Local Matters announced some exciting news today.  It’s a go-live announcement for a partnership with the largest MLS company in the US market, MRIS.

It’s exciting for several reasons.  It certainly shows off our local search platform to be a flexible and engaging web application platform for vertical local search, which is a trend I strongly believe in.  Check out HomesDatabase.com.  More importantly, it begins to plot a course towards a critical new trend in online real estate – the movement towards richer true local marketplaces for agents and consumers.

Shopping for a new home is one of the most intensive of all the online consumer experiences.  Consumers are totally engaged, and the amount of time spent in online research is amazing.

The content underlying the best possible user experience resides in the local MLS systems AND in the minds of the local agent network.  Historically, the MLS has done little in consumer-facing services, while online real estate shopping has significantly evolved via the national efforts of NAR/Move Inc. and its competitors, alongside a variety of web services provided to individual brokers and agents.

The role and value of the MLS is a topic in hot debate within the online real estate industry. Today, you have a disconnected process of agent listing publishing, lead generation, and consumer search and agent interaction.  Further, the consumer is not served by the “collective intelligence” that exists in the local real estate community.  Localizing and leveraging this is the mantra to which the local MLS can forge a valuable agenda. To me, this agenda is highly complementary to the Realtor(c) brand mission to sustain and evolve the agent’s value proposition.

MRIS, the largest and one of the most forward-looking MLS’s in the country, has taken a leadership role in demonstrating the progression of MLS from back-office to a more holistic and valuable local partner to it’s members.  This first step begins to fully exploit the deep content and connections that exist locally.

It will be interesting to see how the MLS evolves in the online real estate landscape.  Personally, I think it has the potential to be a very critical piece of the puzzle.  Real Estate shopping is inherently local.  As consumers demand applications to become more interactive and conversational, this deep local knowledge infrastructure will be critical to success.

Congratulations to MRIS on a meaningful, forward-looking move!