Municipalities and Townships: NorthstarMLS has changed its rule so that if you list a property that is located in a Township, you now have the option to select the Postal City for the Municipality field (instead of the Township).  You may do this for future listings and for existing Active listings (using the Edit function in Home Base).  This option is available only for those properties located in a Township.

There are over 700 Townships in Minnesota.  Most of them are not known by the public, even in the areas around the Townships.  They are more commonly grouped with the nearest town/city which is usually also the mailing address.  These Township properties can now be more easily found by and for potential buyers, giving them more selection.  The Township name will continue to be reflected on the Tax record (available by clicking the PID Number).

MLS Areas to be Discontinued: The Minnesota MLS Area field will be phased out of NorthstarMLS by early 2011.  Reasons for this decision include:

• MLS Areas were developed many years ago for a form of newspaper listing that no longer exists.
• Boundaries are mostly subjective.  As areas have developed over the years, many boundaries have come into contention with no clear consensus on where new boundaries should be drawn.  Even if new boundaries are drawn, they will likely change again over time.
• Changing MLS Area boundaries is difficult.  Besides gaining consensus, there is system reprogramming, reclassification of existing listings and redo/printing of maps (including some broker/agent Web sites).
• Many listings (over 1,000 per month) are routinely entered into the wrong MN MLS Area in an attempt to improve the listing’s exposure.  This requires a great deal of staff resource time to respond to complaints from other agents who object to incorrect location information.
• Consumers have no knowledge of MLS Areas beyond what their agent tells them.
• NorthstarMLS provides many alternative search tools, particularly Map Search which allows you to define a very specific search area for your client’s needs.
• NorthstarMLS mapping is extremely accurate.  With three to four thousand new listings entered per week, only a handful (less than half a percent) report mapping problems which are quickly corrected.  Agents even have a utility in Home Base where they can easily correct the map on their listing if needed (select “Map By MLS#” from the Home Base main menu).

Many of you still routinely search based on MLS Area.   We are giving months of advance notice to give you time to become accustomed to other search methods.  Throughout this transition, we will soon offer online videos on how to do Map Searches.  If you have never used this tool, we think you will find it extremely useful.  You can also continue to search by Municipality, Postal City, School District and ZIP Code.

Related Posts:

• Minnesota MLS Now Has Statewide Data
• Three New Fields Coming to NorthstarMLS
• New Contingency Field Added to Northstar MLS
• New Fields Added to MN MLS System
• Northstar MLS Outage on Tuesday Morning