[Note from editor: The “Mastermind Showcase” highlights companies and news from members of the GEM. Today’s showcase: RESO.]

The Real Estate Standards Organization (RESO) is a non-profit trade organization that champions open standards in the real estate industry, specifically with respect to data. Originally created in 1999 as a NAR work group responsible for the first version of RETS (Real Estate Transaction Standard), RESO was incorporated as an independent, non-profit in 2011 that has a wide range of initiatives:

Web API: A modern RETS alternative for MLS data transfers.

Data Dictionary: The Rosetta Stone for real estate data that allows systems to interact efficiently.

Universal Property Identifier (UPI): represents property data globally to reduce inconsistencies.

Unique Organization Identifier (UOI): A list of individual organizations used to accurately identify the original source data recipients can accurately identify the organizational source (publisher) of each piece of data in an aggregated database
Pinpoints the organizational source for specific pieces of data to improve transparency and accuracy.

Unique Licensee Identifier (ULI): Helps properly identify practitioners to give customers more transparency.

Workgroups: used to create RESO’s standards.

Serving MLS’, brokerage and tech providers, RESO counts the National Association of Realtors, Zillow, eXp, Realtor.com, FBS, MoxiWorks, and W&R Studios among its members.

Represented in the GEM by: Sam DeBord & Joshua Darnell.

What we like: No one but RESO is incentivized to bring the entire industry together to standardize the messy decades-old process of making disparate real estate datasets speak to each other using a common language.

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