Bright MLS, covering a huge swath of territory across the Mid-Atlantic coast region, is currently the largest multiple listing service in the country. Being the largest often means that the decisions it makes will set the bar for smaller players—particularly in a time of rapid change and uncertainty.
This week, Bright announced significant updates to its listing rules affecting syndication and distribution, following a period of rapid reorganizing by other MLSs across the country who have sought to adapt to a surge of pre-marketing and private listing interests nationwide.
Most notably, later this summer, Bright will allow subscribers to block consumer-facing websites from displaying things like price history, days on market, property address or even photos for their listings.
“It’s an evolution of our policies to give more options,” says Rajeev Sajja, chief AI officer at Bright.
Sajja and Bright framed the changes both as a product of ensuring brokers and sellers can make their own marketing decisions, and also as a way to meet new consumer behavior and earn trust in the AI era.
But the update also comes at a fraught time for MLSs, brokers and portals, who are all navigating a sudden fracturing of the listing landscape, as real estate entities scramble for control of valuable data and leverage over listing platforms.
Sajja confirmed that Bright is not preventing portals like Zillow from banning listings that were previously marketed privately—despite significant back-channel pressure from Compass to do so. Zillow is currently suing Chicago-based MLS MRED and Compass in a closely watched dispute over Zillow’s practice of refusing to show certain privately-marketed listings.
At a court hearing last week in that case, lawyers questioned Compass CEO Robert Reffkin on an April email exchange involving himself, Compass Head of Industry Relations Caitlin McCrory and Bright MLS CEO Brian Donnellan, in which Compass asked Bright to “be like MRED,” which is seeking to cut Zillow off from its listing feed over alleged violations of a specific filter rule.
McCrory sent Bright the specific language Compass wanted for the rule, according to testimony in court. Donnellan responded that Bright “cannot take sides” between Compass and Zillow, saying the MLS “will continue to call balls and strikes based strictly on our established rules.”
“The truth is, you and Bright MLS and all the MLSs except MRED and Realtracs have completely sold us out,” Reffkin responded in the email exchange. “I no longer want to support Bright MLS in any way and, of course, I’m not coming to your event this summer. No need to respond.”
In court, Reffkin characterized this as a “very emotional response” to Bright refusing to enforce rules “neutrally.”
Staying limber
Sajja tells RISMedia that the rule updates are meant to simplify how members enter and market listings, adding that the MLS received the most feedback on displaying days on market, price drops and other stats that some in the industry say disadvantage sellers.
The idea is to avoid any situation where an agent “walk(s) into a seller conversation and say(s), ‘We want to do this, but the MLS doesn’t allow it,’” according to Sajja.
Some prominent industry leaders have argued that removing that information disadvantages buyers and creates a less reliable, less transparent market overall.
Asked if Bright was providing any guidance on ways to use—or not use—the new ability to “suppress” these listing stats, Sajja says Bright doesn’t believe it is “our position to advise them.”
“It’s more about, we want to support brokers on their marketing strategy,” he says. “So our goal is to empower all of the options and let them execute their strategy and compete at that level.”
At the same time, Sajja says that the rules don’t change the day-to-day business of most members, and that Bright believes it has the “shortest” and “most straightforward” rulebook in the industry.
“This policy is all about driving flexibility—flexibility so that they can market the way they want based on their seller conversations,” he says. “And we don’t really align with any one broker’s strategy. We want to give them all the options so they can compete the way they see fit on their strategy. That’s a big piece there.”
The AI element
Alongside the rule update, Sajja penned a letter to Bright subscribers that said the rule updates create “infrastructure for the AI era.”
“Every rule that reduces friction in how a listing gets entered, updated, and marketed is also a rule that keeps the source of truth current,” he wrote.
Speaking to RISMedia, Sajja clarifies that the idea is that allowing brokers more control over where their listings are displayed helps ensure that popular AI models are providing consumers with accurate, MLS-sourced information on properties.
Bright is also planning to offer subscribers a “simple AI native app” and a “model context protocol” (a tool that helps AI connect to data sources) for market insights, both tied to Bright’s data, meant to help subscribers access market information more easily.
For consumers, the idea is that with more control over their listings, brokers can ensure the AI models are identifying the trusted data, and can use listings or MLS stats to help them get discovered by consumers asking AI for real estate recommendations.
Sajja adds that Bright isn’t seeking to get publicity or citations from AI.
“As long as that data is accurate with all of the policy changes…and the trust is the same—if AI goes to the broker site or another site that has the same data—our goal would be to actually be that trusted intelligence layer,” he says. “We may not be seen much, but we want to act as a trusted intelligence layer.”
Having rules that are both consistent and flexible is an initial step toward this, Sajja says, but qualifies that Bright has “not really embarked” on the consumer side as it focuses on ensuring the rules and data are serving subscribers.
Sajja says he did an experiment, asking three AI models what the list-to-sales price ratio was in a particular neighborhood, and got three different answers.
“All of them sort of are in the ballpark, but they gave me enough information to be confused. What is the actual answer? Our position is if those three were connected to Bright’s data, the answer would be exactly the same,” he says.
