A major misconception about off-the-shelf solutions is that they're cheaper for the companies that use them. This conclusion is usually made upon seeing the relatively low monthly prices of those services. Many Multiple Listing Services are even allegedly free of charge. However, the reality is that cheap and free solution can achieve this low price only through one practice: they push many time-consuming tasks upon the customers. As a result, they are not as payment-free as it may seem. Instead, those services involve payments in a hidden form: they require the specialists to invest their time into product metrics like usage duration.
Is there an alternative? Yes! This alternative may come in the form of custom MLS services. What are those? These are applications for MLS analysis and data collection that are built specifically for your company. In this regard, investing in MLS software development services is the best option for acquiring such an MLS. Now that you know about this option, let's look into its long-term benefits for various companies in-depth.
Benefit 1. Personalized user experience
The first reason to use apps of this type is their ability to personalize user experience to the utmost degree. Traditional off-the-shelf solutions typically focus on the generalized user experience, trying to make themselves valid for all potential customers on the market at the same time. The problem, however, is that different real estate companies have different views of what can be considered an efficient usage of resources and time. As a result, when using various off-the-shelf solutions, they end up in a situation where internal company resources may become disorganized. What does this mean in the long term? Companies using off-the-shelf software are highly likely to end up in a situation where they would significantly decrease their productivity.
Benefit 2. Enhanced Efficiency and Productivity
The usage of custom solutions for MLS not only prevents situations in which your productivity can decrease due, for example, the inability to align your company's internal processes with those advanced by a particular app. It also raises excellent opportunities for rapid improvements in overall work productivity. You can add custom solutions like automated listing updates, CRM integration, or data analytics. As a result, it's possible to optimize the interactions between tasks that require automation and those that need the manual intervention of the agents.
Benefit 3. Differentiating from competitors
A significant challenge for many companies in the real estate market is differentiation. There's a large number of companies that generally do the same thing. Usually, quality is among the core aspects of differentiation; however, more and more companies are pushing this aspect to its absolute limit at the current rate. Consequently, this means there's a need for something beyond this type of differentiation. This something can come in the form of various AI-driven positive features. First and foremost, it's possible to differentiate your company from the competitors by providing AI-driven property recommendations in an MLS framework. Secondly, a significant improvement that can benefit your business may come from virtual tour integrations. Modern AI can use a lot of contextual information to optimize 3D models of various houses. Therefore, it offers a perfect option for the fast competitive differentiation of different real estate businesses.
Benefit 4. Full control over development
Regrettably, a common problem encountered by many users of off-the-shelf solutions is the inability to affect their development efficiently. As the experience of certain companies shows, development can lead to stagnation in terms of features and a legitimate worsening of its capabilities. Therefore, companies that rely on off-the-shelf solutions are typically at risk of bearing the costs of outside development decisions. This information means that off-the-shelf solutions often represent a form of long-term liability for their clients. For example, a change in search algorithms within an MLS system may easily disrupt the work processes of whole departments without any capability to control the implementation of new frameworks in the first place.
Custom solutions for real estate agents solve this problem once and for all. In the case of those solutions, the customers have more or less complete control over their apps. They can review their code and, more importantly, add any modifications they want. Thus, adding capabilities beyond a project's scope is not risky. Every change, as long as it's aligned with company strategy, is likely to fully comply with its needs.
Benefit 5. Improved data management and insights
Lastly, the ability to control the development of an MLS app also puts complete control over analytics in your hands. Off-the-shelf MLS solutions provide analytics, but the scope of collected information is mainly limited to the options provided by the creators of the relevant applications. This aspect means that, in many cases, you will have no access to genuinely pertinent options that may interest your company. MLS frameworks resolve this problem: they offer their customers a maximal number of data collection options possible.
Conclusion
Custom MLS frameworks are among the best solutions for modern real estate agencies. Why is this the case? They improve capabilities and provide complete control over development in the long term. Off-the-shelf solutions are often an outside factor in the activities of real estate companies. With custom frameworks, minimizing the possibility of negative outside influence is possible. If you want to create a custom solution for your business, our best recommendation is to address companies like Keenethics. You should look for firms with more than five years of experience and multiple projects developed within the real estate sector.
