STATE, FEDERAL LEGISLATION ON FRONT BURNER By Susan Shackelford     From whether mortgage interest will continue to be tax deductible to changing requirements on Federal Housing Administration loans, legislation affecting homeownership is in full swing in Raleigh and Washington. With both the N.C. General Assembly and U.S. Congress in...

Realtors® Care Day makes unusual community gift By Susan Shackleford       Jill Gibson picked up her phone one day in late February and heard some unexpected good news. Realtors® Care Day (RCD) had selected Barium Springs, the nonprofit for which Gibson works, as a special project to honor...

Eric Locher targets member service, priorities By Susan Shackelford     On Jan. 1, 2013, Eric Locher officially takes over as the 85th president of the association. As the leader of both the association and CarolinaMLS, he says he will keep a keen eye on why the organizations exist: to...

Iredell’s Ginger Dowdle wins national Good Neighbor Award By Susan Shackelford     Ginger Dowdle became a Realtor® in 1997 when she started building homes. But what she really yearned to do was to build lives. Today the Iredell County resident does just that. For her accomplishments serving at-risk children,...

Sign up now for a 2013 committee so your voice is heard By Michele DiDonato Vice President Risk Management     Are you someone who likes to be “in the know”? Do you like to get involved and work on projects? If this sounds like you, then please consider becoming...

Distressed homes play out many ways By: Susan Shackelford Perhaps you’ve heard the term “shadow inventory.” It represents the foreclosed or otherwise distressed homes not listed in the MLS. They exist in the “shadows,” so to speak. The Charlotte region, hit by the housing downturn like virtually every market in...

By: Susan Shackleford On Jan. 1, Jennifer Frontera will take over as president of the association and CMLS. While many members may not envy her position at this time, Frontera relishes it. She thrives on change, which is what she believes Realtors® must embrace to adapt and re-invent themselves to...

‘Cool’ to chilly CMLS ponders how to clean up syndicated listings By Anne Marie Howard About two years ago, our MLS began facilitating the spread of your property listings on the Internet. That was cool. But what’s been happening lately is not so cool. In fact, there’s a downright chill in the air. To understand, check out this quick overview of how we set up syndication: We partnered with ListHub, an online service now owned by Realtor.com, and began sending ListHub a custom data feed that is a modification of our MLS listings for the Internet. Each MLS Member Participant (MP) who chose to participate logged into ListHub, created an account and selected which Internet portals, or syndicators, they wanted to receive their firm’s listings (entities such as Yahoo, Trulia, Zillow, etc.). MPs could hit “Select All” for the approximately 100 syndicators available or pick individually. They also could link their...