A cyberattack on a software service used by real estate agents to track property listing data is in its second week, upending open house tours in San Francisco.
“It is wreaking havoc everywhere,” said David Bellings, an agent for 37 years. “It is disrupting and frustrating. Clients are asking for information and we just have to tell them we don’t have access.”
That access is normally provided by Rapattoni Corporation, a Southern California company that contains property listing information and distributes data to local multiple listing services provided by realtor associations.
Agents are able to add listings and make price changes and transmit this information through automated, up-to-the-minute listing information on their phones. After the attack last week, the industry was paralyzed and there is no prediction for when it will end.
A statement posted Tuesday by the San Francisco Association of Realtors stated that 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, said Tuesday that agents were still able to function at a minimum of disruption and that the natural ebbs and flows of the Northern California real estate market were helping.
“This is literally the slowest two weeks of the year for us,” he said. “At this point, it is just an inconvenience. I’m not going to speculate on financial repercussions for anybody.”
A tweet issued by Rapattoni last week said the company was “continuing to investigate the cyberattack that has caused a system outage and are working diligently to get systems restored as soon as possible. All technical resources at our disposal are continuing to work through the weekend. We still do not have an ETA at this time.”
A representative of Bay Area Real Estate Investment Service in Santa Rosa did not respond to email and voice mail requests for comment. A representative of the National Association of Realtors referred questions to Rapattoni or local agencies that use their services.
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.”
Bellings said the San Francisco Association of Realtors managed to put together a house tour by having brokers input their listing information manually. A spreadsheet of more than 160 listings was then created, but in order to tour the listings, agents had to write them down or print out the spreadsheet.
“Being resourceful agents, we cobbled together a brokers’ tour that was done organically, not automated,” he said. “It was a workaround that was weird but very successful.”
But David Papale, president of Laurel Village Realtors next to Presidio Heights, said there were only a fraction of the listings on the spreadsheet that would normally be part of the normal Tuesday tour if the automated list had been generated through the multiple listing service software provided by Rapattoni.
“Everyone is very frustrated. It has been almost a week since Rapattoni got hacked,” he said. “Relevant information is current information, and there is no current information because the MLS is shut down.”
Reach Sam Whiting: swhiting@sfchronicle.com. Reach Megan Fan Munce: Megan.Munce@sfchronicle.com.
