Podcast: Play in new window | Download
President and CEO of First Multiple Listing Service (FMLS) Jeremy Crawford is in the studio today for today’s All About Real Estate segment of the Atlanta Real Estate Forum Radio podcast. Tune in to find out what not to do during a virtual continuing education (CE) class as Jeremy shares all sorts of interesting stories with co-hosts Carol Morgan and Todd Schnick. Additional topics discussed include the transition to virtual training, new convenient programs offered for brokers and agents and the state of the current market.
FMLS is dedicated to serving the Georgia real estate community with a convenient database to facilitate sales for buyers and sellers alike. The fourth largest listing service in the nation, FMLS has over 52,000 current subscribers of brokers and real estate agents using its service primarily for residential renting. Last year, FMLS added commercial platforms to accommodate the ever-changing real estate landscape. FMLS also provides instructor-led software training and technical support to ensure success for users.
To accommodate users during the pandemic, FMLS transitioned its onsite training to live virtual trainings for the safety of all participants. FMLS also launched Mindflash, a self-paced CE accredited training for users to conveniently earn their certification on their own time. Although turnout for virtual training was expected to be low, the transition to online training saw a 50% increase in participants with more than 20,000 brokers and agents participating in courses in 2020. Throughout the past year, over 17,000 CE credits were issued which was a 36% increase compared to the previous year.
This year, FMLS has performed well in its first quarter and has already surpassed $8 billion in transactions, which is a 32% increase in dollar volume over the previous year’s first quarter. Currently, the database’s DOM is at seven for all listings at all price points, which is a significant first for the listing service. Over the past month, there has been a small 1% increase in new active listings as inventory is increasingly sparse. Comparing the median home sales price of this year to 2016, there is a substantial jump in appreciation from $189,000 in 2016 to $310,000 in 2021. Since the previous year, residential detached listing prices are also up by 16%.
“There’s still an opportunity for homeownership as long as you can get the agent to find the inventory out there. And we try to get the agents tools so they can farm virtually now, they can look at seller’s scores,” said Crawford. “We’re giving those tools now to our agents so they can see in a neighborhood which out of all the 200 homes has a seller’s score that’s high because of some of these factors that we’re now getting.”
This year, FMLS also introduced Remine Docs+ transaction management, which allows agents to farm a neighborhood and receive nationwide pack state of access to view properties anywhere throughout the country. This enables agents to provide a listing presentation to a homeowner and easily proceed from their discussion to creating and signing an exclusive listing agreement with eSignature, placing the listing on FMLS, accepting offers and closing through an entirely virtual process. With the Docs+ platform, there has been over 700,000 transactions in six months.
“Mobile is so important as well as virtual open houses and we’ve baked all that into these tool sets so agents can do everything from their phone and do everything electronically,” said Crawford. “We’ve really upped the game with what we provide and all of that is a member benefit.”
Launched for sellers that need assistance with home staging, Coming Soon is another program from FMLS that allows homes to be advertised to buyers before it is actively selling on the market. With low inventory rates and demanding buyers, Coming Soon allows homes to be registered with FMLS before sales to provide agents and managing brokers with sufficient time to adequately prepare the property before receiving buyer attention to ensure maximum returns.
Just two weeks ago, FMLS launched AirDNA which aggregates all data from Airbnb and Vrbo for short-term rental investors. With the help of this system, agents can help investors choose what is on the market for sale that they’d like to put into short-term rental. The AirDNA system then provides all cap rates, annual revenue possibilities and comparisons of the features of other properties for best chances of high return. Recently, the churn on commercial leases is more than the residential sales, but every commercial lease put into the FMLS has been leased in 30 days.
Looking forward, Crawford expects FMLS to continue to support increasing numbers of commercial brokers and agents. However, the rental inventory is currently down by 50% compared to last year, similar to residential inventory. Crawford expects this trend of hot sales to continue year-long with consistent interest rates.
Listen to the full interview above to get a more in-depth analysis on the housing industry and hear about other products from FMLS. To learn more about FMLS, visit www.FMLS.com.
Never miss an episode of Atlanta Real Estate Forum Radio! Subscribe to the podcast here. You can also get a recap of any past episode on the Radio page.
Georgia Residential Mortgage Licensee, License #22564. NMLS ID #6606. Subject to borrower and property qualifications. Not all applicants will qualify. New American Funding and FMLS are not associated. Click here to view the terms and conditions of the products mentioned during the show. Corporate office 14511 Myford Rd., Suite 100, Tustin, CA 92780. Phone: (800) 450-2010. (May/2021)
New American Funding is a family-owned mortgage lender with a servicing portfolio of over 123,000 loans for $30.4 billion, 198 branches, and about 3,100 employees. The company offers several niche loan products and has made Inc. 5000’s list of Fastest-Growing Companies in America six times. It has a state-of-the-art career training facility and develops innovative technology, including the GoGo LO mobile application. For more information, visit www.branch.newamericanfunding.com/Atlanta.
The Atlanta Real Estate Forum Radio “All About Real Estate” segment, presented by Denim Marketing, highlights the movers and shakers in the Atlanta real estate industry – the home builders, developers, Realtors and suppliers working to provide the American dream for Atlantans. For more information on how you can be featured as a guest, contact Denim Marketing at 770-383-3360 or fill out the Atlanta Real Estate Forum contact form. Subscribe to the Atlanta Real Estate Forum Radio podcast on iTunes, and if you like this week’s show, be sure to rate it.
Awesome pod cast , thank you Jeremy for your insight and all that you do and did with remine!!