Disrupt MLS - Unleash Valuable Real Estate Listing Data onto OCEAN Market

OceanDAO Round 9
#1

Name of Project: Disrupt MLS(Multiple Listing Service)

Proposal in one sentence: Disrupt the centralization of homebuyer inventory data on the MLS

Description of the project and what problem is it solving: The data around home buying is centralized via the MLS. Realtors have to pay to access the data and upload it to the MLS, sellers have to pay realtors to place their listings on the MLS and sign exclusivity contracts to do so. Owners who want to subvert this process and list their property do not get the visibility that entering the MLS system provides. Disrupt MLS cuts out the realtors, traditional MLS and associated fees. It takes seller listings and puts them where buyers are, on sites like realtor.com, zillow, etc.

Grant Deliverables: (Provide us with a check-boxed list of deliverables for the funding provided.)

  • Grant Deliverable 1 - landing page
  • Grant Deliverable 2 - database that will store data
  • Grant Deliverable 3 - api fetch data from landing page to store on database

Which category best describes your project? Pick one.

  • Unleash data

Which Fundamental Metric best describes your project? Pick one.

  • Primary Metric: “$ Datatoken Consuming Volume”.
  • Secondary Metric: “Total Value Locked”.

What is the final product?:
The final product is a service that collects, stores and displays sellers listings outside of the MLS. This valuable data can then be accessed directly by wholesalers or investors (who place a premium on listings outside of the MLS) and access can be sold to by sites such as Zillow and Realtor which will add more value to their platforms.

How does this project drive value to the “fundamental metric” (listed above) and the overall Ocean ecosystem?

  • We can get minimum 30 data buyers (and thousands of data sellers in the form of FSBO listings).
  • Each buyer does (20K OCEAN / month) of consume volume on Ocean Market. This is a total of 600K OCEAN / month consume volume.
  • This is the average recurring volume for future months.
  • So bang = 30K OCEAN.
  • Grant size = buck = 17.6K OCEAN
  • So ROI = bang / buck = 30K OCEAN / 17.6K OCEAN = 1.7.
  • Proposer’s estimate of % chance of success = 60%
  • Final: expected ROI = 0.60 * 1.7 = 1.02

As it stands now, There are multiple MLSes that compete with each other. It stands to reason that this service can thrive in the system as it currently exists and out live it as disruption in the Real estate space persists.

Funding Requested: (Amount of USD your team is requesting - Round 9 Max @ $17,500)

Proposal Wallet Address: 0x89128D2be9163d65b3dF2Ebf088A0904Dc48B625

Have you previously received an OceanDAO Grant (Y/N)? N

Country of Residence: United States

Part 2 - Team

IMPORTANT: See Criterion (4). One Project/One proposal on communicating “Core Team” versus “Advisor”. You may be ineligible if not correctly updated.

Core Team

For each team member, give their name, role and background such as the following.

Jenny V.

Advisers

Dianne Jennings - Real Estate Broker and Lender in Georgia, United States

Part 3 - Proposal Details

Project Deliverables - Category:

  • Data will be made available on Ocean Market

If the project includes software:

  • Are there any mockups or designs to date? No
  • An overview of the technology stack?
    Node, React, AWS, MongoDB, Rabbit MQ

Project Deliverables - Roadmap

  • Any prior work completed thus far? No
  • What is the project roadmap? That is: what are key milestones, and the target date for each milestone.
  1. publish an article/tutorial explaining your project as part of the grant. October 2021
  2. Landing Page where buyer and seller data is collected gauging interest. November 2021
  3. Ad Creative that will lead to landing page - gauge interest in data buyers and data sellers. - January 2021
  4. Service Creation - authenticated web page that gathers seller data - March 2022
  5. Service Creation - making data available on Ocean Market. - May 2022
  6. Build relationships with services like Zillow, Realtor. - Ongoing
  7. Market data Access to investors and wholesalers. - Ongoing

Maintenance - For sure. It is about stomping out bugs and taking in consumer feedback to become better than the MLS

Additions - Again this will depend on where the real estate market goes, and where competitors go as well.

1 Like
#2

Hello from ResilientML

This looks like an very practical and meaningful business proposition and a great use case for Ocean markets. Happy to meet you at the OceanDao the other day - welcome from ResilientML.

I wanted to ask you a few clarification questions:

Q1. How will you incentivize listings to join your market?

Q2. How do you take these listings to key aggregator sites like realto.com etc if these listings have signed exclusivity contracts with existing realtors? (or will this be for non-realtor listings?)

Q3: I believe one of the reasons that realtors have cornered the market in these listings and exclusivity is that they provide a complete package including - marketing, listing, advert design and campaign, auction/sales service… how do you see breaking up this package through your solution in order to capture the listings in your market place?

Overall a very interesting potential value proposition… look forward to your comments

best wishes
ResilientML

1 Like
#3

Sorry, I was unable to capture the value proposition and data flow (from source to consumer) in this proposal at first glance. That is usually a sign that keeps me from supporting a project. Can you elaborate where the data comes from and how it is used on the consumers side?

#4

Q1. How will you incentivize listings to join your market?
The incentive is the promise of exposure that “For Sale by Owner” (FBSO) listings traditionally do not receive. These houses tend to sit on the market longer, get lower visibiliy (because it is relegated to whoever sees the “For Sale” and word of mouth.

Q2. How do you take these listings to key aggregator sites like realto.com etc if these listings have signed exclusivity contracts with existing realtors? (or will this be for non-realtor listings?)
Access to the the influx of “For Sale By Owner” listings can be pitched as a value add to Product Heads at these aggregator sites. The value is in the aggregation. Wholesalers, investors and real estate professionals alike know that FSBO listings are prized because there are where deals are found.

Q3: I believe one of the reasons that realtors have cornered the market in these listings and exclusivity is that they provide a complete package including - marketing, listing, advert design and campaign, auction/sales service… how do you see breaking up this package through your solution in order to capture the listings in your market place?
This particular project is focused on listings that operate outside of the traditional real estate agent structure. So the benefit for these listings is to get the same benefit of exposure without the exclusivity agreements and finders fee upon closing that is the norm when real estate agents are involved. All of the services you have described will be on the part of the owner (there prime motivation is saving money which is why they are operating outside of the traditional real estate relationship. There are competitors who are doing what you have stated. And as this project evolves this can be one of the many product pillars that drive revenue. But for now, we are focused exclusively on the power that comes with aggregating and selling access to specific type of seller listing.

#5

The data flow is as follows

  1. Attract Sellers who have “For Sale by Owner” Listings.
  2. Aggregate their listings on Ocean market via our platform.
  3. Approach potential data buyers (Aggregator Sites, MLS services, Real Estate Investors, Wholesalers, retail purchasers) and offer access to the data for a fee. The value here is in the aggregation. FSBO properties are different because the act of listing on the market without the aid of a real estate agent sends certain signals to these buyers depending on market conditions. Aggregation of this data will expose these listings to the national market versus the limited number of people who may happen across a “For sale By Owner” sign or a Craigslist listing.

The same data can be sold again and again just by formatting it differently to fit the different needs of each of the stakeholders mentioned earlier as evidenced by the existing system where money is charged to write in or read a MLS database. A great example of this is access to commercial listings can be about $10,000 per year. The power of these data bases is in the aggregation of the data.

1 Like
#6

@jenny Round 9 Max is $17,500, Round 8 Max was $17,600. I changed to $17,500 in our DAO database, please update it in your proposal.

#7

Thanks for the heads up! I made the change

#8

I think your project has a valuable proposition but would be best served by being global in nature. I think the bringing together of diamonds in the rough USA->CAN->Australia/NZ->UK could create a viable alternative to the siloed situation in the home market we currently have.

Disrupt MLS - Project Update- Second Round of Funding
#9

I completely agree with you! By next proposal cycle the product will reflect this in the mission statement. I’ve made contact with another member of the DAO who has contacts with realtor.ca, as well as viable use cases in countries like NZ.

#10

@jenny For Deliverables updates please post them in reply to your last grant received. Thanks!

Posting your Round 12 comments on your Round 9 Deliverables here for prosperity.

Grant Deliverables:

  • Grant Deliverable 1 - landing page (COMPLETE)
  • Grant Deliverable 2 - database that will store data(COMPLETE)
  • Grant Deliverable 3 - api fetch data from landing page to store on database(COMPLETE)

UPDATE:

The grant deliverables are complete and are available for viewing @ https://b03f-2600-1700-8c90-3fe0-ac87-1ac0-afbd-abb3.ngrok.io/sign-up. The production domain is onemls.world

Deployment to production is currently underway and will be complete before the voting round.

Code: https://github.com/jennyvallon/disrupt_mls/

Blog Post: https://medium.com/@jennyvallon/disrupt-mls-removing-the-multiple-listing-system-unleashing-data-onto-ocean-market-b05fbdbd6343

#11

Thanks @AlexN! I appreciate it.