the broker and agent professionals."

About Jeremy Crawford
 Jeremy Crawford is the President and CEO of FirstMLS (FMLS), one of the largest MLSs in the country. With extensive experience in residential real estate, he is recognized as one of the most innovative thinkers in MLS strategy, leadership, and technology. Under his leadership, FMLS maintains a 95% customer satisfaction rating while processing over 80,000 support inquiries annually.

Connect With FMLS

  • Website: fmls.com

PropTech Pulse: From the entrepreneur's desk to the industry front lines and into real-world operations – taking the pulse of real estate technology in just 20 minutes.


https://www.lwolf.com/podcast

SPEAKER_02:

From the entrepreneur's desk to the industry front lines and into real world operations.

SPEAKER_01:

I'm Aaron Cardell, joined by Kyle Hunter and Jake Hamilton. And we're here to take the pulse of real estate technology in just 20 minutes.

SPEAKER_02:

All right. Well, just want to welcome everyone to this episode of Prop Tech Pulse. We're here with Jeremy Crawford, president and CEO of First MLS in Georgia, and joined by Lisa Mihelich, who's Lone Wolf's general manager of MLSs and associations as well. We're super excited to have Jeremy on the podcast today. We are proud to announce and super excited to announce the launch of Transaction Desk for First MLS members, along with the upcoming rollout of Lone Wolf Transact, our next generation transaction management platform, all to FMLS, and have Jeremy join us today. For anyone who's not familiar with Jeremy, I don't know that there's anyone in the industry who's not familiar with Jeremy, but Jeremy is the CEO, president of one of the largest MLSs in the country, has uh incredible background and experience in residential real estate, and one of the most innovative thinkers when it comes to MLS strategy, MLS leadership, and MLS technology. So, Jeremy, honored to have you join us today. Um I do want to kick things off and really talk a little bit about this partnership that we're launching to bring Transaction Desk and Transact to FMLS members. Um Lisa, I'll hand it off to you to talk with Jeremy a little bit about what we're doing, what it means for MLS members or FMLS members, and what ultimately uh this signals to the industry.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, thanks, Jake. And Jeremy, super excited to do this podcast with you today. And even more so, not only are we excited about the partnership, but even more for me is understanding your vision after more than a year of uncertainty and chaos in the space, and how you think that technology and just what your vision and strategy is as we maneuver out of these waters that have been a little bit murky with the noise and everything going on in the industry. So, having said that, what led you and your your decision to bring transaction desk and transaction to your membership?

SPEAKER_03:

Well, first of all, thank you all so much for inviting me to the podcast. I'm very excited to be here with our partnership. We've actually had this partnership with Lone Wolf quite a while, starting with Cloud CMA. That's been very successful for us. We have always admired the transaction desk platform. And what many people in the nation don't recognize is that we're in a competitive MLS environment, and we have a very large MLS, less than five miles from our offices, who have provided transaction desk to their members exclusively for over a decade. And we're happy to have this opportunity to do the same now that that exclusivity is no longer there. We have a lot of overlapping MLS subscribers that are the same in other marketplaces. And agents love to use the tools they're used to and they're familiar with. So we have thousands of Georgia licensed real estate agents that have been using the platform for many years. We're super excited that we can launch Transaction Desk for them, but also pave the pathway to the next generation with Transact as well. And happy to see that launch for them and give them the opportunity to use the products, tools, and services they're used to, but also give them MLS of choice in the technology they're using, as there are other transaction management platforms out there, and we strive to give them the options so they can pick and choose what works best for their business. Because Lisa, we're here to serve them. We were founded in 1957 to help our brokers transact real estate. And the best way to do that is to give the agents the tools they need to succeed and stand behind those tools. So we're very happy with this launch and to give them this offering that they've actually been asking for quite some time for an MLS of choice platform for transaction management. And this is helping expand our Lone Wolf portfolio in addition to Cloud CMA and other tools that our brokers use, like Broker Wolf.

SPEAKER_00:

Awesome. Thank you. I think one of the things and another special treat for Lone Wolf is I do believe you're going to be part of our customer advisory board as well. So the nice thing about that is you are able to bring your insight, things you feel you're experiencing with your membership, and you can help us form next generation, next feature releases, and things we're doing with Foundation to better evolve our technology as well. So I think that's another nice added bonus that you bring to this partnership that we thank you for.

SPEAKER_03:

I appreciate that opportunity. We're really boots on the street with our brokers and agents in this ever-changing marketplace. In 2010, we were talking about short sales and REOs and how we were going to handle that. Now we're talking about clear cooperation and litigation. And fortunately, buyer agency agreements have been in Georgia for over a decade now. So that's nothing new. But what is new is a constant forms-changing environment that this partnership is going to help us give you the insight, what 60,000 plus brokers or agents are needing to help them in their business, not just from what we provide at FMLS, but the tools that you give us to provide to them in our partnership.

SPEAKER_00:

Jake, anything you want to add?

SPEAKER_02:

I think the only other topic I'd want to touch on with this partnership is Jeremy. What can FMLS members expect over the coming weeks and months as far as getting familiar with the transaction desk platform and coming up to speed on what we're doing together?

SPEAKER_03:

Absolutely. They will be seeing a ton of communication, a ton of training. We also have a phenomenal FMLS training institute, our training institute's CE accredited in Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina. And we provide CE level training. We will be moving into providing CE level training for the transaction desk platform, just like we've had for other platforms. So we know agents need CE and they pay attention in the classes. And also, Jake, we know our agents are used to the white glove service that FMLS provides. So we're here to support our agents directly for anything that they need for transaction desk or transact, and how that works alongside of the other loan wolf partnership products we offer, such as Cloud CMA. So they can expect the same level of service. We have a 95% customer satisfaction rating. We take over 80,000 inquiries a year into our customer support team and maintain that 95 plus percent annually. And so they can expect us supporting this fully and standing behind it, just like we do our other products and giving them all the training opportunities via Zoom, self-paced with our online learning management system or in-person in their brokerage offices as well. So they're really going to get to know how to use this system if they don't already. And when they're wanting to move to Transact, they're going to be ready to get the knowledge from you and from us on how to do that. So we're excited to provide not just the platform, but the support they need, the latest forms that come out from the state of Alabama, the state of Georgia, RA forms, which FMOS owns and provides for our non-realtor members. They're going to have all of that support from us, like they do for all the other platforms we honor and support with our vendor partnerships.

SPEAKER_00:

You know, I just wanted to follow up. Sorry, Jake. What's really phenomenal about that, Jeremy, is the CE course, the accreditation. Not many in the industry do that whatsoever. So typically members are kind of out there, they need to learn as they go, and they forget how to use the software until it's time to do a transaction or they need to use it for assigning. And then it's like, oh my gosh, what do I do? So adding that extra layer of education is really top-notch. There's no doubt about it.

SPEAKER_03:

Well, and with self-pace, Lisa, what we see our members do is they can pause it. So they can do 30 minutes and they can pause it and come back in two or three days. So they get the information they need to do what they need to do right then. And then they can finish their two and a half hours later and get three hours of CE. Very few MLSs offer that. And every MLS should be offering that. And we actually do the CE training not for just ourselves, but we do it for Greater Alabama and Birmingham, their MLS. We do it for Middle Georgia MLS and Macon. We offer the training and go all the way down to Mobile, Alabama, and train their members as well, as well as Phoenix City and any other MLS in the surrounding area. We're happy to provide that because very few MLSs have CE accredited training, and the agents need to know how to use the products that the MLS offers. And CE is a big way to get them to stay through the class and get what they need to satisfy their licensing requirements and then satisfy how to use the product. So it's something that is very unique to the FMLS offering. And that's one of the areas this industry needs to improve upon. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02:

Jeremy, that's awesome. We're super excited here at Lone Wolf to get this launched, get this rolled out to your members, uh, and to partner with you all and providing that first-class experience to agents and being there to meet them at the point of need. So very, very excited about what we're doing together. Um, I do want to pivot a little bit now, and Lisa alluded to all the change in the industry over the past few years. I know with Georgia being a Thompson state, that um some of the changes over the past year haven't been quite as impactful uh as they have been in other states. But I know now we've got the update to uh clear cooperation as well. Um, and really wanted to start to just unpack your thoughts on this next phase of real estate for the MLS and what are those strategic priorities for MLSs over the next one, two, three, five years to continue providing the incredible value to agents and to brokers that they've provided, um, you know, in your case, since 1957.

SPEAKER_03:

Absolutely. Well, the interesting thing is the latest change in clear cooperation that came out from NAR. We're a broker-owned MLS. We're not required to adopt NAR policy. There's nothing in their update they released in Monday that we haven't been doing for years. We have a registered listing status. Our contracts from the state association has a marketing commencement date that is a future date from when you sign a non-exclusive listing agreement. You can put that listing and registered, you can put the listing in coming soon, you can delay the marketing, you can turn off IDX, you can turn off portal distribution. We've been doing that for years at FMLS, and our agents may or may not realize it, but I'm getting a lot of questions, and the answer is it's already in place and it's been in place. And a lot of it is educating our brokers that we've already been there in the state of Georgia, locally, our Forms Committee at the Georgia Association of Realtors, the RE forms, all that stuff has been into place. And Jake, I think the focus is more so how do we get more data and tools in front of the agents and move on from the political nature of the industry and the litigious nature of the industry, and just show them how they can do business because we're here to help them succeed. And if our agents aren't closing transactions, FMLS is not in business because we're not doing our job. And I really think we're looking forward to much more artificial intelligence into the products and services our agents are using. And that's really our number one focus for the next few years is helping automate what the agents are doing. AI is not going to replace the agent. We think it's going to infuse the agent to be more powerful in front of their buyers and sellers and help with consumer transparency of the data that's available that wasn't available 10 years ago.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. So with that, you know, talking about AI expanding in the industry, where are some of the places in the agent's day-to-day job, in their workflow that you see it being most impactful? I know we've seen things pop up like listing descriptions. We've seen things like some image recognition. Um, but I feel like we're really on the cusp. So super curious where you see the biggest innovation and the biggest change coming.

SPEAKER_03:

Well, we just added OcuCell List as a member benefit that actually writes to multiple MLSs at the same time if the agents are members of multiple MLSs. I think that is a huge feature. Many, many years ago, we talked about upstream and broker platform of choice to edit their listings. Ocucell is doing that for the agents who want to put it into multiple listings at the same time. That's live, but it's infused with AI, with REST V.ai. So the agent can simplistically go into a house, take photos, upload the photos, and it will now create the property description. It will tag the photos, it will say what rooms are in the photos, it will create the photo descriptions for them and put all that information in. It'll integrate it with all the databases of tax data, permit data. So the agent really can take 40 photos of a listing, and 95% of listing management work is done as soon as they upload it and they can tweak that and they can actually get to work on selling properties, not the mundane task administratively of entering in property characteristics. And then I think ADA compliance and accessibility of home information is great. You tech on Lundy. Getting Lundy is a phenomenal voice platform that actually combines AI as well. And some of the recipe facets are coming into Lundy. So an agent can simplistically say, show me homes in this zip code that have granite countertops and pools. And what's great is if you have a show device, it doesn't start showing you the first photo on the listing. It shows you all the photos of the pools and all the listings in the search results. Because I don't want to scroll through 80 photos to see the pool. I just want to see the pool to say that's not the pool I want, or that's not the chef's kitchen I want, because I need Viking and Sub Zero. So we're really making it more efficient for the agents to serve their consumers. And with one home and AI, a consumer can take three photos of anything they want: a tree, a Home Depot, door, whatever they want. They take three photos and then one home and REST B returns what's in FMLS that's listed for sale that matches the photos they took and uploaded to the One Home platform. So it's not removing the agent, it's actually making it much more efficient. And the agent looks even more powerful in front of their buyers and sellers. And then they can get into diving into more data details and focus on the things that matter, like floodplain information, or in the world that unfortunately has been recent with wildfires in the West. We have wildfires in North Carolina and South Carolina now. Helen hit Georgia like no other. Our agents can focus on those factors as property characteristics and risk factors versus mundane searching and data entry. So really making their lives more efficient. And they can get from searching a property to getting the contract done in transaction desk or getting the listing agreement in transaction desk and getting that right into ad edit into the system so they can start marketing it as quickly as they're sitting in front of the homeowner and saying, I've got your listing in 30 minutes in FMLS, and within 45 minutes, it's on every broker website in the nation from the time they sign the agreement through authentic sign in transaction desk. So that's where we think the world needs to be, and we think the agents can do that with the tools we provide them.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, that's really cool. I think it's hearing some of what you're talking about there between the listing descriptions, the characteristics in OcuCell coupled with Lundy. I think back to last year when everyone's saying, oh, you know, all of these changes are coming out with commissions, with buyers agreements. Um what's that mean? And I think one of the things I heard consistently throughout the industry was the value of the agent has never been in opening the door and showing the house. It's been in all of those other characteristics, like understanding uh the different environmental risks and understanding what's in a home inspection and understanding what's in sellers' disclosures. And it sounds like you all are taking that next step uh even further to say, hey, let's help bring technology alongside an agent, a place that makes their job easier, makes the consumer experience better, but then allows them to focus on where their unique expertise can really provide value and differentiate a transaction for their buyer or seller.

SPEAKER_03:

Absolutely. We believe in consumer transparency at FMLS. And I personally have been in this industry for more than two decades. I've bought homes, I've sold homes. And if I was selling my house today or buying another house, I'm absolutely using a real estate professional because they know what I don't know, what the consumers don't know. So as much data we provide the consumers and transparency, the professional is helping them along the way. And it's no different than the legal profession, right? You're going to hire an attorney to help you along the way, no matter how many lawsuits you've been in, how many homes you buy and sell. Even investors who do hundreds of transactions use real estate professionals, and they are the ones that know how to go from A to Z. And there are millions of data points between A to Z, not just 26 letters in the alphabet.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, what I was going to add, uh both Jeremy and Jake is the fact that the technology needs to be just sitting in the background doing its job, making that member look that much better to the consumer with being able just to here's your listings, here's your homes. And something that you said, Jeremy, resonates with me deeply. And it's about keying in the data. Why do I have to put the data in my MLS? And now I have to key my data into transaction desk, and then I would have to key my data over here, and then I'd have to key key it into home warranty, wherever. And I think that where the industry is going and where we're going with our lone wolf technology as well, and I've heard it forever for a long, long time. I'm sick of spending too much time on the transaction instead of listing and selling homes. So I think vendors have to take a step back and think about that when we're building technology and allowing entry points into what we're doing to allow everybody to come in and do what they're good at. You know, what technology over here that is really superior so that we're creating that end-to-end platform. And that's what's key in this space, and that's what's missing today. And I think we're going to get there really quick.

SPEAKER_03:

Well, I think interoperability is key. Obviously, I'm a big proponent of RESO standards. Being the previous CEO, obviously, I would be part of promoting RESO standards. But the reality is I truly believe in it. The world lives in a Bluetooth environment of interoperability of many competitors that are out in the space. And we also live in a world. Of this competition with cooperation because brokers compete, but then they work together, and vendors compete in this space, technology providers compete, but interoperability is key for the brokers and agents to be efficient. And I think this world needs to be like Bluetooth. We are now mindless of how seamless Bluetooth works across a plethora of devices, vacuum cleaners, lawn mowers. It's amazing of everything that's out there that are interoperable with Bluetooth. And that's the way the real estate industry should be because that's the way the consumer mindset is. And I think the future, the insight future in the next five years is we're going to solve the interoperability problem. Everyone's going to compete. They're going to be successful, but they're going to cooperate to help get the transaction closed, be it on the buy side or the sell side. And I think that that's where we're going internationally, just not in our own backyard in Atlanta.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, Jeremy, I think that's the interoperability piece is a huge point. I even think, as Lisa mentioned, what we're doing with Lone Will Foundation, it's not just brokers and agents that compete and then work together. It's the technology firms too. You know, there are some firms in the industry that say, no, I don't want to work together. Those aren't the firms that you see succeed long term. One of the things we've done with Foundation and that we're excited to roll out to your members is re-architected from the ground up those platforms. Make it so that they are API first, that we're adhering to data standards, that we're going to be able to say, it's great that we could fill any need you have from digital advertising to CRMs to CMAs to transactions to accounting to data. But we don't expect someone to come in and pick up every one of those. They're going to have a tool they love. They're going to have something that is a solution that's unique to their needs, that's going to be perfect. And we want to make that all connect together. So that's something that we're really excited to be rolling out with Foundation, with Transact and launching. And ultimately, FMLS members will see that benefit when connecting to Transact, connecting to the contacts in the Lone Wolf ecosystem is that ability to plug in and play and really create a workflow and experience that is great for them, is great for their workflow, makes them as efficient as possible. And as we've talked about, lets them focus in on the most important things, the most important parts of a transaction, and let that be where they invest their time.

SPEAKER_03:

Absolutely. At the end of the day, let's help our brokers and agents transact real estate in the most efficient way possible so they serve their consumers and the consumers continue to think the highest opinion of their broker and agent professionals. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, Jeremy, I know we are running up on the end of our time here today. Do really want to thank you for joining Lisa and I, talking a little bit about our partnership, and then really talking about the future of the MLS, the future of technology, how that's going to improve the lives and the careers of agents, simplify what they're doing, allow them to really invest in their customers and their buyers and sellers even more than they can today, or at least more efficiently than they uh get to today with some of the gaps. Very exciting to hear about Transaction Desk and Lundy and OcuCell. And I know those are just three of the uh tens, if not hundreds, of things that FMLS provides to members. Um, but super appreciative of you taking the time and joining us here. Absolutely. It's been an honor and a pleasure. Thank you. Thanks. Have a good one.

SPEAKER_01:

That's our pulse for today. Keep innovating, keep implementing, and keep moving real estate forward.

Contributor

svalerin@lwolf.com

Producer