News & Past Hot Tips

UPDATE 1/28 – The issue has been resolved.

UPDATE 1/23 – The fix for this problem will be applied during the next downtime maintenance period, Tuesday morning 1/28 from midnight until 6:00am.

If you sold a property in one of these counties that was listed by a member of another MLS, the listing should already be in the SCWMLS.  If you were not properly credited on the buyer side, simply forward the closing statement & “drafted by” page of the offer to listings@wisre.com.  We will credit you with the sale so it appears in your SCWMLS inventory & production statistics.

The start of a new year is a good time to pull statistics – not only to help set goals for the coming year, but also to make sure you were properly credited with prior year sales (if any are missing, please forward the closing statement & “drafted by” page of the accepted offer to listings@wisre.com).

Here’s how to pull the report in Paragon:

Under the Resources menu, choose Paragon Statistical Reporting:

In the menu on the left side of the screen, click the arrow next to Sales Detail (under Broker) to expand that section, and then choose Agent:

In the criteria screen that appears, change the Date Range dropdown to Year, enter 2024 in the Begin and End date fields, and then click Generate. This will display a report of all the properties you listed and/or sold in 2024, as well as your units & volume for the year.

To set up a buyer on Collab Center with auto notifications about new properties you need two things: a contact, and a saved search. The quickest way to set this up:

1. ​​ Create a contact – Click the Contacts icon and choose Create Contact. Enter a first name, last name, and email address, then click the Save button at the top left.

2.  Build the search – On the left panel click Buyer Activity, then click the green plus sign Add Search. Then to the right, click the green plus sign Add New Saved Search.

Put in your criteria, then hover over the Save Search button and choose Save Search. It will suggest a search name for you which you can change if you like. Click Save.

​3.  Send the Welcome Message – Click the blue Send Welcome Message button to send them the link to access their Collab center site.

​​That’s it! The search is now running and will send them new matches and price changes.

Have you ever wondered about the various status options in the MLS and when to use each one? If so, our newest video is for you! (a two & a half minute watch):

In your TrustFunds profile you can set whether the convenience fee will be paid by you or the buyer. In Paragon, click the Resources icon within the top menu bar and select TrustFunds: Agent Access.

On the TrustFunds page, click your name on the top right and choose Profile. At the bottom, click Convenience Fee to open up the section and choose your option.

Did you know the assessor data for many municipalities is available online, for free? This provides an easy way to look up things like the number of bedrooms, bathrooms, finished square footage, year built, and more for a given property.

​To locate this information, click Tax in the main Paragon menu and choose Public Records Websites from the dropdown. Select your county on the map, choose the appropriate municipality, and then search by address or parcel #. If you don’t see your municipality listed, you can check AssessorData.org (for free) or purchase the complete property record for a small fee on AssessorData.com.

When changing the status or price of a listing in Paragon, the following popup will appear, which allows you to optionally enter any comments you would like to display on the Hotsheet Report. As the message states, please click “Save” within the popup to ensure your listing changes are saved in a timely manner. As a double check, it may also be helpful to refresh the listing after saving to confirm the changes are reflected.

If a comment is entered, this is how it will display on the Hotsheet Report:

To improve clarity & transparency for buyers searching on public websites, the SCWMLS Board of Directors recently passed a new requirement for the word “Auction” to prominently display on the main photo of all auction listings. We are finding that consumers do not always read the MLS remarks, and are often confused about the price that displays.

Below is an example of an acceptable disclosure. Photo labels in Paragon do not display on public websites, so please add the disclosure to the photo itself. If an auction listing is entered into the MLS without “Auction” prominently noted on the main photo, it will automatically be added for you.

Additional information and requirements for auction properties can be found here. As always, if you have any questions regarding this new policy, please contact MLS staff at listings@wisre.com.

If you are working with a buyer on the purchase of a listing that is marked Limited Service = Yes, please notify the listing agent when an offer is accepted, and again once the property has closed. With limited service listings, the cooperating agent often works directly with the seller, and the listing agent is not informed of accepted offers or closings. Please take this extra step to notify them, so they can update the MLS and ensure all members have access to accurate and timely data.

Many agents use their smartphone to take photos for their listings. There is a setting that will cause the photo files to be saved in an incompatible format called ‘heic’. If this happens you won’t be able to upload them to your listing because that file format is not currently supported in Paragon. To make sure this doesn’t happen, check the settings in your camera app.

On Android, open the camera app and tap the gear wheel icon at the top left to access the settings. Tap Advanced picture options, and make sure High efficiency pictures is toggled off.	On iPhone, go to Settings, Camera, and tap Formats. Make sure Camera Capture is set to Most Compatible.

But what if you already took a lot of photos and they are saved in the heic format? One workaround is to email the photos from the phone, because emailed photos are sent as jpegs.

If they are already saved on your computer in heic format, use a conversion tool such as iMazing Converter.

The Type feature pick list contains three distinct stages for properties that are under construction or newly built:

• Building Plan with Lot = Proposed home is not yet started. Building plans are allowed on the MLS only if they include land with the sale, and only one building plan per lot may be entered. If there are additional floorplan or finish options, these can be noted in the remarks.
• Under Construction = Hole has been dug & construction is underway. The estimated date of completion (or stage of completion at the time of listing) is required in the first line of the public remarks.
• New/Never Occupied = New home is completed & move-in ready. A photo of the front exterior of the home is required at this stage.

It is important to update the feature as a home moves from plan, through construction, to finish. If you add upgrades or finish more square footage than the original listing states, please adjust the price and applicable fields/features in the MLS to reflect these changes. We often see the sale price several thousand dollars more than the list price due to additions/upgrades, which makes it difficult to use these sales for appraisals and CMAs.

To find upcoming Broker Opens, you can use the Tours section on the Market Monitor. For both the Tours and Open House categories, the “Day(s)” field defines the number of days looking forward. So to see if there are any Broker Opens coming in the next 2 weeks, type 14 in the Day(s) field then click Refresh. Click the number to view the details. The maximum number of days you can enter is 30. You can also run a Tour/Open House Search – click the Search icon and choose Tour and Open House. Under Tour/Open House Status choose T – Tour. This method allows for more options to narrow down your search, as well as allowing you to look forward more than 30 days.

On Tuesday, 11/5, we enhanced how open houses and broker opens are entered and searched for within Paragon. In short, you will now add open houses and broker opens (tours) from the listing input & maintenance screen or from the Select an Action menu:

This enhancement will:

• Allow you to enter more than two open houses at a time
• Allow you to take advantage of open house alerts to consumers via Collaboration Center
• Put all upcoming open houses and broker opens front and center via the home page Market Monitor
• Streamline workflow and allow downstream vendors easier and more uniform access to open house data (all vendors were notified of changes on 10/11)

Active open houses have been automatically moved to the new Open House module, so there is no need to re-enter what is already in Paragon.

Click here for detailed instructions on this new enhancement

There are two types of days on market (DOM) counts in the MLS:

• DOM = the number of days an individual MLS # has been actively marketed (Active, Offer-Bump, or Offer-Show status). The DOM resets each time a new MLS # is entered.
• CDOM = the cumulative number of days a property has been actively marketed. This includes the DOM from previous MLS #s. The CDOM will only reset if a property is off-market for at least 31 days between listings.

A few notes:

• To ensure a DOM count of 0, a listing must be entered on the list date.
• Days on market do not accumulate while a listing is in Delayed, Withdrawn by Seller, or Offer-No Show status.
• In order to enter a new MLS #, a new listing contract must be secured (an amendment does not suffice). If a new listing contract is not obtained, the new listing will be deleted and a fine of $50 will be assessed.

When you’re looking at a listing with a lot of documents that you want to print out, there is a way to print all of them at once. This can be done from a report view called ConnectView. If you are looking at the Agent Full view in Paragon, click the green Reports button and choose ConnectView. If you don’t see ConnectView under Favorites it will be under Specialty Views.

Scroll down and click the Documents bar to show all the attached documents. At the top right there is a Print PDF button.

Clicking this will allow you to combine some or all of the documents into a single PDF file, which you can then print or save.

When viewing a listing in Paragon, the correction button can be found in the toolbar directly above the listing information:

In Paragon Connect, it can be found within the three-dot menu in the upper right corner:

You can use CubiCasa floor plans to easily create an interactive virtual tour for your listing. After making your scan, purchase the Plus or Plus 3D plan at a 25% member discount. Then upload your listing photos and CubiCasa will automatically place them on the floor plan and create an interactive tour. You will get a link to the tour to add to your listing.

Click here to see an example, and for more information.