Facebook
X
Pinterest
Copy Link
The pivot heard around the real estate world
When news broke of Upstream’s strategy pivot, we all stopped to see how they shifted because this not only has implications for brokerages, but for the industry as a whole. For many, Upstream’s movement represented brokers taking back control. This pivot means the power stays in the hands of the MLS.
What Happened With Upstream?
The original plan was for Upstream to stick themselves before the MLS organizations, granting brokerages much wanted control where they hadn’t before. Now instead of trying to get brokers to input listings with Upstream first, they will have brokers input listings into their MLS, and later can push said listing through a dashboard to Upstream if/when the broker chooses to. It’s not just a pivot, they flipped a 180 and it has major implications.
York Baur, CEO of Moxi Works, weighed in on the topic and said, “The point of Upstream was for brokerages to get control of their data. We were fans of the idea of upstream. If we had a magic wand and Upstream existed, then our team wouldn’t be spending their time chasing MLSs around, we would just be writing to the Upstream API and be done with it. The problem they were solving for the software companies and brokerages was a fantastic idea. We understand why they had to pivot – trying to change agent behavior at the MLS level is a huge challenge.”
There has to be a better way, right? We’re here to say: There is.
A Solution
Moxi offers an alternative that gives more control to brokers. But before we explain how, we need to back up and look at the original goal of Upstream.
To give you some perspective, “The idea behind Upstream is to give brokerages the ability to store and distribute any information they deal with, not just listings. This includes information related to salespeople, employees, customers or clients, vendors, accounting and historical property data.” This is from a 2015 Inman article. They didn’t just set out to fix the control of property data, they set out to fix the brokerage control of all data.
So, what’s the alternative? The next best thing are open platforms like the Moxi Cloud. The end result for brokerages in our case, is the same. The brokerages data is all in one place and all the tool and services integrations can get to it. It’s a power strip where brokerages can plug and unplug all the best-in-class tools and services they want, while remaining in control of all their data.
Baur added, “There is good news to all of this, and that is that the Moxi Cloud open platform does what Upstream promised today, allowing property data, brokerage data, agent data, and consumer data, to be used and updated by more than 30 industry leading tools and services. Until the time Upstream or something like it exists, this is the best brokerage solution.”
The most common question we get is: “What if we commit to the Moxi Cloud and then Upstream happens… then what?” The answer is simple. We have already cultivated these tools and services, we would simply take the Upstream feed into our services and everything would work the same. It’s not the Moxi Cloud or Upstream, it’s the Moxi Cloud AND Upstream.
Final Thoughts
Our goal, why we do what we do, is all in order to strengthen a brokerage and give them control of their destiny. “The desire for brokers to have more control won’t go away and it will probably be filled by MLSs, brokers, and platforms like Moxi Works, that already build tools that give brokers that control,” said Cass Herrin, Director of Data Services at Moxi Works. “We will continue to focus on tools that give brokers control over their own listings.”
Baur added, “Brokers funded Upstream with the goal of gaining control of their data. While that’s been diluted by this pivot, brokers must realize that the vendor community and the open platform Moxi Works provides, aka the Moxi Cloud, has already solved this problem.”
Learn about the open platform and how it can benefit your brokerage here.
A glance at the Moxi Works Open Platform:
