Upstream Revealed

As many of you know, WAV Group has been working with a group of brokers and franchises for more than a year on a project called Upstream. Today, Upstream is a corporation with one of the strongest board of directors in our industry. It has been an honor to work with the board along with the CIOs and CTOs of their corporations to define the Upstream application and talk to enterprise level technology firms who have the capacity to deliver such an enormous solution.

Until now, very little information has been shared openly across the industry. Until the company's governance was established, the application specified, and a vendor sourced – there was little to say. Upstream has been theoretical. It is about to become operational.

Although I love to write, the best explanation of the project comes from one of the directors, Craig Cheatham. Cheatham is also responsible for the operation of The Realty Alliance think tank, a group of 85 of the largest brokerage firms in America.

Below are his words. (Italics are mine.)

Upstream is a broad-based effort owned by brokers and designed to be managed at the strategic level by brokers, elected by brokers to a board and run at the operational level by a contracted vendor. (Upstream is for all brokers, not just large firms.)

Upstream is a platform for data entry, data storage and data distribution. It is not a multiple listing service or a service that interfaces with the public in any way. Upstream is designed to operate outside of the core MLS functions of cooperation, compensation and valuation (and the enforcement of policies and practices relating to those). (WAV Group researched brokerages and franchises and learned that they almost all universally manage data sets not included in the MLS and that much of the MLS data is keyed into systems before it qualifies as an MLS listing.)