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Wednesday, December 11, 2002 Metro offers unique listing service Just last month, Metro Brokers became the only Atlanta real estate company to successfully manage the migration of both the MLS and FMLS listings and photos to its company website without data duplication. Metrobrokers.com now showcases more than 60,000 Atlanta area listings, almost double that of any other Atlanta real estate website, and offers homebuyers a "one-stop shopping" advantage. Since January 2002, Metro Brokers/GMAC Real Estate has committed $320,000 to its technology and Internet initiative, putting the company at the national forefront of technology innovation in residential real estate. Over $100,000 was spent solely on merging the MLS and FMLS listing services.
Metro Brokers' one-of-a-kind system is the result of hundreds of hours of work over the past year by a specialized team of technicians. Their job: to pull together an abundance of diverse information into one cohesive, consumer-friendly database. Metro Brokers' outlay also included the purchase of four DELL servers using Microsoft advanced server and SQL 2000. The advanced server offers built-in clustering/redundancy capability, greater speed, and more features. Additionally, CISCO Pix Failover firewalls were installed to provide state-of-the-art security for the server environment. According to Don Greenwood, Manager of Information Services for Metro Brokers, it was the testing and infinite knowledge of the sequel server, along with the technicians' understanding of Visual Basic systems, that helped this extraordinary goal become a reality. Metrobrokers.com just this month awarded Best Real Estate Website by the Greater Atlanta Home Builders Association for the second consecutive year remains Atlanta's most popular real estate website with an average of 2 million hits and 6,500 unique visitors per week. The average visitor session, or time spent on the website, is more than 21 minutes a lifetime in the online world. Real estate guru and nationally known speaker Walter Sanford, one of the top five agents in North America for more than 15 years, summed it up at a meeting for Metro Brokers' 1,300 Atlanta associates last month. "Metro Brokers is so far ahead of the curve it's scary." A Southern California native who personally closed $72 million in residential real estate during his best year, Sanford knows of what he speaks. His parting comment was, "Every franchise in the country is looking over their shoulder at you guys."
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