MLS rental listings find a home

LEASE ON LIFE: Landlord Matthew Quirk’s Realtor used the R.I. Multiple Listing Service database to help rent his property. / PBN PHOTO/RUPERT WHITELEY
LEASE ON LIFE: Landlord Matthew Quirk’s Realtor used the R.I. Multiple Listing Service database to help rent his property. / PBN PHOTO/RUPERT WHITELEY

Six months ago, Massachusetts landlord Matthew Quirk of Rehoboth listed a Warren duplex apartment with the real estate agent who handles his commercial properties and found it rented quickly.
His Realtor, Holly McCombs of Re/Max Right Choice Real Estate in Fall River, used the usual array of leads from Craigslist, Trulia, Zillow and the Re/Max website to search for tenants for her client, but she also used a tool available only in the past year: a Rhode Island Multiple Listing Service database for rentals.
The MLS for rentals only lists properties where there is an exclusive contract between the landlord and a single Realtor or broker, said Donna McGuinn, administrator, and Michael Letendre, chief information officer, at Rhode Island State-Wide MLS Inc. in Warwick. That exclusivity ensures that rules and ethics codes are followed.
Then, in addition to putting the property in the database, the property is searchable on an associated website, RILiving.com.
While McCombs couldn’t say which tool ultimately produced the tenant for Quirk’s Warren duplex, she said she managed a total of 21 rental properties in 2013 and is relying on the Rhode Island MLS rental listings with increasing frequency.
“The other tools I’ve used have always given me more business,” said McCombs, “but I’m seeing an increase in people coming through because of this change. I’m seeing more real estate agents using this, and it’s nice because the goal is to get the right tenant into the right rental. It doesn’t matter where they come from, as long as it’s the right fit.”
In addition to McCombs, Realtors and brokers in East Greenwich, Newport and Cumberland say they are embracing the MLS rental listings as another means in the marketplace for matching landlords and tenants.
One of the chief benefits, besides having reliable data from the landlord, is that contracting with a broker or Realtor through the MLS ensures commission income, though that income can be any amount, even $1, brokers said.
“It has been profitable,” said Marissa Tafuri, a Realtor with Prudential Gammons Realty of East Greenwich.
Tafuri has been a Realtor with the outlet for 10 years and is one of two in the office whose commission income is driven substantially by rentals, said broker/owner Allen Gammons Jr. She estimated 40 percent of her work involves rentals, while about 60 percent involves home sales. “It sometimes can be really hard to find somebody a rental, because sometimes there are not a lot of them, so it’s nice to have another avenue,” Tafuri said.
Gammons’ office had always handled rentals, he said, but recently created a rental division and in the past year handled 120 properties.
As it turns out, the RILiving website, which consumers can search, but not add to, has been operating since 1999, said Gammons and Letendre, but it was neither efficient nor well-monitored, Gammons said. The MLS database, on the other hand, is accessible only by real estate agents, Letendre said.
As far back as 2006, the State-Wide MLS formed a task force to try and establish MLS rental listings, but it wasn’t until the advent of a second task force in 2011 that functionality was hammered out, said McGuinn. The current version went live in December 2012, she said.
Today, rental properties that appear on RILiving.com are populated exclusively from a data feed provided by the MLS system, Letendre and McGuinn explained.
“Unlike a ‘Rental Classified’ tool which RILiving used previously,” Letendre added, “today these rental listings are posted to RILiving directly from the MLS, meaning that they’re regulated and conform to our data standards, [using] required fields and reporting deadlines.”
Arthur Chapman, broker and partner with William Raveis of Southern Rhode Island, which has offices in Newport, Providence, East Greenwich, Bristol, Portsmouth and Westport, said many landlords don’t yet see the value in signing an exclusive contract for rentals and would rather see brokers compete on their behalf. But landlords are beginning to adjust, he said.
“My position is, if you get on this bandwagon early enough, and show the value added, you will be able to get market share,” said Chapman. “You have one person responsible to get this rented, therefore the agent has a realistic expectation of getting a return on their investment, so they will hustle more.” McCombs and Gammons say the troubled economy and foreclosures in particular have driven this change, producing more demand for rentals as people were forced from their homes. Some couldn’t sell their property but had to move for a job out of state, for example, and chose to rent while hanging onto the other home, they said.
“The rental market has changed dramatically because there are so many people that have been displaced because of credit issues or foreclosures or this mortgage crash,” said Gammons. “The rental industry has become not just more profitable for agents, but there is also a higher need for executive rentals.”
McCombs said she got into the rental market when the prices were climbing, and then decided she should continue as more people began to face short sales.
“I felt if they were going to lose their home, most of them would want to get into single-family homes as opposed to smaller apartments,” she said. “There were a lot of people in that situation. And a lot of the renters I do see coming to me are in that situation. The MLS listing for rentals has helped. It helps with other agents that are trying to do the same thing I’m doing.”
Before the MLS rental listings became available, it was hard from the point of view of the broker or Realtor to find reliable available listings for a client that were up to date and provided credible information, added Ryan Antrop, a broker associate with Residential Properties in Cumberland, which serves northern Rhode Island and southeastern Massachusetts.
“Putting [the rentals] in the MLS, at least you know there’s another broker on the other end,” he said, “and there’s more legitimacy, and what [tenants] are told is actually what they’re getting at the end of the day.”
Ultimately, added Chapman, renters benefit because of the increased visibility of reputably managed properties beyond Craig’slist, where anyone can post an offering.
“The renters have a lot to gain, and the landlords are going to benefit because they have a single point of contact and accountability,” he said. “Landlords will slowly come around.”
Quirk, however, is already sold.
“I just think it’s a great service,” he said, “and should help the rentals a lot.” •

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