News & Past Hot Tips

September 2007

-Our MLS covers mainly South Central and Southwest Wisconsin (click here for a map). Occasionally an agent will list a property located outside of this region. The location codes used for these listings are Y01 for other parts of Wisconsin, Y02 for Illinois, Y03 for Minnesota, and Y04 for Iowa. If you are looking for a specific county or municipality outside the South Central/Southwest Wisconsin region, it works best to skip the location box and use the County or Municipality search boxes which are located on the bottom of the Primary Criteria search screen.

– We have had increased reports of agents contacting sellers before their listing contract expires with another agent. This is a violation of both MLS Rules and the Realtor® Code of Ethics. Please take a minute to read the article titled How to Avoid Jumping a Listing. Click here for a copy.

July 2007

-When viewing a listing in Paragon, one of the links at the top is “correction”. If you click on this link, an email box will open. Use this link to report to the MLS what you believe to be inaccuracies on that listing.

-The MLS Market area within the Market Monitor is a great place to track activity for a specific geographic market. By default, the MLS Market is defined as the whole MLS. You can limit that to just the market you would like to monitor by clicking on the gear button on the Market Monitor title bar, and then enter any locations or counties you want.

March 2007

-To better identify properties being offered at auction, a new feature has been added under the Terms Feature. Each listing flagged with the new Auction feature is also flagged with an AUC directly following the price. To help convey necessary information about the auction process to potential selling agents, all auction properties must include the SCWMLS Information Form for Properties being Sold at Auction as an associated document. This form can be found under the Forms section on our member website at www.scwmls.com.

February 2007

-The following are recent changes to the wording of current features:

December 2006

-The correct placement of your property on maps within Paragon is often dependent on the correct street tag (i.e. St, Ave, Dr). Please be sure you include the correct street tag when entering a new listing. Click here for a list of proper Paragon street tag abbreviations.

October 2006

-Properties in our MLS that include instruction to contact the seller for showings are protected from solicitation by REALTORS, just like all other exclusive listings. Your conversation with the seller should be limited to setting up the showing. Properties in our MLS that are being sold at auction are also protected from solicitation by REALTORS. It is against MLS rules and the REALTOR Code of Ethics to solicit these listings prior to their expiration.

September 2006

Here are a few tips for marketing township properties:

Use the “Other Market Area” field. If you add what you think is the most appropriate bordering city or village as the Other Market Area, your township listing will come up in searches for that city or village on Paragon and on wisconsinhomes.com. You may want to consider location, school district or mailing address when making this decision.

Start your remarks with something like “Only 2 miles east of the City of Sun Prairie.” Most of the public websites, including just recently Realtor.com, include the remarks section of your listing.

If the street number of your rural listing begins with an alpha character, do not move the alpha character to the street direction field. The W or N before the street number is part of the street number, not a street direction. This is very important for correct mapping placement.

-If you work within a team and would like your team name to be included on the bottom of the customer full reports, email support@wisre.com with your team name. After we add your team name to your member record, you can customize the customer reports by clicking on Preferences, Views/Reports, and the Details tab. Open up the report you would like to change and scroll down to the bottom section in white. Double click on the white box to display the fields you can include. Select My Info – Team Name, which is located a little more than half way down. Highlight this field and click Add. Place a check mark next to the Team Name and next to No Label at the bottom and hit Save & Close. At this point, the Residential report is done. You will need to do this for each class of property. Your personal slogan can also be added in this same fashion.

August 2006

-You can search for upcoming open houses under the Search Program in Paragon. Click on Search, Property, and select the property class. Open up the Advanced Criteria section at the bottom to find the Open House Date search prompt.

June 2006

-The map on views/reports (i.e. customer full with map) can be adjusted to display a preferred zoom level. If you have access to add and change listings, you can find this adjustment under Listings, Maintain and Change GeoCode. Once you adjust the zoom level and save it, the map on views/reports will hold that zoom level.

-Two new listing features have been added to Paragon. Rental Allowed is now listed as an option under Terms/Misc for Condo listings. If you have an active listing that includes this feature, please edit your listing to include it.