Thousands of Realtors Affected by MLS Outages

The key resource used by real estate professionals nationally and through various regions of California to publish property listings and access information about available properties for potential buyers has been the latest victim of a Ransomware Attack. On August 9, hackers targeted Rapattoni Corporation, based in Southern California, a company responsible for hosting numerous multiple-listing services across both the state and the country. As a result of this cyberattack, the company’s servers have remained offline. Protect your business from such cyberattacks with the assistance of Managed IT Services Sacramento experts.

Rapattoni’s clientele spans across 12 states, including Florida, Massachusetts, Michigan, Indiana, New York, and California. The company’s offerings include a unified sign-on portal for agents, facilitating access to tools like ShowingTime, Cloud CMA, and iMapp. This convenience extends to mobile device usage. Additionally, Rapattoni supplies member data services to MLSs, which implies that the service disruption has resulted in agents being unable to retrieve details about fellow members.

The incident prompted real estate agents from various regions to urgently seek alternative methods to cope with the disruption to their marketing and property sales endeavors. Consequently, a number of agents across the nation find themselves incapable of adding new property listings, making necessary price adjustments, or even accessing the most recent property details for showings. Additionally, the challenge of keeping track of sold properties has intensified for agents since the attack due to the unavailability of their local MLS system.

After the attack, BAREIS (Bay Area Real Estate Information Service) swiftly established a backup system to assist listing agents. This system permits agents to make alterations to property listings and enables other agents to access these modifications. Nevertheless, as per the report by the North Bay Business Journal, agents have been advised to communicate with listing agents directly to confirm information.

The impact of the attack impacted around 8,200 BAREIS users. Similar service disruptions were observed at various other multiple listing services, including the San Francisco MLS.