Real estate data and analytics firm CoreLogic has been selected as the new vendor of Upstream, a long-in-development data management platform from UpstreamRE, which aims to provide a centralized point of entry for listing data.
The National Association of Realtors’ (NAR) subsidiary Realtors Property Resource (RPR) was previously the vendor for the beleaguered Upstream, which first launched in May 2018, after two years of delays. NAR had spent $13 million of its members’ dues over three years on the project, before cutting ties in December 2018.
“More than any other technology firm in the real estate industry, CoreLogic is well-positioned to deliver an industrywide platform at a speed of implementation necessary to secure significant adoption during the coming year,” UpstreamRE CEO Alex Lange said in a release. “Under the terms of the agreement, real estate brokers participating in Upstream will continue to pay the same rates but have access to a wider array of features on the Upstream platform.”
Lange said, in a public letter that was sent to Inman, that Upstream and CoreLogic have been working together for nearly six months, which predates the official separation with NAR. Lange also confirmed that brokers remain in charge of the initiative and its board and operating structure remain unchanged.
CoreLogic will utilize its proprietary applications, including Trestle, as the core of the platform, to deliver Upstream’s real estate brokerage data management solution. Through Trestle, brokers can send and receive data from a multitude of multiple listing services from a single-entry point and opt out of listing syndication feeds.
“We anticipate brokers will choose to push listing data into Upstream from their multiple listing platform and distribute data using Trestle as they do today,” Chris Bennett, executive leader of real estate solutions for CoreLogic said in a release. “In the future, brokers will have access to add/edit capabilities and additional features that enhance their data and photos.”
Lange confirmed that the teams together have been working on a multi-phase rollout, with brokers receiving deployments as early as the second quarter of 2019 that will give them syndication control and administrative accounts. In the next phase, users will be able to enhance their listings with high-resolution photos and documents. Following that will be role-based accounts, roster management and team features.
Providers looking to access broker data can connect to UpstreamRE in the same way they connect with Trestle. CoreLogic plans to launch the data distribution component of the platform in phase one of the project,
“The concept behind Trestle was to build bridges that securely connect data to broker technology applications,” Bennett added. “This agreement between UpstreamRE and CoreLogic exemplifies that idea by creating a rules-driven data environment that makes it easy and efficient for technology vendors and multiple listing organizations to power real estate broker solutions.”
Since Upstream’s May launch, an Inman investigation found that the first multiple listing service to sign up, RMLS in Portland, had only two listings put into the system using Upstream. The listing manager behind one of those listings reported that there were “a lot of glitches.”
NAR originally allocated $6 million for the project in 2015 and in total, its CEO Bob Goldberg wrote in a Facebook post that the trade association ultimately spent $13 million in member dues for the project.
Inman asked a spokesperson for CoreLogic which features of Trestle will be used for Upstream, clarifications on the length of the vendor contract and how the project is being funded but have yet to hear back.
