by G. Sax, Head of Communications, RESO
For the next two weeks, the burgeoning topic of floor plans will be featured, first from an MLS perspective and then from the vendor side. This week’s interview is with Megan McFarlane, CEO of New Mexico MLS. In addition to floor plans, we talked about a famed university, a famed graduate of a famed university, online dating and “A City Different.” Enjoy!
Q1: You were the first MLS to declare a mandate that a floor plan must exist with every residential listing within your MLS. As part of this leap forward, you worked with your vendor, CubiCasa, on a statewide product-teaching tour – an actual road trip from city to city, which is almost unheard of in 2025. How can other MLSs and vendors learn from such an experience, and how is the floor plan rollout going in general?
Megan: There are three phases of the floor plan mandate:
- Announcement. This is complete, along with that road trip you mentioned. We also created new never-before-seen “FLOOR PLAN” yard sign riders.
- Compliance. We are working with our vendors, restb.ai and ListingIntegrity, a data checker from CRS Data, on the compliance piece so we can determine with their systems that indicate “Yes” or “No” as to whether or not there is an available floor plan with the listing. This is in the beta testing period and will be operational later this month.
- Integration. We are working with our MLS system, Paragon, to have a designated field/spot built into their platform to upload floor plans into listings. This should be ready late in Q3 2025.
This journey began during October 2024, when our board of directors were working on our strategic alignment plan. In fact, it was at the RESO 2024 Fall Conference that we talked to the team at CubiCasa and told them about our plan to mandate floor plans.
We laid out a marketing plan and schedule, part of which was a road trip. I wanted them to come around the state with me to alert our members of the plan and to teach them how to use the product. I had to warn them – it was going to be a full week of driving and pit stops.
They did not hesitate to say yes, and that’s how CubiCasa’s Eric Hackman, Director, Customer Success & Support, ended up on a road trip with me across New Mexico. Some stops were only an hour’s drive in between, while others were a four- or five-hour trek that involved getting to the next hotel in the dark. But it was worth every mile.
I picked Eric up in Albuquerque, then we went to Gallup, Truth or Consequences, Deming, Las Cruces, Roswell, Artesia, Carlsbad, Hobbes, Clovis and our Las Vegas. We covered 1,800 miles, including 15 miles of dirt road to buy a pie in the famous Pie Town, and we traveled together for a week. We were best buds by Friday.
The caravan tour was phenomenal. It’s a difficult thing to pull off, and there is a lot that can go wrong with such a tight schedule. There can be people issues along the way, too. Agents don’t necessarily like the word “mandate,” so it can take some convincing, but Eric made it look so easy, and the in-person touch went a long way.
For most users, floor plan apps are extremely inexpensive or free, and it takes five minutes to produce a wonderful visual enhancement that also serves as a strategic asset for the MLS, because we get to keep that data.
And now, every time a buyer gets to see a floor plan, they like it. They can visualize how their belongings will fit into the home. Imagine a fireplace situated awkwardly in the corner of a living room that requires a specific couch size. A floor plan makes that obvious before moving day.
One excellent example happened with a million-dollar listing that the potential buyers thought was nice enough, but it didn’t move them until they saw the last picture, a floor plan. Every bedroom had its own bathroom. That piece of information was the make or break for seeing the home in person, so floor plans can help sellers, too.
Q2: You went to school at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo. In my experience, graduates of Cal Poly have an oversized amount of pride. While that is true for a lot of schools, it seems to be different for Cal Poly. What can you say about that, and did you have any connection to “Weird Al” Yankovic, who graduated just before you did?
Megan: Cal Poly has always been a good school, but it’s hard to get into. Like extremely hard. So that is an immediate source of pride for those who make the cut. Beyond that, the extracurricular activities, sports, aerospace engineering and ag business are all huge parts of the experience, and they have gotten big on alumni donors.
“Weird Al” Yankovic before the fame.
I left in ‘82 as building restrictions in SLO were taking hold to prevent overgrowth. Rent got really expensive, so people had to double up on roommates to afford to live there. A house may have been restricted to four tenants, but maybe ten would live there. We called the extra forbidden six tenants “termites.”
There was a huge influx of students from the Los Angeles area. Of course, the beach was a draw, as well as the comparative affordability and more easy-going lifestyle. That brought LA money, then LA parents and even more expensive outcomes. It was a great experience, but I actually haven’t been back in 15 years.
All three of my sisters went to school at Cal Poly. Between the four of us, we have degrees in Home Economics, Animal Husbandry, Agricultural Journalism and Agricultural Business. My dad often said that every time one of us graduated, he felt like he got a raise. I was even a Little Sister of the Alpha Gamma Rho, an ag fraternity.
While I didn’t know Weird Al, my oldest sister knew him. He ran the radio show, and she was in the band, but they kinda ran in the same weird group. He did his own things around the school before I attended, and he got an Architecture degree. I think you can find some of his old albums in vinyl shops.
Q3: You nor your husband are originally from New Mexico, yet you found your way to Santa Fe, one of the most fairytale cities in the United States, which is located in the state known as the Land of Enchantment. Now you seem like a New Mexico expert! How did this come to be?
Megan: I’m originally from San Luis Obispo, which is a big reason why I went to Cal Poly, and then I spent many years in Hilmar, a small town that had more cows than people. My husband is from Atlanta. We met on the Internet in the early days of online dating in 2002.
As a joke, I created an online profile for distribution in Montana to tease a male friend in the MT area who said there were no women to date. I wanted to see how desperate he was, so I filled my profile with simplistic baseball references like “no foul balls” and “I’m looking for a pitcher who throws strikes” – that sort of thing. Sure enough, my friend replied. In fact, I got 250 replies in three hours, including my future husband!
It was strange to meet someone online, but we both kind of knew it was the real thing when we were talking on the phone every night for four hours. One thing led to another, and he moved to California, but he was used to Georgia humidity, traffic and three million people. I had cows, manure and flies.
By the time we were both ready to move on from small-town California, I said we could go anywhere west of the Mississippi. The dart landed on Santa Fe.
The problem was that I’d been working for the Harris Ranch Beef Company. I was an Agriculture major, and there were no ag jobs for me in Santa Fe, except for the Farmers Market. I had to reinvent myself.
At one point, I met up with a friend who was building the house of the association executive of the New Mexico Association of REALTORS®. They needed a new Projects Manager, and I’d done some catering work (project work), so I applied.
That led to a role at the state association from 2007 to 2016. During that time, I ended up running the MLS. When the New Mexico MLS board voted to split the MLS from the association, I continued to run the MLS. In the spring of 2016, I took over as CEO.
It has been an absolute pleasure to have made my career and home in Santa Fe. From the distinctive Pueblo and Territorial Revival architectural styles to the proliferation of coyote fences to the many characters that inhabit our beautiful city, I just love it.
The city’s slogan is “Santa Fe: The City Different,” which is meant to highlight its distinctive culture, architecture, art and people. New Mexicans embrace their differences. When I see a basic plank fence around a yard, I know that they are from California.
Sometimes Santa Feans can take it a step further though. When I adopted one of my felines, her caregiver at the time told me I had to come back the next day, because she needed to talk to the cat to see if the kitty wanted to live with me. Thankfully, that cat decided that it was okay for me to take over her care, and I promptly renamed her from Honeybear to Gordita, as she was a fat cat. She lived a long, happy life with me.
I’m proud to call Santa Fe home, but I’m also happy to reside out of town a little bit, in an HOA with 2,700 home sites, each with two-plus acres. Dirt roads, mud huts, wildlife and views! You can still borrow a cup of sugar from your neighbor, but they can’t hear you yell at your husband.
Three Questions is an interview series that features real estate industry professionals, their businesses and how they interact with real estate standards in a fun way.
