Bulletins – Hawaii Information Service

You should consider your blog audience to be a top-tier group of contacts who follow you because they have a genuine interest in you, what you do, and what you say.  Compared to cold calls or mailers, blog readers are more than “opted in,” they’re coming to you. They want to hear from you. Take advantage of that by making sure that you always advertise things like new listings, reduced prices, and open houses, in addition to your regular posts.

All of this information is syndicated to Aloha Living and beyond, creating greater exposure and search engine visibility. But nothing beats a group of people who have been pre-qualified to a certain extent.

If you commit yourself, blogging does bring results. Beth Thoma Robinson with Hawaii Palm Properties on the Big Island is one of our regular bloggers on Aloha Living. “After a year of blogging my website stats show that after three search engines, the next biggest source of traffic is my blog,” she said. “And I get phone call leads from it.” Also, Elaine Murphy of RE/MAX Kauai has had found several clients through her blog, and has even made a $1.475M sale with it. She says, “It certainly has paid for itself!”

Through my past experience, I have found that agents have a higher success rate of making a sale from within their already established sphere of contacts rather than from a group of people who may not have worked with them before. Even if no one in this group is ready to buy or sell right now, chances are they have a friend who is, and who doesn’t like a good referral?

REVISED RULES AND REGULATIONS

A new version of the Rules and Regulations of  MLS Hawaii, Inc. d/b/a Hawaii Information Service is now available in the HIS website.  This version was adopted by the HIS Board of Directors on January 13, 2009.  Members may access the rules through the MLS Rules and Regulations link that appears on the login page under REsearch Quick Links.  The rules now include all of the amendments approved by the HIS Board of Directors since January 2006. 
 
Members should pay special attention to the revisions to the rules regarding Short Sale listings and changes to the rules regarding IDXs and VOWs.  The revisions to the IDX and VOW rules were required by the NAR/DOJ settlement.  Most of what you’ll see in Articles X and XI, is taken from the NAR MLS model rules.
 
Should you have any questions, please feel free to contact us at 1-800-628-3121 or send an email to TechSupport@HawaiiInformation.com.

ABOUT SHORT SALE LISTINGS

New Section 4.09. Short Sales
There is a new section in the revised rules that specifically addresses Short Sale Listings.  Section 4.09 requires that the language “Potential short sale” be included in the Private Remarks.  Further, this section requires that all confidential disclosures and confidential information related to short sales must be communicated in the “Non Public Remarks” available only to participants and subscribers.
 
Disclosure in the Public Remarks permitted with seller’s consent
We have had several members express that they felt it a duty to the public to disclose that a property was subject to short sale in the the Public Remarks.  After discussing this with legal counsel, it was decided that members may, but are not obligated to, disclose the existence of a potential short sale in the public remarks provided the seller has consented to the disclosure.
 
Short Sale Listings may remain in Active status until lender approves or accepts an offer or purchase agreement.
We heard from several members concerned about having to place short sale listing under contingent status after the seller accepts the first offer.  If required to place short sale listings in contingent status after the first offer was accepted by the seller, it may be months before an offer is accepted by the lender.  They felt that buyers and their brokers and agents were not interested in pursuing a listing in contingent status.  This issue was discussed at the HIS Board of Directors meeting and the directors agreed that a short sale listing may remain active until the lender accepted or approved an offer or purchase agreement or contract.

MAINTENANCE ALERT!

HIS will be performing hardware migration for one of its SQL servers this Saturday night, April 11th, starting at 10:50 p.m. The work is anticipated to take about 12 hours.  During this 12 hour maintenance window, all REsearch, IDX and public site customers will be running in “Read Only” mode. No new listings, photos, prospects, calendar entries, or other data entry processes will be permitted until the migration work is completed.  It is anticipated that full service will be available by 10:50 a.m. on Sunday, April 12th. 
 
We thank you for your patience and apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you.  Should you have any questions, please feel free to contact us.        Mahalo!
 
Normal Office Hours

Monday – Friday:   8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m
 
In the event of emergency ….
you may leave a message in our emergency voice mailbox by calling the main office number and pressing * (star).   Leave your message and our phone system will notify our on-call staff that there is an emergency message.  Call 1-800-628-3121, if calling from the neighbor islands or 599-4224, if calling from Oahu.

As the saying goes, “April Showers bring May Flowers,” a true statement even here in Hawaii – the land of perpetual green – especially after the seemingly endless wet and chilly weather we’ve had lately.  With the first days of Spring the sun has reappeared and what better time than now to ask yourself “how does my garden grow?” ……

To read the rest of this article and to see a list of April events happening statewide, go to http://www.alohaliving.com

Here are the changes/additions that have been made with REsearch Version 4.2.2

• Changed listing input form’s new options to make them more understandable – Foreclosure is now Pre-Foreclosure and REO is now Bank Owned REO.

Other bugs and issues that were fixed:

• Corrected ZIP CODE where it was incorrect for HOVE and HOVR.
• Made enhancement to MLS Book Format so that the remarks now show in a separate box.
• Addressed the javascript error appearing in the Basket.
• Corrected data for Oahu Listings that were showing incorrect status in Latest Listing Activity.
• Corrected data discrepancy in REsearch for Mls 221951.
• Fixed aerial image maps so they will toggle off.
• Fixed Maps in standard view to show aerial view
• Corrected the data discrepancy for tmk 2-4-5-3-11 to show Lessor’s name as: B P Bishop Estate Trs
• Fixed forms to allow input of brokerage information.
• Corrected the data discrepancy: Changed owner’s name to NAKAGAWA WU FAM LTD PTNRSHP on tmk 1-2-4-12-12