The real estate industry is set to adopt data standards, bringing consistency to the 900 or so listing agencies across the US. To date, the industry has lacked standards covering key business concepts – such as how many bathrooms a property has. Without a common standard, buyers can't compare houses.
The agreed standard includes four numeric fields for types of bathroom, plus a “baths total” figure. This means that agencies can continue with their own methods for presenting the total figure, while also giving the basic data others can use to construct their own totals.
So, you could get a house with "baths full"=4, "baths half"=2, "baths three-quarter"=3 and "baths one-quarter"=2, and "baths total" of 11 or 7 or any other number depending on agency preference.
Okay, that's probably more information about bathrooms than you wanted. But it's a good example of industry players coming together to serve their common needs while protecting competitivity.
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