Early in 2003, the 1100 members of the Ann Arbor Area Board of Realtors made the switch to MLXchange, adding yet another chapter to their longstanding history of partnership with the company now called MarketLinx that began in 1977.

"We stayed in the family when we decided to go with MarketLinx, and I'm very happy that we did," said CEO Pete Cornell. "The cutover to MLXchange was a total non-event. Very few members had any difficulty using the system because it’s so intuitive. This was definitely the easiest conversion I've been through." Cornell has been a member of the Michigan-based Board of Realtors since 1969 and became CEO in 1992.

To familiarize its members with MLXchange, Ann Arbor began using the program in parallel to their existing MLS system in the fall of 2002.

"We were very interested in all the additional functionality MLXchange could deliver," said Cornell, "but what our members liked best about the new system is how much information is displayed on each screen, and how logically the information is arranged. With MLXchange, there are fewer steps involved in performing a search, sending an e-mail, or creating a report."

Ann Arbor intentionally transitioned to MLXchange during the slowest time of the year, but other factors threatened to complicate the process.

"We cut over to MLXchange just two weeks after switching to a new lock box system," said Cornell. "We were still up to our eyeballs working through that, so we were very relieved when the MLS conversion turned out to be no problem at all."