Throughout the world, each new year is seen as an opportunity to reaffirm the value of important ties, take stock of past accomplishments, and consider future goals.

With that in mind, I would like to thank you for the honor of your patronage and express my gratitude for the trust you have placed in SoCalMLS. Customer relationships are our most important asset – and it is the power of these ties, particularly in times like these, that keeps us strong and ready to help you make the most of any opportunity.

In 2010, we promise our continued dedication to assist you in meeting your goals. By working together we will realize our ambitions and celebrate our successes.

I would like to share with you the accomplishments of SoCalMLS over the past 12 months.

1. Survival - 2009 was obviously a challenge for the industry and to you, our loyal customers.  We congratulate you on having the guts and the smarts to have survived a tough year. We hope that the products and services offered by SoCalMLS had some part to play in your success.

2. CARETS - Nearly 4 million listings, serving over 100,000 practitioners from 30 boards and 7 MLSs is quite an accomplishment. We plan to add Ventura Coastal and Desert Area in 2010. At SoCalMLS we tried to make CARETS as seamless as possible so that the only impact to you was that you now had access to all of it without having to change from your home Tempo system. Mission Accomplished!

3.  Outside MLS Access - we continue to offer direct access into other MLs systems for those who choose to do so - Sandicor, Ventura Coastal, Desert Area and even the CARETS MLSs of MRMLS, CLAW and iTECH.  We will be adding some others in 2010.

4.  Public Records/Tax Data - We expanded coverage so that you now have access to the entire state of California - all 58 counties, including plat maps, street/aerial mapping, foreclosure data, and more.

5. MongoFax - We continue to offer the easiest and quickest solution for converting a paper document into a pdf and automatically e-mailing it. No other product has the power and ease of use as MongoFax - and you will be glad to know we will be continuing to offer it in the future.

6.  Webinars - SoCalMLS is trying to go green with our training.  In 2009 we introduced our Webinar series - take training from the comfort of your home or office. In 2009 we touched over 13,000 of you via our webinars. How’s that for improving our carbon footprint?  We continued in-class training as well and had nearly 7,000 attendees for those classes.

7. Office Visits - In 2009 we made nearly 200 office visits, touching another 7,500 people.  Not only is this good for you, it is great for us because we get to hear first-hand what you like and what you don't like.  Keep those cards and letters coming.

8.  Communication - In addition to the 75,000 phone calls answered, we also sent out over 200,000 individual e-mail responses.  Every one of those calls and e-mails was followed up with a survey where you got to rate the person with whom you dealt. Another great way we have to gauge how good a job we are doing. Thank you to the 15,000 people who responded to the satisfaction surveys.  You gave us an average rating of 97% - next year we shoot for 99%.

9. One-Click MLS - Remember that you can get to rDesk, Listingbook, MLS Office, DocCentral, MongoFax, Sandicor MLS, Alliance/Mercado, Neighborhood Info, and more with just a click of the mouse right from your Tempo desktop. And if you are looking for some useful links, feel free to check out the sidebar at the left of your Tempo screen.

10. System Changes and Enhancements - Here are just a few of the many system enhancements we have made over the past year:

    - Green features - we have added nearly a hundred fields to describe "green" features of a property.

    - Map Report E-Mail - the map report can now be emailed to your clients

    - Copy Listing - You can now copy one of your other listings to create a new one that has similar features.

    - All new Bing mapping - all the features from Virtual Earth and more.

    - Add/Edit - Feature fields now show you the maximum number allowed for that field as well as how many selections you have made.

    - Search Statistics - now has a summary section that totals all statuses into one report, and we have added a column to calculate the Sale Price to Original List price ratio.

    - Designations, Certifications, Associations and Languages - You can now add your designations and certifications via the Edit My Roster Button.  These will display on reports and be displayed and searchable on the public web site.  Same can be done for different languages that you speak.

Again, thank you for your support throughout the year. Please feel free to send us your suggestions - that's what we are here for.

Have a great and prosperous 2010.

Russ Bergeron, CEO