Providing third party user access to your RETS server can be time consuming as well as costly. As the Internet becomes more of a main stay in the real estate industry innovative tools requiring listing content become an integral part of doing business today. Traditionally support of RETS has been financed by subscribers fees, the entire population pays to support services not everyone uses. Third party service providers profit from selling their services to a few subscribers, using content obtained from the MLS system.

More and more MLSs are beginning to charge non-subscribers for their use of MLS content. Charging Application, Set-Up and Annual usage fees is slowly becoming commonplace. MLS subscribers, as a collective, do not have to sit back and watch as their fees are used to provide services not directly related to their individual business. Designing and implementing RETS fees to off-set the MLSs costs is a great way to soften the impact of a slower market. Why should all of your subscribers pay to support a product only few will use? Why should third party companies enter into your market, using the MLS listing content belonging to your subscribers without paying for that valuable information?

RETS IQ Contact™ has taken the idea of recovering MLS costs one step further. RETS IQ Contact™ incorporates Executive Level analytical Reporting which enable the MLS Administrator to evaluate data consumption by non-subscribers. These reports allow MLSs to define areas where data consumption becomes costly. By reviewing the types and amounts of MLS content a third party is using, MLS Executives now have a very simple method for determining RETS pricing structures which not only directly off-set costs incurred by the MLS but can also be turned into non-dues revenue.

MLS subscribers are working hard to collect information to share in the MLS system. More and more “industry interlopers” are requesting MLS listing content to power the tools they use for their own profits. RETS IQ Contact™ allows the MLS to add realistic, appropriate price lines on RETS data usage which will, in turn, lighten the financial burden of the MLS as well as the subscribers they serve.