I am a real estate agent that maintains my own site using Joomla, Open Realty and CMS Realty.

This past year has brought us to an interesting point in time. Joomla 1.5 is available, Open Realty 2.5.6 is out with lots of new features, The VOW policy is adopted by MLS's across the country and RETS servers are provided by most MLS' per NAR mandates.

With so many new technologies and business rules available it was time to upgrade my site to all of the latest software. I especially wanted to upgrade from my custom coded IDX importer to a RETS feed. I tried some of the open source RETS clients that are available. Especially the ones that are supposed to work with Open Realty. I then contacted Transparent Technologies about Transparent RETS.

You all were very helpful and took the time to assess my MLS’s server, finding some RETS standards compliance issues. ( this was a great help in getting the corrections made) As you know, I eventually bought the product and was elated to find that it was extremely easy to install and set up. The user interface is much better than other RETS Clients I tried and within minutes was connected to the RETS server and pulling data.

The TRETS client queried the server and displayed all of the property fields available. I simply went down the list and checked the fields I wanted to import and hit "Auto Map". The system automatically created all of the fields in my OR database! Brilliant! Setting up the queries to only import the data I wanted was also extremely easy and intuitive.

Literally, in 10 minutes I was pulling data into my site. It automatically cleaned up the database by removing old properties and it works with OR’s new property notification system. Something I was missing from my custom coded solution. The best part is that it is so easy to use that I do not worry about the MLS making data changes in the future. This is going to make my site much easier to maintain. I also feel the site is on a much better platform on which to add future capabilities.

Considering the many hours I spent with other products to get any data imported, and all the tinkering required for making changes to the import, I feel the cost of Transparent RETS was a bargain. The fact that you were there to help with identifying issues on my MLS’s server was also a huge benefit and something I would never have been able to do on my own.

I am looking forward to completing the implementation of my new site using this product. It truly is a huge improvement to my site.

I would recommend this product to anyone who is setting up an OR site and has a RETS server available. It is the way to go.

Thanks so much for this product.