News & Past Hot Tips

The security of clients’ properties is a top priority for all of us. If an agent accesses a keybox without a confirmed appointment, even if it is a vacant home, the agent and their broker may be assessed a fine of $500 each. These fines double, and Supra eKEY access may be suspended for a second offense. These penalties are guidelines, and may be more severe depending on the circumstances. A seller can also bring trespass charges against any agent without a confirmed appointment. Before accessing a property, please double check the address, as well as date & time of your showing confirmation to ensure you have permission.

As part of the NAR settlement agreement, agents and offices will need to remove any references to commission or offers of compensation from the broker remarks of all active, pending and delayed listings. The deadline to do this is Monday, July 1st. You can generate a report in Paragon that displays the broker remarks for all current listings, allowing you to easily identify which listings need to be addressed. Click here for instructions on how to do this. More information on upcoming changes can be found here.

The MLS has received several reports of a scam in which an agent is contacted to list a property (often vacant land) by someone posing as the property owner. The scammer will typically handle all communication remotely and request the property be listed for less than its value in order to generate immediate interest. This helpful article from the WRA explains the scam and how to avoid it.​ NAR also has some tips and an informative video on the topic.

If the fraudulent lead came from Realtor.com or Homes.com, please forward the info to listings@wisre.com, as MLS staff can assist in getting the user blocked. Agents may also forward any suspected spam leads from Realtor.com directly to customercare@realtor.com

Another resource is PropertyFraudAlert.com. This free public service is monitored by the county land records offices and will alert a property owner of potential fraudulent recordings that affect their property. Although it does not prevent fraud from happening, it provides an early warning system so the property owner can take the appropriate action if fraudulent activity has occurred. It may be particularly helpful to share this with a property owner who has had someone pose as them and attempt to list their property. Sign up is quick & easy. Go to PropertyFraudAlert.com, select the state & county in which the property is located, and choose how you’d like to be notified.

Did you know the MLS has an associated document for marketing energy efficient features of a home? It’s a great way to highlight things like solar panels, green building certifications, and other energy-saving upgrades & appliances. Check it out here!

There are also several features in the MLS that can be used to draw attention to these improvements (here’s where to find them on the profile sheets). Why should you include this information on your listing? Not only can it attract a larger pool of buyers (and potentially increase property value), it is also useful to appraisers when researching comparable sales.

To help maximize exposure for rural properties that are located within a township, you may want to consider adding an Other Marketing Area (which can be found directly below the Location field in Paragon). When including an Other Marketing Area on your listing, please keep in mind that it must be either the mailing city, school district, or a city, village or township that is contiguous to (touching) the township in which the property is located.

The only exception that will allow an Other Marketing Area to be used outside a township is for cities and villages that cross county lines. In these cases, Paragon will automatically include the other county code for that municipality as the Other Marketing Area. Click here for more information.

The SCWMLS is excited to announce a partnership with CubiCasa, an easy-to-use app to create floor plans.

The CubiCasa app is free, and our partnership provides members a 25% discount for add-on products such as adding furniture, including gross living area (very valuable for appraisers), 6-hour rush delivery, plans over 5,000 square feet, and 3D plans.

Click here to access the SCWMLS portal to load the app and capture your 25% discount. When asked for MLS Login ID, please enter your Paragon Login Name.

More detailed information about CubiCasa can be found here.

Since June 2017, we have imported over 32,000 listings from other MLSs, via WIREX, directly into your SCWMLS database to make it easier for you to find them. These listings are located in the counties our SCWMLS members typically list and sell in. The MLS numbers for these listings are prefixed by 2 letters to make the MLS number unique, and to identify them as listings that originated in a different MLS system (ex: MM for Metro, NE for Northeast).

As of 5/13/24, we added Walworth County listings to these imports, for a total of 21 counties covered. This means that all current Walworth County listings (plus sold and expired listings with a list date of 1/1/24 and later) can now be found directly within the main SCWMLS database. It is no longer necessary to switch to WIREX to see listings in Walworth County. More information on imported listings can be found here.

Hopefully you know about GreenLight statistics, an interactive statistics program that allows you to customize output by region, county, city, zip, property type, or price range to provide real-time charts and graphs. You can access these stats through Paragon by clicking the Resources icon and choosing GreenLight Statistics. There are now two new reports available to you:

​In the MarketReports section, under MONTHLY: Inventory you will now find Months of Supply By Price Range – This will help you see supply and demand within a specific price range.

Under WEEKLY: Inventory you will find New Listings and New Pendings – Useful for monitoring changes in an area each week and comparing it to past years.

Click here to see GreenLight’s monthly report for April.

SCWMLS rules allow “for sale” signs to be placed on listings that are in Delayed status.  Delayed listings are not sent to public-facing websites, which means buyers will not be able to find these properties online.  To provide transparency and inform the public that these listings are not yet available to show, members are encouraged to add a “coming soon” sign rider on all Delayed listings.

For a summary of what can (and can’t) be done with Delayed listings, click here

Quickly load a previous search you did in Paragon by selecting the Last Search option located above Primary Criteria after selecting Class. Hovering over Last Search will display the 5 previous searches you performed. Clicking on one of these searches will load the search criteria for that past search.

Quickly load the last Quick Search you did by selecting Last Quick Search located under the Quick Search header on the Paragon Home Page. To ensure you are seeing the latest searches, refresh the home page by clicking the Paragon logo or the Home icon.

On April 8, Metro MLS moved to Aligned Showings and turned off ShowingTime within their MLS system.  Metro agents are no longer able to click a button within their MLS system to schedule showings on SCWMLS listings.  Metro agents can contact you via phone or email to schedule showings manually, or they can access the ShowingTime system at https://www.showingtime.com or via the ShowingTime app and pull up SCWMLS listings by address or MLS number.

Within Paragon & WIREX, you are no longer able to click to schedule a showing on Metro listings (those prefixed by MM).  Our intent is to add a button for the Aligned showings product on Metro listings within Paragon and WIREX, but we are waiting on programming from Aligned.  We unfortunately do not have an ETA as to when this will be done.

Our Board of Directors continues to monitor progress of the Aligned product as a potential replacement for ShowingTime.

Set your Default County for Searching:  From within CRS, open Settings at the top right. Select Default County Search, select up to 4 counties, click to Save.

Customize your Results List: When viewing search results, you can toggle between Simple Results or Custom Results.  You can customize what displays under Custom Results.  Open Settings at the top right and select Custom Results List.  From here you can select up to 10 columns and even set your desired display order by dragging and dropping.  Click Save before closing.

Personally Brand CRS Tax Reports: Within the Branding option under Settings you have the option to upload a photo, logo, and other information you want to include on CRS reports. At this time, agent information does not flow from Paragon so you will need to keep this data updated manually.

Listings that are no longer available for showings due to an accepted offer must be moved to the status of Offer-No Show. It does not matter if all contingencies are removed; the deciding factor is if showings are allowed or not. A listing can go directly from Active to Offer-No Show status if a seller does not wish to continue showings once the offer is accepted. MLS rules require this change within 3 days of when the property is no longer available to show.

This access allows a non-member, such as an agent from outside our MLS, or a contractor, one-time access to a single keybox.

To Grant Access from your eKey:

1. Tap My Keyboxes
2. Select the keybox from the list – If the keybox is not listed, tap Add Keybox, enter the Shackle Code for the keybox, and connect to the keybox. Click here for instruction on assigning a keybox to a listing if you are not at the keybox.
3. Select Grant Managed Access
4. Enter the cell number of the person needing access
5. Set the desired access date and time. Note: You can limit the duration of the showing per instruction, but the window granted here must be at least 2 hours.

More detailed information is available via the PDF Document below

• Granting One-Time Access to Supra Keybox         PDF Doc

The person you have granted access to will receive a text message. If they ask you for assistance, please have them call the MLS office at 608-240-2800, option 3. If after hours please have them call Supra technical support at 877-699-6787.

If you are not currently using Tax Autofill when adding a listing, you may want to check it out. It allows you to automatically pull information such as address, parcel number, municipality, owner, school district, acres, assessments, and taxes from the tax record into the listing input screen in Paragon, saving you keystrokes.

To do this, click the Tax Autofill button at the top of the Add Listing screen. On the Tax Search page that displays, select the county along with the parcel number, address, or owner name, and then click Search. Check the box next to the appropriate tax record, and then click the Autofill button in the toolbar above the results to load the information into the listing input screen. To adjust any of the information that auto-filled, simply overwrite it.

Did you know the MLS remarks section of a listing is searchable?   Within the Advanced Criteria section of your search options (at the bottom under Search), you will find the Remarks search prompt.  Simply type in the word or words you are looking for.

For example, if your buyer would like a property that has a large garden space, type large garden and your search results will include properties for which the listing agent has included the words large garden in the remarks. You can also string together multiple words. For example, if your buyer would like a home on a secluded lot, you could type secluded (tab) private (tab) isolated.

Your search will bring back properties for which the listing agent has included any of these words in the remarks. Give it a try the next time you are looking for something there is not a specific search feature for.  Also, when composing your remarks, make sure to mention special features not covered elsewhere in the listing features.

We generally see two reasons a new listing is not available for showings right away.

The first is the property is not ready to be marketed via the MLS due to needed clean up, timing for professional photos, desired staging, etc. It makes sense to enter these listings as Delayed until they are ready for public exposure.

In the second situation, the property is ready for public exposure, but the seller and listing agent decide to pick a “launch date” when showings will begin, often starting with an open house. You will find these listings in Active status, as the seller and agent want them to be visible to the public. These Active listings must include the date showings will begin in the first line of the public remarks. The “show date” field can also (optionally) be entered, which will block off the showing calendar until that date.

Our rules regarding listings that are not ready to be shown take both situations into account, and allow agents the flexibility to market them as either Delayed or Active.  Click here for more information.

Did you know you can customize the Market Monitor on the Paragon Home page to limit the display of listings to certain counties, cities, school districts, or types of property? Click the gear to the right of the words Market Monitor to set your preferences:

Clicking the My Info Tab on the Market Monitor gives you quick access to your current active listings as well as your current offer-no show listings, your current delayed listings, your listings due to expire for days specified, and your solds for the past 6 months. Listings under the Sold Within Six Months link include your co-broke sales, allowing easy monitoring to be sure you are given credit for them.

Have you ever wondered how to tell the difference between a bi-level and a raised ranch? Or maybe a townhouse condo vs. a garden style unit? You can find descriptions (and photos) of each of the architecture features in the SCWMLS Architecture & Home Style Guide.