Monthly Archives: July 2016

HIS Marketing Admin 4:57 pm on July 29, 2016  

Absorption Rate in REsearch Market Stats

kbr-gmm-2016We truly enjoyed meeting and spending time with many of you last week at the Kauai Board of Realtors General Membership Meeting in Lihue and the Hawaii Island Realtors General Membership Meeting in Kona. Hawaii Information Service is proud to sponsor these great events and support our members.

We appreciated hearing your feedback and suggestions. On Kauai, one of the many interesting conversations we had focused on the useful metric known as the “Absorption Rate.”

Absorption rate describes the rate at which properties are being sold in a given market, and are a popular measure of a market’s strength. We are adding the absorption rate to our new Market Statistics in REsearch, and to help you find the absorption rate for a specific area, we’ve put together a REsearch Quick Tip video to share with you!

Quick Tip Video:

Learn More:

Absorption Rate is often expressed in “months of inventory,” a measure of how long it would take for all active listings to sell. (Six months is generally considered a “balanced market.”) But Absorption Rate can also be expressed as a percentage: what portion of a market’s inventory might be sold in a given month. This will now also be shown in REsearch!

You may find these articles on this market metric helpful:

Questions? Suggestions for our next ‘Quick Tip’? We love hearing from you! Send us an email today at support@hiinfo.com.

Mahalo!

If the above embedded video doesn’t work, you can view it on YouTube:

absorption-video-thumbnail

HIS Marketing Admin 4:05 pm on July 25, 2016  

August 2016 Training Schedule

Go To MeetingBelow is the schedule of upcoming online training classes for the month of August. If you’re new to HIS, we strongly encourage you to attend an “Orientation” session at 9:30 a.m. on Aug. 17. To get started with REsearch, attend a “Getting Started” session at 1:00 p.m. on Aug. 17.

Even if you’ve participated in a session before, it’s often a good idea to get a refresher. Our live trainers can answer your questions and help you get the most out of REsearch. Descriptions of each HIS webinar can can be found here.

To sign up immediately, simply click on the links below. If you are going to attend online classes as a group, only one person needs to sign up.

Aug. 8-12, 2016

Aug. 15-19, 2016

Aug. 22-26, 2016

Instructions on how to register for online classes:

  • To register, please click on the applicable link located below the class. This will take you to the Citrix GoToMeeting/GoToWebinar registration site.
  • Please complete all the required fields marked by a red asterisk (First Name, Last Name, Email Address, Phone, and Organization or office name).
  • Click “Register Now” to complete the registration process. Once registered a confirmation email will be sent to your email address to confirm your registration along with a unique web ID number and instructions on how to login to the session on that day.
  • If you need login assistance, please feel free to contact our Customer/Technical Support team at 800-628-3121, press # and then 457.

Remember, after you have participated, please make sure to fill out the survey or e-mail us your feedback so we can continue to improve upon our training efforts!

System requirements for online classes:

  • PC-based attendees – Required: Microsoft Windows® XP or newer
  • Macintosh®-based attendees – Required: Mac OS® X 10.8 (Mountain Lion) or newer
  • Mobile attendees – Required: Apple iOS 8 or newer, Google Android 4.0 or newer System requirements apply only to the GoToMeeting webinar service, not to the REsearch system.

Questions? Comments? Please feel free to contact us via support@hiinfo.com or call (808) 599-4224 or (800) 628-3121

HIS Marketing Admin 7:49 pm on July 6, 2016  

New Time: Scheduled Downtime July 13

REsearch will be unavailable beginning at 9 p.m. on Wednesday, July 13, 2016, for important system upgrades. Please ensure you finish your work and log off before this time.

This scheduled downtime is set to run until 6 a.m. on Thursday, July 14, but service will be restored as soon as possible.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause, and we thank you for your continued support!

HIS Marketing Admin 3:00 pm on July 5, 2016  

REsearch Listing Input Form Changes

We’re making changes to the listing input form based on your feedback and careful deliberation by our volunteer REsearch User Group!

Mahalo to the REsearch User Group!

research-user-groupTo help us continue to improve REsearch, a volunteer REsearch User Group was formed with representatives nominated by each of the boards that HIS serves. These subject matter experts helped us make REsearch better for everyone:

Hawaii Island REALTORS®

  • Heather Hedenschau, Big Island Brokers
  • Jess Moulin, Clark Realty Corp. – Kona

Kauai Board of REALTORS®

  • Mark Goodman, Century 21 All Islands – Princeville
  • Wayne Richardson IV, Keller Williams

West Hawaii Association of REALTORS®

  • Mike Drutar, Windermere/C and H Properties
  • Lance Owens, Luva LLC

The User Group specifically reviewed fields that were not being populated with data, or were being populated in less than 1 percent of all listings, in order to determine whether they should be removed. They also offered suggestions that the HIS Board of Directors agreed should be incorporated in the form.

We cannot thank the User Group members enough for taking the time out of their busy schedules to help us with this project!

Data Entry Form Revisions

We are still working on some of the revisions to the REsearch data entry forms recommended by the User Group, but wanted to share with you the changes that have been completed to date. The revised forms are scheduled to be available in REsearch soon. Here are clips from the forms showing the revisions you’ll see first.

  • The “Pre-Foreclosure/SS/REO” section has been renamed “Sale Type” and a selection called “Standard Sale” has been added. A selection under this section will be required for all property types except for Business:
  • The “Assessed Land Value” and “Assessed Bldg Value” fields will no longer be required. These values are not available on Kauai. The fields are available for the entry of data however, since these values are available for the other islands:
  • Under Flood Zone, the selection “A99” was deleted because it was not being selected by members:
  • Under the section Additional Information, item Additional Fees, the selection “Special Assessment” was deleted because it is already available under the Fees section:
  • The fields “Power” and “Water” will be required for all property types. A selection called “Meter Installed” has been added under Water:
  • Two selections called “Balcony” and “Porch” has been added under the Other Square Footage Type section:
  • The section that was between Basement Type and Exterior Finish, called “Exterior” was deleted because it was a duplication of the “Other Square Footage Type” section as shown above:
  • The Appliance section is now required for all property types except for Land and Business:
  • Under Window Coverings, a selection called “Curtains” has been added:
  • Under the Parking section:

    • the field called “Stall Number(s)” has been renamed “Assigned Stall Numbers”
    • the fields “Gar Dr Height (in)” and “Gar Dr Width (in)” has been deleted because no data was being entered in them.
  • Under the Pets section, the “Pets Allowed” field will be a required field for Condo listings:
  • Under the Fees section:

    • A field called “Ag Dedicated (Year)” was removed because data was not being entered into it.
    • “Special Assessment” and “Special Assessment (Monthly)” are now required fields for Condo listings.
  • Under the Terms Acceptable section, the selection “Partial Release” was removed because it was not being selected.
  • The fields “Dues Year” and “Fee available until” were deleted from the Leasehold Information section due to non-use.
  • The field “Sales Concession Amount” was deleted from the Seller Financing section because it was used in less than 1% of all listings:
  • The sections Online Display and Remarks for Customers (Public) will be required fields for all listings.

As mentioned, these are just the revisions completed to date. Many of the fields that were approved for deletion are still pending. Should you have any questions or concerns about these forms, please feel free to contact us.

HIS Marketing Admin 10:07 am on July 1, 2016  

zipForm Login No Longer Required

REsearch users no longer need to log in separately to use zipForm. Now, when you connect to the zipForm service from REsearch, you will be able to simply continue through to search for the property with which you want to work, rather than first entering an MLS User ID and Password. We are happy to be able to release another time-saving enhancement to REsearch, and would like to remind you that we always welcome your feedback on other ways in which we can better serve you. Thank you for your continued support!

Before:

zipformlogin-before-800

After:

zipform-after-800