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San Francisco

Open houses hindered as cyberattack shuts down Bay Area MLS

Broker: “Relevant information is current information, and there is no current information”

SF Home Tours Hindered by MLS Cyberattack
Compass's David Bellings (Illustration by Priya Modi for the Real Deal with Getty)

A real estate computer hack has hindered open houses.

The cyberattack on MLS provider Rapattoni that has crippled listings in the Bay Area and elsewhere since last week has upended open house tours, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

The multiple listing service meltdown has forced brokers across the city to manually input their listing information, with only a fraction of the homes normally on the tour.

“It is wreaking havoc everywhere,” David Bellings, an agent for 37 years, told the Chronicle. “It is disrupting and frustrating. Clients are asking for information and we just have to tell them we don’t have access.”

The financial impact on local brokers is not yet clear.

Investigations continue into the attack on Westlake Village-based Rapattoni, which has rendered Northern California agents unable to access listings since Aug. 8.

Agents aren’t able to add new property listings, make price adjustments, or access the latest property information for showings. 

This has resulted in confusion among agents left unsure about which properties are still available for sale. 

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The cyberattack paralyzed the real estate industry, with no idea when it would end. The attack has affected 8,200 users of the Santa Rosa-based Bay Area Real Estate Information Service, serving brokerages across multiple counties. Similar outages have been reported by other multiple listing services such as the San Francisco MLS.    

A statement by the San Francisco Association of Realtors said the system would be down at least until Thursday. “At this time, we still do not have a clear timeline on when services will be fully restored,” it said. 

Damon Knox, president of the association, downplayed the impact on brokers.

“This is literally the slowest two weeks of the year for us,” Knox told the Chronicle. “At this point, it is just an inconvenience. I’m not going to speculate on financial repercussions for anybody.”  

According to Bellings, the longest previous crash of the price-list system had been for a few hours, “and that created angst for everybody,” he said. “This is unheard of. Clients aren’t blaming us, but anytime something like this happens there are repercussions.”

David Papale, president of Laurel Village Realtors next to Presidio Heights, said there were only a fraction of the listings on the hand-typed version compared to the automated MLS list by Rapattoni.   

“Everyone is very frustrated. It has been almost a week since Rapattoni got hacked,” Papale told the Chronicle. “Relevant information is current information, and there is no current information because the MLS is shut down.”  

— Dana Bartholomew

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