Above, from left: Michael Wurzer, Melissa King, Cameron Paine, Justin Landon, Garry Marsoubian. Photo by AJ Canaria.
As the real estate industry continues to change, the role of the MLS is evolving right alongside it. Recent legal action, as six MLSs join together in a federal lawsuit against Compass and the mega-brokerage’s broader campaign to remake MLS rules and policies, highlights the growing debate over the future of cooperation, transparency and the way in which listings are shared across the marketplace.
These issues were front and center at RISMedia’s 38th Annual CEO & Leadership Exchange earlier this month.
During the session titled, “The New State of MLS,” moderated by FBS President and CEO Michael Wurzer, MLS executives from some of the largest organizations across the country shared how they’re adapting policies and rethinking listing distribution in the wake of industry shifts.
Balancing local needs with national data standards
For Melissa King, COO of OneKey® MLS—which recently publicly rejected threats from Compass over listing rules—movement in the marketplace prompted the New York-based MLS to take a comprehensive look at its rules and regulations/policies.
And while satisfied with the level of flexibility and different seller options available, it was the delivery mechanisms they were unhappy with, according to King.
“People didn’t fully understand based on different fields what it meant for how their listing was going to be shared and cooperated, and what it meant for how it was going to be available downstream,” said King, who explained that while they didn’t make a single policy change, they focused on making the delivery options within the platform very intuitive and very clear.
Pointing to the data specifically, King noted that while OneKey® MLS supports private listings within its platform with specific rules around them, status toggles and distribution settings live in disparate areas of the system—many of which are Real Estate Standards Organization (RESO) standard.
“But you can’t take something that exists in a spreadsheet and replicate it in a system and think that people are going to understand it, so we created a new exposure field that really made it a lot more clear,” said King, which ultimately impacted adoption.
And as brokerages become more regional and national, King noted that, as Wurzer asked, there absolutely is a tug of war between setting policies and MLS rules at the broader level and responding to the needs of individual local markets.
“I think, ultimately, first and foremost, at OneKey, our participants are our customers, (so) we need to make sure that any policies that are in place are there to serve the majority of our participants,” she added.
Citing her work helping MLSs do data conversions to the RESO Data Dictionary standard, King believes it’s important for the flow of data.
“We’ve heard that, and we have brokerages doubling down on the data. It’s very important, (but) it’s also very difficult,” she said.
“There is a very local market that we have to serve while not doing it with blinders on and not considering that our largest participants do tend to be national or at least regional beyond our borders—and so trying to find that balance, it’s very challenging,” added King.
After conducting data dictionary conversions at MLSs, King noted that while 50% to 60% of the fields in the MLS were actually part of the RESO Data Dictionary, the rest of them are local.
“If we got rid of those local fields, people would absolutely lose their minds,” she said.
Expanding data access while protecting broker interests
Serving much of Missouri and Illinois, MARIS MLS President and CEO Cameron Paine jumped into the conversation to validate the concerns that brokers have voiced on stages throughout the industry.
“The idea that a national broker cannot get a single dataset of all their listings and all their contact information means that the way MLS is operating today is broken,” noted Paine, who pointed to MARIS MLS working to solve two main challenges: data issues being brought up by brokers—ownership, control, monetization—and the flexibility of a broker being able to market a listing in certain ways.
To that end, the MLS’ Seller Approved Marketing (SAM) program provides brokers and sellers another option, enabling a listing to be entered into the MLS and shared with MLS participants while giving the listing broker flexibility as to how broadly it will be distributed to public websites.
“I think it’s critical for us to remember that the role of the MLS is to provide timely, accurate, comprehensive information. If that’s our role, then data in terms of ‘comprehensive’ has to play a role in what the MLS has to do for our brokers,” Paine continued. “Our position is, comprehensive doesn’t mean our duty to provide comprehensive data stops at our borders.”
Solving that in terms of both ownership and control, according to Paine, begins with turning over every dollar the MLS earns off access to the data back to the brokers who listed it—equating to over a quarter million dollars going back to brokers last year.
“The ability to provide data outside of our borders is not something we can solve alone. That is an industry thing that needs to happen,” he added.
As far as the tension between national and local, Paine noted that it boils down to the fact that there are different business needs between large national brokers and smaller brokers—which need to be accommodated, because simply listening to the large brokers will harm everybody else.
“These are also coincidentally the brokers who were left out of the NAR settlement,” said Paine. “So if these brokers who are already pissed off because they had to pay in where everyone else didn’t, are now not getting what they need from the MLS, we’re just giving them incentive…to do something different than the MLS.”
Addressing the direct input of listing data by brokers or their systems, Paine urged caution.
“I don’t know any broker who would willingly put themselves in the mercy of their competition, and that is exactly what that does,” he said.
Rethinking listing distribution and broker incentives
The conversation continued with MetroTex Association of Realtors® President and CEO Justin Landon acknowledging that while MLS has been slow to react to the way in which business transacts, they have an obligation to catch up to that.
“As I listened to Melissa and Cameron talk about the flexibility that they built into their system, and that we’re building into ours, I start to get a little frustrated with the national narrative, which is like it’s still not enough flexibility,” he explained.
“And I’m not clear anymore what target we’re shooting at as we try to meet the needs of the marketplace because it doesn’t seem like we’re quite able to get there despite trying to provide additional seller choice,” added Landon, who noted that the Texas-based MLS’ approach is rooted in a desire to separate status from distribution.
“For the longest time, status meant distribution…and we’re separating those two things now where status and distribution are two completely different concepts,” he said.
The other big change, as Paine described, is doubling down on committing to the notion that the value of the listings coming into the system are created by listing brokers and that the revenue should ultimately drive back to the people that created it—distributing $2 million in revenue back to brokers this year alone.
Landon also noted that the incentives of the industry have been permanently fractured by Sitzer-Burnett and the resulting rule changes.
“In an environment of cooperative compensation, the incentives were clear: If I put my listings into the system, then my neighbor puts their listings into the system, we’re going to cooperatively compensate each other,” he explained. “Without cooperative compensation, the incentives have started to break down. And our commitment is (that) we have to rebuild incentives to ensure that both brokerages and agents see an incentive to put their listings into the system, if not all the time, almost all the time.”
Addressing the question related to national versus regional, specifically, Landon noted that while there is tension, he understands the problem national brokerages are trying to solve.
“They’re trying to create brand certainty, data certainty. They want to be able to have their marketing get out in advance on their listings before that listing gets to a portal…and oftentimes we’re being blamed at the MLS level for the failure to deliver that when in reality it’s the connected tissue of all of the different systems. It’s the ability of their backend to talk to our backend and get that data in a timely manner,” he explained.
“We have to meet the demands of the brokerage community, and whether we like it or not, those needs are coming from a national scale—or we’re going to have to figure out how to cooperate (on) a national level together,” he added.
Modernizing MLS rules to put brokers first
For Garry Marsoubian, president and CEO of MLS Now, whether it’s the new state of MLS—or the future state—the bigger picture centers on a progressive approach in modernization of the current state of the MLS as it relates to systems, platforms, people, processes, technology and relationships.
Pointing to his years of experience in the industry, Marsoubian noted that one of the things he’s learned is that he has no business telling his broker what his or her business model should be.
“We at MLS Now, of Northeast Ohio, are here to facilitate the transaction, not get in the way of it. So part of that progressive thinking and the modernization for us includes rules, archaic rules, rules that get in the way,” said Marsoubian, who explained that the first thing he noticed upon his arrival at MLS Now in 2024 was the MLS’ 76 pages of rules—which has now been whittled down to just 15.
“We loosened up on a lot of things because the broker is my customer, and I’m going to help them facilitate the closure of that listing,” added Marsoubian, pointing to two soon-to-be-released listing statuses: prep show and prep no-show, where prep stands for pre-release entry property.
“We’re big on listening, but a lot of us listen and walk away. We listen and respond. And we responded in a way where we added this pre-release status regardless of what office exclusive program a given broker may have,” noted Marsoubian, who also drew a distinction between seller choice and what he calls “broker choice.”
“We call it broker choice because you are our customer. Broker choice with seller authorization,” he explained.
“We are tied to certain things…because of our organizational structure and our affiliation with certain national organizations. That is what it is now, but the mind, arms, heart and eyes have to remain open for possible change in the future,” said Marsoubian, who noted that while the MLS has loosened up significantly on the rules front, they plan to do more.
Localization, according to Marousbian, was a major technological challenge 20 years ago because the technology didn’t exist. But it’s there today.
“What I’d like to see, at the end of the day, is not the broker sending out for listings, but the individuals that can deliver timely, efficient, accurate, meaningful data are the first point of entry and the disbursement and the transition of those listings,” said Marsoubian, who doesn’t believe that rules or technology are the problem.
“The problem isn’t the technology. It’s people getting along, communicating, collaborating, cooperating to make sure that we take advantage of the available technology, do things that everybody’s trying to do,” he said. “Let’s just talk to each other. I’d love to see it come first into the MLS because I believe we do it best—and then disperse it out from there.”
VIDEO: RISMedia caught up with Justin Landon after “The New State of MLS” panel.
