Welcome everyone. My name is Anne O’Shea and I’m your Flexmls trainer today. And today’s quick coffee break webinar is on general preferences.
So general preferences. General preferences are an easy way to customize your Flex MLS experience. And I put it up here on my favorites. Typically you won’t though because once you set them you can forget them. So I tend not to keep them up here and I’ll show you where it is in the menu.
Here in the menu under preferences and there they are general preferences. As I said typically I don’t have it on my favorites bar because you set it once maybe you tweak it six months twelve months later but I’m putting it up here just so everyone can see it. Okay I want to give you an example of how great general preferences are. They can really make your life easier.
So we have this new feature coming out. It’s rolling out soon. I believe it’s tomorrow but in any case there’s a new feature coming out so that you can look up comparables that much easier. And one of the things you can do, there’s a couple ways you can get to it and you’ll hear more about it, I’m sure. But my favorite, of course, is the Quick Launch Bar because I love the Quick Launch Bar.
So I’m going to type in or begin to type in an address. And I just start typing in this address three thousand seven hundred thirteen and you’ll see soon, not yet but it’ll be in the system soon for you, a comparable search.
And I can find there’s my address that I’m looking for comparables for this address because I have a potential client perhaps thinking about selling their home. So I’m going to click on that address And I’m just gonna show you briefly what this looks like. The comparables feature is awesome.
It’s gonna start with a zero point two five mile radius around that address, status of active or whatever your default statuses are in your MLS. And then it starts off with bedrooms and bathrooms exactly what is matching the subject property. And it’s already giving me three active results. And I can zoom out so you can see the quarter mile radius circle around that address.
But typically you’re not going to want to do comparables just with the status of active. And I could come in here and add other statuses of course on the fly. And I can always come in here and change the range. Maybe I tend to like to go plus or minus one bedroom over and under the subject property. But maybe I don’t want to do that every single time I do this. So this is why general preferences are fabulous.
So let’s jump in there. In your general preferences, have a number of tabs and you’re going to soon have this comparables tab right here. So let’s jump there first.
And the default radius is zero point two five and I’m going to switch it up. Maybe that’s too small a radius in my neck of the woods. Maybe I need a bigger circle. Maybe I’m always going for a one mile radius or one point three five. Whatever it is you want. But I can make it where it always starts at that one mile or something that I find I commonly use. And I can do a bedroom’s adjustment without having to do it every single time.
Maybe I’m always going to go one less than the subject property and one more. Of course you can pick whatever number works best for you. Bathrooms maybe I never go less but I will look at comps that are going one more bathroom. And you can make other adjustments here too. Statuses active I like active. Pending and closed though too. Maybe every time I run comps I always run pending and closed as well. And of course whatever statuses you have in your system will be in here.
Okay? So let’s take a peek. The key thing though when you make a change in your general preferences is to click save at the bottom right. So I’m clicking save because that’s what I prefer. Those are my general preferences. So now if I come up here and I start typing in an address again which luckily it saved for me so I didn’t even have to type it. I can come down here.
There’s my address that I want to get comps for. Click on that and you’ll see this is the fabulous thing about it. It starts off with that one mile radius that I chose and the three statuses I chose. And now I can easily change the date. The default in this MLS is one year. I can easily change that if I want to maybe sixty days back for pending. You do all that on the fly. You can still edit everything.
Bedrooms are now between three and five instead of four And bathrooms instead of being three, it’s three to four. Whatever works best for you. So you can set those so that you don’t have to go in and change it every single time. And of course I can still come in and change it. Maybe I want to go three to six this one time. But it’s nice to have those general preferences kind of start you out the way that you tend to always head.
Okay so just an example. So let’s go back and look at general preferences in full.
So here you are you have a lot of tabs in here and I highly suggest you wander through and see what might make your life easier. So for example I wear glasses and I don’t always wear them when I’m in front of my computer or I forget to put them on. I like a little bit of a bigger font size. You can set this while you’re in the list tab in search results as well but decide sometimes while you’re in here to just set things while you’re in here.
Default view of your listing reports, private version, if you’re always having clients looking over your shoulder, maybe you want it to default to public. You can always change it back while you’re doing things in quick search results. But it just gets you to where you prefer to be when you first go in. Maybe you like a different listing report. Whatever it could be, you have these options to make your life easier.
Email this is a great one. You can set your default type for your email. And here’s a good one. Default email signature to checked. If you do a subscription email, this automatically have your contact information at the bottom. But the manual email, you have to check the little box every time. This way you don’t have to check the box every time anymore. It’s going to be pre checked for you.
Things like that. Maybe you want a daily hot sheet email. Maybe you are always going in and you actually tend to check your emails first before you go into Flexmls. Maybe you want to get that hot sheet email sent to you. You can set up a custom hot sheet and have it emailed to you every day. So these are things that can make your life easier.
Another thing, there’s lots of great things in here but I’m just going to touch on a few as this is a short coffee break. Listings. When you go into my listings in the menu, come into the menu and you like to look at my listings. I don’t have any listings. This is a test account, So I have no listings.
But if you tend to want to always see your active pending, maybe not your closed, not your expired, not your withdrawn. Or you want to see your closed and you can say I want to see the closed but going back ninety days. You can change all this. Now I haven’t clicked save yet because if I click save, it’ll take me out of general preferences.
But all these changes that I’m making, I have to click save at the end so that they’ll stick. Okay. Just like anything else, of course. Notifications. This is a very popular one that people like to set. Send an email notification of your expiring listings. So if you happen to have a listing that is getting close to expiration date, yes, you may know where it is. You may have it in your calendar, etc.
Date wise, but maybe you want to get additional notifications. You can get an email notification once per day for that last week before it expires just to remind you. But maybe you’re like me and you want a little more time, you can change the date. Maybe I want it fifteen days. So what it’ll do is it’ll give me one email at fifteen days before it expires.
And then that last week I’ll get one every single day for the last seven days preceding the expiration date. So again there are so many things in here to check out. There’s so many great things that you can preset for yourself to make your life easier. I just highly recommend it. Take some time and every six months maybe tune up what you want to do. There’s so many things you can set up in here.
You know have fun. Just have fun. Customize your Flexible S experience. Make your life easier. I hope this was helpful. Oh got to click save. That’s key. Thank you very much for joining me. I hope this was helpful.
