Rapid Growth of Mexican MLS Contributes to Open Market

  Buy­ers, Sell­ers, and Bro­kers Ben­e­fit from Inter­net Technology

The rapid growth in use of a new Inter­net tech­nol­ogy over the past two years by Mex­ico real estate bro­kers has resulted in a de facto Mex­i­can mul­ti­ple list­ing ser­vice (MLS). The new sys­tem bet­ter serves buy­ers and sell­ers of real estate through­out coastal and other regions of inter­est to for­eign buy­ers. This progress helps solve the key chal­lenge of shar­ing and mar­ket­ing list­ings between agents, a his­tor­i­cal chal­lenge in Mex­ico as it was in the early days of US real estate. Buy­ers and sell­ers would do well to make sure that their agent is part of this grow­ing MLS in order to ensure that they are receiv­ing the proper real estate ser­vice, par­tic­u­larly in regions of inter­est to for­eign buyers.

A com­mon mis­con­cep­tion amongst real estate buy­ers and sell­ers is that there is such a thing as the “one and only” mul­ti­ple list­ing ser­vice. This is erro­neous because there are lit­er­ally hun­dreds of mul­ti­ple list­ing ser­vices in the US and Canada, and the term is mor­ph­ing to become a descrip­tor of any quasi-public repos­i­tory of real estate list­ings (except in Canada where the term is a reg­is­tered trade­mark for real estate). Any­one may cre­ate a mul­ti­ple list­ing ser­vice with the value of the sys­tem being a func­tion of how widely and how respon­si­bly the sys­tem is used. Each mar­ket deter­mines the MLS sys­tem that best meets the need – with the occa­sional dis­rup­tion such as the law­suit by the US Depart­ment of Jus­tice with the National Asso­ci­a­tion of Realtors®.

Mex­i­can real estate has a his­tory of agents with­hold­ing list­ings from each other with the intent to get the com­mis­sion from both the sell­ing and buy­ing sides of the trans­ac­tion (i.e. “pocket list­ings”), sim­i­lar to the sit­u­a­tion in the US and Canada before the var­i­ous regional MLSs were cre­ated. This made it dif­fi­cult for a poten­tial buyer to know if they were see­ing the best prop­er­ties or get­ting a fair deal, and for sell­ers to know if their agent would give proper expo­sure to their prop­erty. (The appear­ance of orga­nized MLSs in the US in the early 1970s was a vast improve­ment over this inef­fi­cient system.)

The good news for con­sumers is that boom­ing Mex­ico mar­kets of inter­est to for­eign­ers plus the ubiq­uity of the Inter­net have dri­ven the demand for more open meth­ods of shar­ing list­ings to the ben­e­fit of buy­ers and sell­ers. No longer does the mar­ket have to sub­mit to anachro­nis­tic sales meth­ods in the Inter­net age.

One par­tic­u­lar mul­ti­ple list­ing ser­vice has grown organ­i­cally to gain a lead­ing spot for Mexico’s real estate inven­tory: Point2 NLS by Point2 Tech­nolo­gies. Mex­i­can agents from Tijuana to Rocky Point [Puerto Peñasco] to Puerto Val­larta to the Mayan Riv­iera have dis­cov­ered that this com­mer­cial plat­form is an effec­tive way of shar­ing and mar­ket­ing nearly 7,000 Mex­ico prop­erty list­ings amongst over 1,000 fel­low agents through­out Mex­ico. Quite sim­ply, it is the largest data­base of Mex­ico real estate list­ings shared between agents in the world – and it is grow­ing daily.

“Point2 is a vehi­cle to pro­vide, in Mex­ico, the tech­nol­ogy that a full-blown MLS pro­vides,” com­mented Saul Klein, CEO of Point2 Tech­nolo­gies in an inter­view. “Orga­ni­za­tions of real estate pro­fes­sion­als can add value around the plat­form. The key func­tion of shar­ing and mar­ket­ing list­ings between agents is intrin­sic to Point2. Indi­vid­ual agents con­trol their busi­ness rela­tion­ships in a way that best serves their clients.” Klein noted that Mex­ico real estate agents are Point2 Tech­nolo­gies’ third largest group of Point2 adopters in the 85 coun­tries that the com­pany ser­vices, pre­ceded only by the USA and Canada.

Why should real estate buy­ers and sell­ers in Mex­ico care about an Inter­net technology?

The answer is that if their agent uses Point2, that client’s agent has access to the most pro­lific MLS through­out Mex­i­can regions of inter­est to for­eign­ers. Buy­ers and sell­ers would be wise to ensure that their agent is using Point2. Sell­ers will want to seek out list­ing agents that gen­er­ously share the prop­er­ties with other agents’ Web sites in order to max­i­mize expo­sure of those list­ings. Buy­ers in turn will want to under­stand how their pre­ferred agent fil­ters list­ing results that appear on their agent’s website.

Until an improved shar­ing and mar­ket­ing solu­tion is offered nation­ally to Mex­ico, the Point2 sys­tem is lead­ing the way towards address­ing buyer and seller require­ments for an MLS in the United Mex­i­can States, one real estate list­ing and one real estate agent at a time.