Good morning, everybody. My name is Josh Hernandez, and today’s webinar is going to be focused on using FlexMLS for appraisers inside FlexMLS. Now I’m going to begin with the very basics. We’ll do an MLS number search. We’ll also do the very basics of using the quick search, and then from here we’ll start to get a little bit more intermediate and a little bit more detailed with what we’re doing. I’m going to talk about reviewing and selecting search results. I’ll give you another example, so if you missed something in one of the first examples, we’ll run another search and I’ll use that to run the one thousand and four MC reports. And then we’ll get into exporting search results if you want to just export those into a spreadsheet that you use yourself, and also customizations to help the system work better for you.
So let’s begin with the MLS number search. Whenever I’m teaching a class full of appraisers, many are familiar with this page or sometimes they ask me how does this page works. So we’ll look at what it can do. You can search for a single MLS number, multiple MLS numbers, and you can also do a radius search from a given MLS number on this page. So I’m going to shrink this screen just a little bit.
Drag this up. There we go. And let’s look at the MLS number search in FlexMLS.
And I’m starting with this because it is a very straightforward functionality. So to navigate the system, go to menu and you will probably see a search column. It might be the second column for you. It might say search instead of being in the third column, it may be in the second column. And we’ll start here, MLS number search. And like I said, this is a fairly straightforward page. Let me zoom in on my page a little bit and make this easier for you to see what I’m doing. And you can type in MLS numbers, you can paste in. So if you’ve got a list of MLS numbers, you can paste those in. They can be separated by a space or you can separate them by a comma, either will work. And just to show you an example, I’ll type in an MLS number. And in this particular MLS, they use a listing prefix. Not all MLSs do that. You might just have a straight six or eight or nine digit number that you type in. If your MLS belongs to a data share where they share with other MLSs, you would see that option here. Not everyone will see that, and you could select those to include or exclude listings from those other data sharing MLSs. You’ll also notice something that can be done on this page, is the radius search. So if you know the previous listing or the current listing number for a particular listing property, you can do a radius search here. Click on that. You’ll see it turn blue. You can set the distance. The default of course is one mile but you could set that to one point five miles, point five miles, three miles, fifteen miles, whatever it is. And then you select the statuses that you would like to include.
And that’s really all there is to this page. It’s not complex. We’ll get into a lot more options that are available when we go to the quick search. But from here, I’ll just click on search.
It will start us on a search results screen. So you’ll see it actually bring up listings that match my search results. So just a one mile radius from that MLS number I had typed in. If I want to see, well what does that actually look like on the search? I can click to edit the search. I’ll see it drew the one mile radius around my subject property. It’s got seven ninety four results in here. It takes just a moment for those to populate on the screen. And so just a basic radius search, or if I just wanted to type in a list of MLS numbers, I would use that function as well. So with the MLS search address, MLS number search address rather, we’re going to move on to the quick search and I’m going to start very basic and then we’re going to get a little bit more detailed. So I’ll give a few examples using the quick search. So we’ll start with the most basic examples here. So with the quick search, a few things to keep in mind. There’s a template, a search template you’ll need to select. So we’ll start there. We’ll select the statuses and date ranges that we want to include in our search, and I’ll show you some things with the date ranges, and then we’ll talk about entering search criteria. And if there’s a field I want to use that’s not on the template, how do I add it to the template? And then we’ll also look at the map. We’ll look at another way to do the radius search on the map as well as use polygons. So let’s just go back into Flex MLS and we’re going to begin with the most basic review of QuickSearch. So like I said, we’ll start basic, we’ll get more complex. We’ll begin this search by choosing our search template. At the top of the screen, in the top left, it says one residential. All MLSs have default search templates and most of them have it set specifically to each individual property type within the MLS. So you’ll see if I click on this, I get a drop down. It even tells me change the search template. I can click on that and get the same drop down. So this is the residential template. If I change let’s go I’ll click on number three, vacant land and lots, and you’ll see the actual template reload underneath that. The search for vacant land and lots is not going to include fields like bedrooms and bathrooms because those aren’t used with the vacant land and lot search. So this is selecting the template right at the top and the actual template itself loads right underneath that. So let’s go back to residential.
And let’s begin by looking at status. By default, most MLSs have active selected. When you begin a search, the MLS just says search for active listings. You can’t change that default yourself, but you can come in after I begin the search and say, I don’t want to include active. I want active pending and closed listings all for the past year. Let’s click here on the status bar and now I’m going to see the available statuses. You may need to scroll to see all of the available statuses in your MLS. Some MLSs will use different statuses. You may see some contingent statuses or things here as well in your MLS. To select multiple items from the list, hold down your control key, command key if you’re using a Mac, and then click. And you’ll notice as soon as I did that, when I selected pending, this off market dates popped up and then sold date also popped up. Most MLSs have that defaulted going back one year, some have it going back a different set time period as the default. So you can always come in, click on that calendar, and select the specific dates you want the pended dates going back to or the sold dates going back to.
You can also come in here and change this. Maybe I want to save this search so every time I run this search for we’ll say maybe I’m going to run it for West Fargo. Every time I run this search it will go one year back and pull listings one year back from whatever day I run that. Let me zoom in on the screen, make this a little easier for you to see, and instead of using specific dates, click on this forward backward arrow, and now you’ll see it going x number of days back. And I can click on that months back, years back. I’m gonna change that one year back, appended date of one year back. We’ll click on this, years back, and again to toggle from the specific dates on using a calendar function or x number of years back from whatever day I’m running the search, it’s just this forward backward arrow where my mouse is hovering.
So specific dates or relative days back, or years or months back. So now I’m looking active, pending, and closed listings and going one year back for those pended dates. These would be currently pended listings, closed listings. And then I have the other fields on the template. Now your MLS may have different fields that are here. I’m going to go in and make some specific selections here.
In this MLS, single family is under subtype. So I’m going to click on subtype and we’ll select single family. Again, to select multiple items from a list like that, you can use your control key or command key to make those multiple selections. Just hold that in and make those selections.
There should be some location fields, oftentimes cities, ZIP codes, counties. Fargo Moorhead has map areas, so maybe I’ll just click on map area. They have different areas in the cities here, so I’m going to go into West Fargo. Maybe right here, E four.
If your MLS does not have these map areas, that’s okay. I’m going to show you how to actually draw on the map as well. Subdivisions, bedrooms, bathrooms, I’m going to select bedrooms. If I just put in a minimum number, it’s going to search three plus. So if I’m looking to find things that are comparable here, I’m going to put in a specific range usually. So I’ll put in a minimum and a maximum. Same thing with total bathrooms. Maybe I’m going to say two to three total bathrooms. Square footage, you may see different labels for square footage fields in your MLS, but there is most likely one for a total square foot or a total above ground square foot. So I’m just going to again do a little bit of a range. Right here, maybe twenty three hundred to twenty eight hundred. And as I’m looking at this, I see the map constantly updating. If there are under one thousand results, they start mapping here. And I can tell how many results there are. It always says view results and it tells me the current number of results.
So if I wanted to say then at least two garage stalls. We’ll click two and you’ll see that number. Oh, one twenty eight still.
If there’s something that I want to search on but it is not on this search template. Click add a field to the search and from here I’m going to see all the available searchable fields pop up and what I want to do is I could add those fields by scrolling through or I can just type in what I’m looking for. Whoops, scrolled up on that template. I can type in next to this plus sign what am I looking for, and I’m just going to add central air. So I’ll click on air conditioning central, add that to my search results, and now we’re down to a hundred and twenty five. I can close this pop up of the fields by clicking the x in the upper right corner, and I see those out currently on the map. So that’s the basics of searching. Start with the template, statuses, specific dates or date range depending on what you want to do for your search, and then enter your search criteria. Now I can begin reviewing these search results. You’ll notice right at the top of the search criteria it says view results. Just click on that and it’s actually just going to jump us to view those results in the list form.
So as I’m looking at these one hundred and twenty five results in the list, the columns of information here are called the view. And we’ll talk about this because this is one of those areas where oftentimes somebody will say, well this has the sold date, it has the sold price, but I want to see the original list price as well on this. We’ll talk about customizing this in the last half of today’s session. What I want to focus on here is just some basic ways to work with these search results first and then we’ll talk about the customizations. So the first thing is maybe I just want to compare these listings in a one line view. I’m not interested right now at seeing this preview photo. On the list, right underneath the list label, there is this single line view. So status will then be abbreviated address, sole date, whatever is on here. So that can make it easy for quick comparisons.
If I’m going to go in and I’m just going to select a few of these and select maybe five closed, five active and maybe five pending.
Because I want to just highlight a few things here when looking at these search results. There are one hundred and twenty five results, but it tells me how many I have selected. So if I move over to the detail tab or the photo tab to start really comparing, maybe I want to drill down on these, and I just want to compare the ones that I’ve put a check mark next to. Click on selected, and that will show me it’ll highlight I’ve only I’m only viewing the selected. There are still a hundred and twenty five results, but there are only fifteen displaying right now. So I can click to start looking at the photos for just these particular listings. Or if I go to the detail page, look at the details for these particular listings. When I have listings selected, I can also drag and drop to rearrange them in whatever order I would like. So if I want to rearrange, I can manually rearrange these as well. And then lastly, looking at some of these basic search, we’ll come back to the map in a moment, but working with these search results and selecting the results, that’s only part of the search. I put in my search criteria, that’s part one. I review and select results if I’m selecting results, that’s part two. And then what’s the action that we’re going to take with the results?
So my actions are at the top of the search page. So I see email, save, print, CMA. All of those options here. One I do want to highlight because I have had this question asked is, I just want to go in and save this one line view as a PDF or print that one line view so I can refer to it later. So let’s come in and select print. So our actions are at the top. Now I could print just whatever listing is currently highlighting. Anything with a check mark, it tells me how many there are, fifteen, or all search results, all one hundred and twenty five. How do I print just that list?
Maybe I don’t want to print all fifteen detail reports that are available. I’m just going to click on list. Let’s take off the detail. Take off that title. We’ll just call this residential view. I can select the font size here. If I want to see what that looks like, I can click on preview and it’s giving me this basic view. Now the view that I’m seeing, it’s twenty nineteen example, I’m gonna change the view. These are the columns of information. We’re gonna come back to that. I’m gonna select one line. And now I’m gonna re preview this. There, that makes it a little bit easier for me. Now it’s that one line view. I could save this as a PDF. I can print this. When you’re printing something, you also usually have that ability to send it to your printer or your printer usually has the function to save that as a PDF as well.
So I might change this to landscape and then save it as a PDF or print it out from here as well. So taking an action with those search results. Now let’s just go back. Let’s go back to the search we’ve done with these one hundred and twenty five listings. I’m going to deselect these fifteen. Quick note on how to deselect, I can manually uncheck those or I can check that box at the top, right at the top of the column, and now I’ve got zero selected. So I can go back to all search results. But let’s go back to the search. My search is still in play. I’ve got these one hundred and twenty five results and I can click on edit search and I’m right back in our search template and the map. Last thing I wanted to do on this map was show you a little bit of using the map functionality. In this MLS they do have map areas, so I selected one of those. But maybe yours doesn’t or maybe you’re searching in a location that’s not defined by an MLS area. Three shapes for drawing. You have rectangles, circles, and the free form polygon. I’m just going to click on the free form polygon today because this one is a little bit less self explanatory than the rectangle or the circle. So I’m gonna zoom in on this area and maybe I just want to pull in this subdivision kind of where my mouse is tracing. Let’s click on this polygon tool. My map tools are at the bottom. The polygon is the last one on the right in this center group of tools. Click on that. And now every time I click, it sets a point on the map. So it just starts tracing a line kind of like connect the dots. So I can come in and trace this. I’m gonna just click and drag my map a little bit.
Trace this exactly how I want it to be set And when you’re done drawing, double click and that sets the shape on the map. So now I’ve gone from those one hundred and twenty five search results to just listings within this shape that I’ve drawn. I can also come in and start adding search criteria at any time. I can move back and forth between my map and entering search criteria on the template. So if I wanted to say two story, that limits us down to five.
One story, I’ll click command, hold that in, and one, one and a half story. So I can come that way. So that’s using the map and then again working with those search results, viewing them on the list, the detail, photos, map, those are going to be the same as we’ve already taken a look at. So those are the basics of starting a search and then working with those search results. Let’s As I’m looking at this and editing this search, if you want to use this search later, I want to come back this afternoon, I get called away right now, I’ve gotta go do something else, but I want to come back to this later. Save the search. And again, that’s going to be a function at the top. Let’s just click on save and I’m going to give it a name.
I’m going to call it Neighborhood one. And I’m just gonna save that search.
So now I can get to that search at any point in time. So if I want to come back later and work with this search, I can go to my menu and go to saved searches. When I go to my saved searches, I’ll have all of my saved searches. If I mark a search as a favorite, I can hover over that and put the star next to it. It will save in my favorites, just another item right here. But West Fargo neighborhood one, if I click on that, it’ll take me to the search results and I can go in and start editing that search again. So last action I wanted to take is just saving that search. Now let’s get into a little bit different search.
I’m gonna run another search but this time we’re going to use it to run the one thousand and four MC report. So we’re gonna begin by creating a search and then there are some very particular things. When I’m going to be looking at listings to include, we are going to deselect the status entirely. And I know you think I’m crazy right now, but it’ll make sense once I get into this. And that is because we want to make sure we don’t miss any listings here. So I am just going to we’ll stress this again when we create the search itself. And then I’m going to put in my search criteria and then we’ll use the CMA function. That’s where the ten o four MC option is going to be. So we’ll take a look at this right now. So I’m just going to come back here to my home screen, that home dashboard, and let’s begin a brand new quick search.
Now this time I’m going to maybe draw a radius.
Since I didn’t show that previously, when drawing a radius, I’m going to just locate my subject property on the map and draw a radius on the map.
I’m going to go to the map and click in the lower right corner of the toolbar this locate address option. When locating the address, I can type in of course the house number, the street, five thousand three and fifteen eighth Street west city, state, and zip. If you know the zip, can probably get away with just typing that in. Five eight zero seven eight. That’s in West Fargo and I’ll click on locate. And it comes and pulls that listing up. If it’s an active listing, it’ll show, but it doesn’t even have to have ever been on the MLS before. The address search is simply looking on in Google Maps for that address. So it doesn’t have to have been on the MLS previously. So unlike when we looked at the MLS number search, when I use this address search box, this address doesn’t ever have to have been on the MLS before. And you’ll see it’s located by this red push pin. I’m going to click use this location, and the radius search is our first option. Now if that push pin was not in the correct location, You can remove the pin, you can drag and drop the pin around to rearrange it, but I’m just going to see I see it’s mapped correctly here. So let’s just click on radius search. The default is one mile, but you can set that to whatever number you would like. Create radius. So I’m zoomed in. It is looking at active listings, and the first thing I noted on that previous slide is we don’t want to select a status. And I know you think I’m crazy, but just just watch what happens here. So I’m going to just click that box. So I’ve got this circle drawn. You don’t have to use the radius when doing the ten o four MC. I’m just including that in this particular example.
I’m going to uncheck status and you’ll see this number, fifteen hundred results. That’s okay. When we run the one thousand and four MC, we’ll have the chance to set an effective date and it will pull all listings one year back from that date.
So this ensures by deselecting status that we don’t miss anything. So I’m going to come in and select single family.
I’m not going to select I could select areas or things like that, but since I’m already using the map, I’m just going to go in and put in some fields like three to four bedrooms, two to three bathrooms. And square footage, let’s do two thousand three hundred. Gonna pull in we can always come back and adjust this as necessary. And it’s pulling three forty nine results. Now I can keep drilling down. I could get as specific as your built, garage stalls, whatever it may be. I can add fields to the search. But for the sake of time, I want to show you as I’ve set my search criteria and I’m confident I’ve got the fields and the ranges in these fields that I want to include in the search, I am going to send these results to the CMA function and here is where we have the opportunity to run the one thousand and four MC. So from here, I can of course review the results, but again, for the sake of time, let’s just click on CMA. And I’m going to click this option, use all results. Click on use all results and if there are over one hundred and fifty, and most likely there are going to be depending on your MLS and the location that you’re searching, it’ll default to the statistical CMA. If it’s not defaulted there, make sure you click on statistical CMA and then click next step.
Now this first section and checkbox are for the total statistics. It’ll take all of our search results and just give us some basic statistics on those. So I’m going to include that for right now. And you may have this option removed, total square footage statistics. You’ll see where that is included here. Individual listing information, that’s three hundred and some listings. I don’t want a listing report for all of those. I’m keeping that unchecked. And then the ten o four mc option. This is where I select, let’s include this, the effective date back. This is the end of that one year period and you’ll notice it can only be today’s date or earlier. I can’t set this for a future date. So it has to be the current date or earlier, but everything goes back one year from that date. If I want to include the median calculation for my total statistics, I click this button. That just you have an option because sometimes you want to run these things faster. The median will just take a few more seconds when I include the median, but it’s a great thing to include. Break it down by status. You have some options here. Status is going to most likely be your default. And then I could download it as a PDF, email it. We’ll just click on view.
And this allows us to see two parts to the page. I’m gonna zoom out just a little bit. First half, the statistical market analysis. That’s what this total statistics is and that’s where the median calculation is included. So it breaks things I’ll also say this is where it’s broken down by status as well in those search statistics. So it tells me in the search results that I’m looking at how many active, pending, closed, all of the statuses included, number of listings, list volume, sold volume for those off market sold listings, list price, low average, median, and high, same with sold price, sale to list price, square footage, list price per square footage, sold price per total square foot, agent days on market. If your MLS uses cumulative days on market, they’ll be here as well. And then underneath that, we have the information for the Fannie Mae ten o four MC. Let me just zoom in a little bit. So that checkbox that I included here for the Fannie Mae, that is right here. Total number of comparable sales, absorption rate, active listings, and then prior seven to twelve months, and it gives you the exact date ranges that it’s using. So there’s no question here. Four to six months and current through three months. So you can look at that information.
If I wanted to run this and only see the ten o four MC, I can just uncheck that, click on view and just see the one thousand and four information by itself, or I could see only the search statistics by itself as well. Oftentimes you’re gonna be using both of these so it doesn’t hurt to run them both at the same time. So that was running that one thousand and four MC from FlexML S. And remember, that’s why when we ran the search and I said don’t select status, you wanna make sure that nothing excluded when you’re running these statistical results. You don’t want it skewed by anything. So use your search criteria to get the correct listings, but don’t select any statuses or off market dates. That’s all done via this effective date right here to make sure the search statistics are accurate when we run those. And I’m going to now return back to my search results screen.
If I wanted to save this search again, I just click on save up at the top and I can give this search name one thousand and four MC and then I might just put in the address that I used, as kind of the location of the subject property, fifty three one five eight street west. Save that. So that’s in my saved searches now as well. And I’m going to then move on to our next section. We’ve gone through searching, using that one thousand and four MC to get the search statistics as well as the one thousand and four.
And from here, let’s talk about search results. Because sometimes you might say, I just want to take all of these results, put them in a CSV file that I can manipulate myself. I trust my calculations more than anybody else. I’ve got my processes. How do I run that export? I’m going to first show you where the export function is, and then we’re going to talk about creating a custom export and I’ll tell you why we want to do that.
So I’m gonna close these two windows and let’s just go start our quick search again. Maybe I want to go to one of those saved searches that we just did. Let’s go to this West Fargo neighborhood one. We ran this search. I’ve got ten results. I want to export these. I’ve got mostly closed, one active, one pending in here. And the functions at the top. Where do I go in to export? I see share, email, save, print. There’s no export function, but my instinct tells me this is where the functions are. Click on these three dots, export. There is the export function. So on search results, any search results screen, click on the three dots, export. Now when you come here, if you’ve ever come here before, you have a generic text export. It’s gonna export. You can do it as a CSV file. That’s great but it contains all of the listing information. So it’s going to conclude fields that you have no interest in seeing. It’s all of the listing information. So I’m going to suggest you create a custom export. Let’s go back to our search results. I’m going to go to my menu and I’m just going to search for custom export. Whoops.
My export is what they’re called rather than custom. My exports. I’m gonna put a star next to this and you’ll see when I star something, it gets added to my favorites. So now I can click on this to go to my exports or I can click on this link at my favorites so I have one click access. So you’ll notice you may have some here, some that are inherited exports. You may not have anything here. If you don’t have anything, you can start from scratch. Select new. Give the export a name.
And I’m going to call this residential custom export, so I know what it’s called when I look at it in a list.
Group name, that means when I see like a field washer and dryer, it’s under an appliances group, it would say the group name, appliances washer and dryer, appliances double oven, appliances refrigerator, that’s what the group name refers to. So I can include or exclude that as I would like. And then I’m going to say the property types. Different property types have different fields, so I’m going to select residential, so I have the residential fields. Click next. On the left are my available fields.
So anything that I want to include, I’m just going to click on control f, Sold date, sold price, sold price per square foot. Maybe I want the start date, maybe I want the current status, change date. I can make multiple selections here by holding my control key, command key if you’re using a Mac, and then I can click add. So I have these added here.
Then maybe I want my street name, suffix, style of house, floors, whatever it is.
Subdivision, subtype, bathrooms, bedrooms, full bath, half bath, square footage, add this.
Now these are the order that those fields will appear in. So if I want to, I can rearrange these. And you can rearrange if I wanna select my bathroom information. I’m gonna move these up. Full baths, half baths. Let’s move three quarter up here. So I can rearrange here. Maybe I want total baths or total bedrooms above that subdivision up at the top. So take your time, select the fields that are important to you, that you need and that you want to include in your export. Once you’ve done that, arrange them here on the right and then click save. So now I’ve got this residential custom export. If you want, you can give that to another member. So if you’ve got a group of appraisers that you work with, somebody’s got a great export, ask them to give it to you. They can just come to their export screen, give to somebody, they select the office, they select the member from the office, and then they can give that to you. Or you can give that to them. So again, let’s go back to our saved search, that West Fargo neighborhood one search that we did. Now when I go in and run my export, it’ll give me much better information.
When I click on three dots, exports, click custom text export, my residential custom export, and now it’s only going to be those columns of information. Lastly, you have to come in and do one of those. I am not a bot scraping data, four fifty three v, and I can click to export that.
If you want to download the photos for those listings that you’ve included, you can do that from here as well. And you’ll see I’ve got now a CSV file I can open up and use that as I need. So that’s the custom export, and that takes us in to some of our other customizations that we’re going to take a look at.
So in our last twenty minutes, we’re going to take a look at different things we can customize and make the system work better for our needs. So all MLSs have, as we started with a search, these search templates. And you might say, well this residential template is good but really I’m not worried about searching by list price or the current price. I only like searching by sold price. I’m only looking at sold listings.
Maybe I want to make sure that I’ve got my list date out here. I don’t see the list date. I like searching, when I’m looking at active listings for the list date. So I can customize this template. So when I create a custom template, it’s not going to have anything selected for me by default. It’s just the fields that are available. So let’s move from here. Custom search templates. Just the fields that are available by default when you start a search. And what we’ll look at now is how to permanently add fields. So every time you start a search, those fields are there. And when we come in, we’ll look at how to save that, how to rearrange those fields on the template, and then we’ll answer this question. Can you set a default search template? And the system defaults to the most recently used search template. So we’ll take a look at how that works. So I mentioned some fields that I wanted to add. Maybe I don’t usually search via some of these options here. I’m not interested in waterfront. Maybe I’m where I work at, there is no waterfront. I don’t need this on the template. You can click an x to remove something from the template, And I mentioned maybe I like to search on list date. Let’s just type in date and okay. It’s gonna be in this MLS it’s noted as start date. And maybe I like status change date on here. I want to see when that status changed. So if I like these and I want to include them, I also like to search, by let’s come in here. We’ve already got new construction. They added this, semi recently. I was gonna I usually use that as one of my examples. I’ll just add this. Probably not something that you would include in one of your searches, but my air conditioning group. So I added these three fields. I can save this now as a custom template where these three fields will always be here. And to do that, I take an action. Before I enter in any search criteria, I just click on save. The second option instead of saving the search is saving that quick search template. So first, you need to give it a name. I’m going to give you a professional tip here and that is put a zero in front of it or put a couple spaces in front of it.
And that will put it at the top of the list, and I’ll show you why it’s handy to have it at the top of the list. The view, those are the columns of information that we see when we view the list. We’ll talk about that. We’ll create a custom view for it as well. And then I’ll just click on save. So now when I click on this list, I’ve got this residential custom search option. And I can start putting in my search criteria, whatever it is, and I can view review results. The second part of associating something with this search template is the columns of information, the view. I mentioned at the start when we started looking at search results, you can customize this view to include only the listing data that you want to include. But before we get there, let’s go back to this custom search template, edit search. And a few things that people want to do. Rearrange the fields on the template. You’ll see right now if I leave this screen and come back to a search, the system defaults to using the search template that I most recently used. That’s the default. Whatever you most recently used, that’s what you’re going to start at for that search template.
But if I want to get down to my start date or the list date for these listings, I have to scroll all the way to the bottom. Maybe I want that start date right up toward the top. Status change date, right toward the top. There’s no way on this screen to change the order. So how do I do that? I’m gonna go to my menu, and it’s in the preferences section. It’s going to say my quick searches, it’s really your quick search template. So I’m just gonna type in quick search. So not this, not my quick searches, that would just be starting a search. But under preferences, so the item you see under preferences, my quick searches, just like my exports was under preferences, these are my quick search templates. Click on that. Here is our residential custom search template. I can click to edit that. This is the default view. We’ll talk more about that in just a moment. But I’m going to click next so I get to this screen where I have all of those fields. There’s my start date and my status change date. I’m gonna hold my control key, select both of those, and just click to move those up my list. So I’m gonna put those right after status. So if I like to look at list date when I’m looking at active listings or, pending or sold listings, I wanna know that list date. I’ve got my start date and my status change date right at the top. Click on save.
So now when I begin a search by clicking on quick search, it uses the last used template. There’s our custom residential template. And now I’ve got my start date and status change date right here as well.
I am going to move from here and I mentioned you saw when we were saving this search template that it said pick a list view to associate with this. And so this is the view and you have probably default views that are already in the system. Those default views have a little asterisk next to them. So I might like one of these views. Maybe I like this residential sold view, but I like to look at some additional fields here as well. So how do I change this view? And while I’m at it, how do we change the sort? Maybe I want it sorted by price first or location first then price within location. So let’s just click on view right here. There’s a menu item called my views but this is a nice shortcut to it. And I need to give the view a name. If I want to save my own, I’m gonna put a zero in front of this one as well so it’s at the top of my list. Custom residential view, report description, that only displays when you go in and print the list tab, that report view. So I can put something in there or skip it entirely if I would like. Show photo, yes or no. What’s the default? If you want no, just click on no. If you like seeing that photo there, click on yes. You can always, if you say yes, change it to the one line view as well. Default, I don’t have any listings or office listings. As an appraiser, I don’t add listings. I don’t I’m not selling anything here. I can ignore this for right now. And then I move my general tab to the field tab, this middle tab.
Over on the right are the fields that are currently there. Now my price, status, listing number are going to be there by default. I’m gonna take address off, that’s gonna be included. Total bedrooms, maybe I want that rate under, and maybe I want total bathrooms. So these are the fields on the right that are currently there. On the left, I select my property type. I can come in and search for what I’m looking for. Maybe I want bath. Total bathrooms and full bathrooms. They’ve been added, they get added to the bottom. I can drag and drop to rearrange the order. Also, I can change the name of this.
I can just call this baths and I can call whoops, spelled that correctly.
I can click to rename this and maybe I’ll just call this FB, full baths.
So I can add whatever fields I would like, rearrange them. You’ll notice there is one more tab here to sort. Column order, I can just click on any of the column headers and sort that way, or I can create a custom sort. So if I click create a new sort, I give the sort a name. I’m going to call this zero so it’s at the top of the list. Custom residential sort. And then maybe I want to sort by city.
And then I want to sort by price. I can say original list price, sold price, Current price, if the listing is currently on market, it’s going to have whatever their current price is. If it’s sold, it’ll sort by the sold price. Maybe I’m going to do that. And then I can choose ascending or descending order.
And I can drill down as much as I would like for these sorts. So I’m just going to click on save.
So now I’ve got my residential custom view. So when I begin a search, remember this is sticky. The neck the last search I did, you use the residential search template. The same thing happens. The view that I use, if I change the view, I’m just gonna change this to our custom residential view. When I change that view, the next time I use this search template, it’s going to just automatically default to that view. So we’ll just take a quick look at that. When I come in here, start searching, go to that list, my view, there’s that custom view. Those will be associated together. If I were to change this view to something else, the next time I ran the search it would use whatever the new one was that I used. But now this custom template is just associated with this custom view. So again, if you’ve gone through the trouble to create a custom search template or one of those custom views or those custom sorts that I have, you’ll see the sort tells me I’m using my custom residential sort or we’re sorting by city then price. I can come in and go to those menu items. So my quick searches, I can give that to somebody else. So again, if you work with an appraiser group, somebody says, listen, I’ve I’ve gone through this trouble already or I’ve done it for you, you can give that to somebody else or you can ask somebody else to give you those search templates. You can click on the template, click give to somebody. You will always have those inherited templates. You can’t get rid of those, but you can use those custom templates. So I encourage you to do that for your search needs.
And I’m going to do the same thing. Just go to I mentioned there’s a menu item for views under preferences, my views. You can do the same thing.
Now when it says give to someone, whether it’s the exports, whether it’s your custom search template, or whether it is your view, you can give that to somebody. You’ll see whoops. Come back here. Give it to a selected office. So I can select office, give to somebody within that office. These people don’t have to be somebody within my office. These views, the exports, and the quick search templates can all be given to anybody, any active member of the MLS that has access to Flex MLS.
So that was our custom search template. Our custom views one thing I didn’t point out on the views, when I’m reviewing search results, anytime I’m on that list tab, you can rearrange the size of the columns. Just hover over the column and this oh, it’s not sticking for me. Might be because I’m zoomed in so far on my screen. I’ve got my screen at like one hundred and fifty percent right now to make that easier. But you can drop and drag to change the size of the columns here as well.
Last few minutes, we’ll talk about some other customizations because when you’re using FlexMLS, you log in, you’re probably at a dashboard. And you might say, you know what? I don’t use a lot of these things. There’s a my listings gadget on a dashboard. I’m not an agent. I’m not selling. I don’t have listings in the system. I don’t have contacts.
So take this dashboard and click on any of these gadgets. They have a settings option. Click on the three dots. Click on the settings. And I can one, I’m I’m a first let’s remove these. I’m just gonna click on the three dots. Let’s click remove first. So are you sure you want to do that? Yes. I don’t have contacts. I’ll remove this one as well. You can undo that of course. I’ve got a hot sheet out here. I’ve got my saved searches, display listings. This display listings, let’s move this up to the top. Each of the gadgets that you do have out here has settings. If you click on those three dots and click on settings, I can say let’s sort this. I just want to see search results. So I did that.
What do we do today? What did I call that? West Fargo Neighborhood one. That’s a search we did. I’m just using one of my saved searches so I can set this to display listing information from a specific saved search. I could also add gadgets to the dashboard. So if you go up to customize, go up to add gadgets, you get a list of gadget categories on the left hand side. You can search through these. I’m not going to spend too much time doing it. I just wanna show you, what this looks like. So I might say, oh, absorption rate, that looks interesting. Inventory, that looks interesting. Original list price ratio, sale to original list price ratio looks interesting as well. When I return to my dashboard, you’ll notice that these are all added at the bottom. So you can drag and drop to rearrange these. And these are looking at the entire MLS and some MLSs cover a very wide area. So I can come in and change the settings on these and say let’s just look in, maybe I work mostly in West Fargo. Double click, add that right here. So I can look at these for specific locations as well. And again, that would just be by going into the settings, using that location search, and saving here. Maybe I want to compare West Fargo, Fargo, and Moorhead. I could set up the absorption rate gadgets for all three of those. I could add three absorption rate gadgets, set them each looking at a different location. So you do have those options as well.
And then lastly, not only can we customize that dashboard to make it a little bit more user friendly for the things that you want to see ah, there we go. You can customize those favorites. So if you’re looking up here and, you know, if there was a favorite on here of something that you don’t use, you can get rid of those favorites. To get rid of the favorites, just see the menu item with a star next to it, uncheck that star, and it gets removed. And I’ve got my saved searches on here.
Maybe I want to put it on the MLS number search.
And I might say, well, I want this order to be changed. You can change the order of your favorites by going to the far right on that favorites row and clicking reorder. So let’s put quick MLS number search first. That’s what we started with today. Quick searches, save searches, click save.
Now I do see one question that came in and that asked about when I created that custom map shape, saving that as an overlay so I can use it anytime I’m starting a search. So let’s just go to our saved search and it was this West Fargo neighborhood one. This is where I drew a map shape. So let’s go edit a search. Anytime you draw on the map, and because we’re at the end of today’s webinar, I’m just using a shape that I’ve already drawn. If you go through the trouble of using that polygon tool to draw a shape, you can save that shape and make it available in any search. Click on the polygon shape, and you’ll notice it’s just called polygon. Right next to that, click edit. And call this neighborhood one. I can change the color of this if I want and then you see this option. As I’m renaming it and choosing the color, save it as a map overlay.
So I just give this I’m gonna call get a new set of overlays called neighborhoods because I can put more than one shape in here.
And so I’m just going to Good.
So what I’ve done here is oh, I’ve got some sort of error right here. Well, apologies for that. We’ve got a slight problem with Flex MLS right now. It shouldn’t last more than a second. But how do I use that? Anytime you start a search, it doesn’t matter what template I’m using. I could do this for a land search, for the regular residential custom or search, my custom search template. Up at the top, there is a search location bar. Click on that and I am going to see my map overlays. So I can come in and use that on any search that I run. It doesn’t matter what template I’m using, I can use that for any search that I’m running. So I just wanted to show you. One note, if you do create those custom map overlays, I type in the word map and I just went here a moment ago, my map overlays under preferences. You can, like I said, draw multiple shapes under over an overlay or in an overlay. You can give this to someone as well.
However, unlike the search templates and the views and the exports where you can give to anyone that’s a member of the MLS and using Flex MLS, these you could only give to somebody within your own office. There is a limit on sharing with those map overlays. So I just wanted to point that out as well. Now, we’ve gone just slightly over time. So this has been recorded. That’s a lot of information that we’ve looked at in the past hour. We will send you this recording in approximately twenty four hours. And in addition to that, I just wanted to point out some help options that are available for you. You can always click on help in the upper right corner. Flex MLS help has our printed help site. So if you wanted to say, I wanna know a little bit more about running that one thousand and four MC, Click, takes you right to that. In addition to that, you have the FlexMLS Academy. We have recorded videos, upcoming training here. Video training, just our recorded training. There’s also guided help.
In the center of your screen near this quick launch bar, this guided help is available and we’ve just added a section appraiser guided tours. And so this has a lot of the topics we covered today in here already. Running the ten o four, running a radius search, creating custom search templates, creating custom views. When you go through these, it’s a step by step on screen help that comes up. Read the text and follow the prompts on the screen. Just wanted to point out that guided help for you as well. One question on here about using most recent searches. So I had pointed out under the saved searches, that there is all of your saved searches, but sometimes you don’t save the search. There is the draft search section right here. And so this is going to show you and I don’t log into this account directly very often, so this will show you your draft searches, searches that you ran but did not save. So you can access those draft searches here as well right under your saved searches, all of your saved searches, favorites, or drafts, those searches you ran but did not save. With that, it has been a pleasure working with you and showing you some of the features today. I hope you have a safe and healthy rest of your week.
