After being handed down dozens of iProperty projects from the people at vieleRETS I fell so far behind that we were literally 3 to 4 weeks behind on all projects.  The most time consuming part of ANY MLS project, regardless of target solution has got to be field mapping and coding the data inserts.  To take an MLS, map each property class, build the data inserts from the XML files takes an easy 2 hours per class when doing it manually.  Thats if the RETS feed is compliant naturally because I’ve had others take several hours just getting the DMQL queries to bring back the correct data. So with that in mind as a daily challenge, I finally called no joy and decided to build some generators to reduce the amount if time it takes to prepare RETS or IDX Data for products like iProperty.

Once the generated code is completed, building the inserts takes the balance of the time but its not nearly as tedious as the mapping and configuration part in any project. As a result I’m able to bring the price of mapping down to about $100 to $150 per class on average.  So if your typical MLS RETS feed has 5 classes (Residential, LotsLand, Multifam, Commercial, Rentals, etc…) then the price for a full iProperty RETS integration can be about $500 to $750 which has been my average lately. This includes all necessary iProperty mods for adding new fields to the DB, modification of the Language file and then building adding the field data.

I’ve sent the scripts to Mark Curits over at vieleRETS for examination and publishing.  What they do is as follows;

  • The first generates code for the property.php file as in;
    $property[$i]->L_Area= $p->L_Area;
    $property[$i]->L_HotSheetDate= $p->L_HotSheetDate;
  • The next generates template code for adding fields to the /tmpl/default.php file for example
    <?php if($this->p->L_Area): ?>
    <tr>
    <td class=”key” width=”40%”><?php echo JText::_(‘Listing Area’); ?>:</td>
    <td width=”60%”><?php echo $this->p->L_Area; ?></td>
    </tr>
    <?php endif; ?><?php if($this->p->L_HotSheetDate): ?>
    <tr>
    <td class=”key” width=”40%”><?php echo JText::_(‘Hot Sheet Date’); ?>:</td>
    <td width=”60%”><?php echo $this->p->L_HotSheetDate; ?></td>
    </tr>
    <?php endif; ?>
  • The last generates the modifications to the language file
    ##############################################
    # ADDITION FOR MLS FIELDS
    ##############################################
    L_Area=Listing Area
    L_HotSheetDate=Hot Sheet Date
  • Number 4 will be the SQL generator for the SQL Modifications

I produced these things to help people save money. Even though I don’t personally believe $600 is a lot of money for a turn key RETS enabled iProperty site, there are Real Estate Agents unable to pay that much when starting out. Why should they not have the same benefits? Well thats my thoughts too, so when clients use these generators it will help reduce costs by 20% when we are contracted to build the MLS scripting for an iProperty project in the future.

iProperty Scripts VIDEO GUIDE

Yeah I have a video, it wont upload to YouTube because its a Captivate Tutorial so I’m having the people at vieleRETS publish it over there.