Lubeck’s Letter
The idea that MIAMI was and is attempting to share RAPB’s listings with its near 40,000 Realtor membership stems from a letter 2015 JTHS President Nancy Lubeck sent on July 30 of this year. The letter, which Miami Agent has read, begins with a short note explaining the merger, followed by a “Notice of Special Meeting” and two pages explaining the possible benefits of the merger. Within the benefits, the document spells out access to RAPB’s MLS database.
“It appeared that JTHS was trying to invite MIAMI in to its listings and also RAPB’s,” Rothman said. “JTHS currently has access to RAPB’s listings, but if the merger goes through that access will be revoked.”
Confronted with the evidence of Lubeck’s letter, Kinney explained that its contents were in no way aimed at MIAMI members.
“The letter was not directed at MIAMI members, only JTHS members,” she clarified. “The letter has nothing to do with MIAMI. Their members were the only ones voting on the merger.” The letter’s opening line is, “Dear JTHS Association Members.”
From MIAMI’s end, the bigger issue is gaining access to JTHS’s MLS database, which, according to Kinney, the association has a right to. The standing barrier, however, is that RAPB and JTHS, while their MLS’s are separate and proprietary, share a database. As of now, MIAMI is unable to fully discern between JTHS and RAPB listings, which is keeping them out of the system altogether.
“Our vendor, CoreLogic, ran a report to separate the two associations’ listings, but the results showed that nearly a third of JTHS’s listings weren’t appearing,” she explained. “Once we can figure out how to work it out, we want to include an identifier in the system so we can easily pull only JTHS’s listings. The whole thing is about the data and us trying to figure out whose listings are whose.”
A hearing on RAPB’s complaint is scheduled for Sept. 3, which should bring the disagreement to an end, but after the court’s decision it’s unclear whether RAPB and MIAMI will be able to repair their once strong working relationship.
“It’s up to RAPB,” Kinney said. “We never imagined this merger would have this impact.”
This now makes 3 times Miami Teresa King Kinney at the helm has been sued for this type of conduct. When does it ever stop as she appears to be the only common denominator. This attempted grab of 1400 members in North Palm Beach County has now cost 38000 Miami members access to Palm Beach listing and JTHS could never merge absent to the RAPB MLS data. Kinney claims she never could have imagined this even though they were continually warned that this was going to happen? Really? Someone needs to be held accountable at both Miami and JTHS…heads should roll.
No! It has left Palm Beach and Broward sellers without access to 38,000 potential buyers, and without access to the international connections available in Miami. RAPB is at fault by cutting off access to this resource and damaging the income of good, hardworking agents.
Considering that less than 1% of Palm Beach listings are done by Miami agents who shouldn’t even be in Palm Beach in the first place and all of Palm Beach listings are fully available via MLS Advantage your suggestion falls flatly on deaf ears. This article certainly indicates that Miami leadership and management appear as corrupt and unethical as many of their membership conduct themselves when they attempt to do business in Palm Beach.