2016 MLS Chair Javier Cavazos

Welcome to 2016! I hope 2015 was a great year for you both personally and professionally. I look forward to serving as your MLS Chairman once again, I had the honor of filling the position back in 2011. I will be taking a look back and comparing these 2 years and give a little insight in future articles. First though I must take a minute and thank Jonna Aluisi, your 2015 Chair, for the wonderful leadership she provided last year. There were a lot of different subjects we tackled last year, each meeting was full of great discussion, and she accomplished quite a few tasks for you.

Next, I must thank all of you for all of your hard work. You may or may not be aware that Fresno was designated as the "healthiest" real estate market nationwide in Freddie Mac's annual Multi-Indicator Market Index report. It is great to read about our wonderful City in such a positive way, please be sure to share this information with all of your clients. Although a "healthy" market can mean many things it did not directly translate to more buyers and sellers in the market or number of closed transactions. They focus their report on the number of mortgage applications received, buyer's purchasing power (relates to affordability), timely mortgage payments, and the overall employment figures. If you focus in on our jobs, we directly affect each of those categories. Take a minute to applaud yourselves but then get back to the job at hand and help keep us moving in this forward direction. Your State Directors will be traveling to Anaheim next week to attend the first CAR meeting of the year...it is my understanding Fresno will be receiving some recognition for this national attention. I will also bring back any new MLS news that affects us locally.

Lastly, I must thank the members of last year's MLS Committee for their service and hard work. There were several members that termed out last year and new members added. Thank you to Steve Flach and Sheri Poindexter (Fresno's Realtor of the Year) for stepping in to their new roles on my committee. Also a thank you to Lupe Uribe and Jo Souza for running your weekly Tuesday morning marketing meetings for the last 2 years and Tom Miller and Gretchen Sullivan for filling those positions this year.

As part of last year's hard work there are over 140 updated changes scheduled for the Rapattoni system. You should already be experiencing several of the changes and the remainder will be rolled out throughout the year as they become available. Hopefully the changes will help things "flow" easier for you. There were also several new reports/flyers made available to you. Don't forget that MLS Touch was made a "free" benefit to all of our members to help you with your business....you will now be more mobile and find information at your fingertips to better serve your clients.

Thank you again for allowing me this opportunity to serve you and please do not hesitate to contact me or my committee members with any questions or enhancements requests. Keep an eye out for my future articles. Continued success to you in 2016!