MLSN Abstract for ARES Conference

Today I submitted my abstract for the American Real Estate Society (ARES) conference in April next year:

Title: MLSN: A Request and Response Internet Protocol for Real Estate Property Listings

Abstract:

Sellers list their properties with real estate professionals who enter property information into private databases called Multiple Listing Services (MLS). These MLS's attempt to store and index data listings with serialized numbers that only members of the local real estate association have access to query, insert, and update. In the United States alone, there are over 900 MLS's which unfortunately create redundant, localized MLS numbers causing confusion over specific properties and their respective listing information on the Internet. These duplicated MLS numbers can be anywhere from five to ten digits long or more relaying no meaningful or geographical information to real estate professionals, sellers, and buyers alike.

This paper proposes and discusses a new internet protocol called Multiple Listing Service Network (MLSN) Protocol for registering, assigning, and distributing property listings on the Internet. Similar to the WHOIS protocol, MLSN is an application publicly available on the Internet, however instead of port 43, MLSN is accessible from reserved port 32801. The numbering scheme is comprised of two parts separated by an '@' symbol: (1) a triple-dotted notation of three decimal integers ranging from 1 to 65,535 and (2) a double-dotted notation number composed of a postal code and country code standardized by ISO 3166-1. Taking in consideration for expired listings, MLSN offers a reusable feature which allows assigning a new, double-dotted notation number to a preexisting triple-dotted number thereby creating a new MLSN property listing number. Together with a standard protocol and unique numbering schema, MLSN provides a uniform resource locator (URL) to users for conducting a more efficient and convenient real estate property searching on the Internet.

Keywords: internet, multiple listing service, protocol, internationalization

--Corey