PPMLS UPDATE

COMMISSIONS:
RSC legal counsel recently responded to these questions posed by Participants:

Question: Can a Participant refuse to extend the “blanket unilateral offer of cooperation and compensation” to another Participant who is also acting as the “Buyer”?
Answer: No – “blanket unilateral offer” means exactly what it says.

Section 5 COOPERATIVE COMPENSATION SPECIFIED ON EACH LISTING states, “The listing broker shall specify, on each listing filed with the Multiple Listing Service, the compensation offered to other Multiple Listing Service Participants for their services in the sale of such listing. Such offers are unconditional except the entitlement to compensation is determined by the cooperating broker’s performance as the procuring cause of the sale (or lease) or as otherwise provided for in this rule.”

Section 5.2 PARTICIPANT AS PURCHASER states, “If a Participant or any licensee (including licensed and certified appraisers) affiliated with a Participant wishes to acquire an interest in property listed with another Participant, such contemplated interest shall be disclosed to the listing broker prior to the time an offer to purchase is submitted to the listing broker, and clearly stated that the purchaser is a licensee.

Question: Can a Participant limit the “blanket unilateral offer of cooperation and compensation” only to Participants acting pursuant to a transaction-broker relationship?
Answer: Yes – currently the CREC standard listing contracts do allow the brokerage firm to check/not check a separate box for compensation offered to a Buyer Agent and separately to a Transaction Broker. (However, it is our understanding that the CREC has been asked to review this policy, and possibly replace it with a “generic” offer of compensation regardless of agency status.)

In Section 5, the PPMLS further notes, “The listing broker retains the right to determine the amount of compensation offered to other Participants (acting as subagents, buyer agents, transaction brokers, or in other agency or non-agency capacities defined by law) which may be the same or different.”

“Specifying the compensation on each listing is necessary because the cooperating broker has the right to know what their compensation shall be prior to their endeavor to sell.” If the coop broker is unsure of the compensation being offered, they should verify the compensation with the listing broker.

DISCLOSING BASEMENT SQUARE FEET:
Section 1.2 DETAIL ON LISTINGS FILED WITH THE PPMLS states, “A Listing Agreement and Listing Input Worksheet, when filed with the PPMLS by the listing broker, shall be complete in every detail which is ascertainable as specified on the Listing Input Worksheet.”

The existence of a basement on a property can be verified against the El Paso County Assessor’s database or the Realist database in the TEMPO system. The PPMLS has seen a number of listings where the listing broker has input the “Basement Type” as, for example, “Walk-Out” but then displayed the actual basement square feet in the “Lower Sq Ft” field. Please ensure that you correctly display the square feet information on your listing.

Remember, the Tax system in TEMPO (Realist) was recently upgraded to include a more thorough break-out of square feet information.

TEMPO SYSTEM ADDS “NON-DELIVERY RECEIPT”:

On June 28, 2005 MarketLinx will install a great new feature to the TEMPO system.
Currently, when an agent sends an email to a client from the TEMPO prospect function, either manually or via auto-notification, every once in awhile that email is rejected by the client’s Internet Service Provider (ISP) and is not delivered. The email may be rejected for a number of reasons, including that the email address is invalid, the client’s mailbox is full, etc. The agent was never notified that the email failed to go through.

TEMPO has a new process that checks each Non-Delivery Receipt (NDR) sent by an ISP when an email is rejected. If a Prospect’s email fails, the sending agent will be notified.

In order not to inundate agents with NDR emails, the agent will be notified only after 20 errors are returned for an email address within a 5 day period. (This takes into consideration that the Prospect auto-notify process runs 4 times a day.)

PPMLS staff will have the ability to monitor the activity of NDR emails, and if necessary will contact an agent if the email in question is not fixed or removed.

This monitoring is necessary to help prevent the emails coming from the TEMPO system from being blacklisted as “spam” email. Your cooperation in removing any rejected email addresses will be greatly appreciated to help ensure that the Prospect function will remain available to all PPMLS Participants who wish to use it.