Through feedback and internal analysis, CREA has identified a high percentage Live Stream Open Houses that are published to REALTOR.ca, are a duplication of 3D tours or pre-recorded material already being submitted as ‘Multimedia’ on the site. This creates a poor consumer experience on REALTOR.ca.
CREA is taking several measures to combat this:
- Rejecting non-Live Stream URLs;
- Working in concert with MLS® System providers to give members more Multimedia publication opportunities; and
- Communicating to members the differences between Live Stream and Virtual content.
Effective March 11, 2021, CREA will start validating URLs submitted through Board Load to REALTOR.ca and reject those URLs incorrectly submitted.
The following URLs will be whitelisted for entry as a Live Stream. Any others will be rejected.
The asterisk indicates a wildcard value, and we’re accepting anything in that space, so, for example, *.zoom.us means that we would accept http://crea.zoom.us
Youtube
*.youtube.com
*.youtu.be
Facebook
*.facebook.com/events/*
*.facebook.com/*/live/
*.facebook.com/*/events
*.facebook.com/*/videos/<numbers>
Instagram
*.instagram.com/*/live
*.instagram.com/tv/*
Zoom
*.zoom.us/*
Teams
teams.microsoft.com/*
Misc
pscp.tv/*
twitch.tv/*
younow.com/*
livestream.com/*
meet.google.com/* join.skype.com
CREA understands that YouTube URLs are a large source of pre-recorded material vs live events, and whitelisting YouTube does not entirely solve the issue at hand. This is a temporary whitelisting as they are actively working with MLS® System software vendors, like CoreLogic, to offer multiple URL fields for Multimedia links. With this change, members could, for example, add a 3D Virtual Tour and a YouTube video to the same listing. CREA is working towards this functionality later this year.
Please note the difference between virtual tours and live stream open houses;
Virtual tour: a pre-recorded or pre-existing, static digital exposure of a property. This includes pre-recorded video tours, 360-degree panoramic images, 3D digital tours, an pre-recorded showings available for playback
Live stream open house: a real-time interactive digital open house at a scheduled time where an agent can communicate with potential buyers via a live video service
To learn more about entering a Virtual Live Stream Open house, please click here.