Boards in SW Fla still don`t understand!

Listings in Southwest Florida still out of sync, irking agents
By RIDDHI TRIVEDI-ST. CLAIR, rtrivedi@bonitanews.comNovember 11, 2005

Four boards, thousands of agents and three listing systems — and no consensus on which system works best.
It was a similar lack of consensus that originally led to the split among the participating boards in Sunshine Multiple Listing Service. Now it is causing some Bonita Springs, Estero and Naples area real estate agents to join three boards or be left without access to a significant part of the home listings in one area or another.
"It's terrible. We get less listings down here and the agents up there can't read the ones on our MLS," said Jack Barra, a real estate agent with Prudential/WCI in Bonita Springs. "They were supposed to have data-sharing, but that was supposed to happen by the end of September, then it was Oct. 10, then Oct. 20 and now it is November whatever ..."
The problem, Barra said, is the Fort Myers board is playing games and there are a lot of agents on both sides who are upset with the split and the new system. Some real estate agents in Fort Myers and members of the board say the problem is with Sunshine MLS, not their end.
While each side says it is working on the data-sharing agreement, each one blames the other.
In the meantime, real estate agents and homeowners are paying the price, said Bill Barnes, managing broker for Coldwell Banker in Estero and Fort Myers.
For example, the Rapatoni system has technical problems that don't allow all the features to work properly, it doesn't interface with many of the existing features on Sunshine MLS and the split is forcing his agents to join three different boards if they want to have access to all the listings, Barnes said.
"For the homeowners, it means loss of data," Barnes said. "If different homes in a neighborhood are listed in different systems, they may not be able to get the transaction history for the neighborhood. The two systems are supposed to have data sharing but it hasn't turned into anything meaningful."
The split has left Lee and Collier counties with three listing systems, the one used by Naples and Bonita Springs, and two used by Fort Myers and Cape Coral, where most agents would prefer one combined listing for all the areas. While Barnes and other agents would prefer a unified system. Others, including George Sayers of Re/Max Realty, would like to see not just Lee and Collier counties, but also Charlotte County combine their data.
There are as many opinions as real estate agents over who is to blame for the systems splitting rather than combining.
Fort Myers board members blame an "outdated" Sunshine system. They chose the newer, more user-friendly Rapatoni system.
"Rapatoni has 95 (multiple listing services) nationwide. Sunshine is a homemade system put together by two part-time technicians," said Gary Atkinson, presi dent of the Realtor Association of Greater Fort Myers and the Beach. "We tried to get them to upgrade Sunshine and it didn't go anywhere."
That's why his board decided to go with its own system at the end of September.
Officials with Sunshine disagree with both claims — that Rapatoni is a better system and that Sunshine hasn't been upgraded.
"That's completely inaccurate.
I am sure (Rapatoni) has features they like better, but I have a feeling Sunshine has some feature they don't," said Joseph Ballarino, a Realtor with Ameriwest in Naples and immediate past-president of NABOR.
Real estate agent Dawna Krohe and Judy Fisch, a listing coordinator for Coldwell Banker, both said Rapatoni is more time consuming, harder to use and more complex.
"The new system is like a bureaucracy. It's not better and it isn't more user-friendly," Krohe said. "It's harder to put data in, harder to search and harder to find what you are looking for. It's frustrating."
Sayers of Re/Max, on the other hand, found 95 percent of his 171 agents in Lee County love the new system.
Brett Ellis a real estate agent with Re/Max Realty Group, The Ellis Team, has a more balanced view. The new system has its problems, Ellis said, and he spends a lot more time putting data into it than he would like. He considers those teething problems.
"We gave Sunshine two years. I am not willing to do that with Rapatoni," Ellis said. "But it has only been two months. I would give them a little more time."
That time is costing many agents money, say Barnes and others that do business in the Naples and South Lee area.
"Agents are having to refer business out to other people because they can't get all the listings they need," Barnes said.
Sayers said the move by Fort Myers to Rapatoni was the right thing to do.
"They took the right step to get us into 2006. We need to be able to service our buyers and sellers and this system does it," Sayers said. "We had too many complains about Sunshine. We can't send out agents out there with a pick and an ax."