In a matter of weeks this quarter, all the major brokerages partnered with portals to pre-market their listings. Compass routed its pre-market listings to Redfin; Zillow formed its own coalition—with Keller Williams, Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices, RE/MAX, United Real Estate and Side—as it launched Zillow Preview. And eXp Realty announced a “Coming Soon” partnership with Realtor.com®, Homes.com and ComeHome.com (HouseCanary’s portal in Google Search).
But in the middle of these falling dominoes were the nation’s multiple listing services (MLSs) and the question of whether the data they produce will continue to be as comprehensive—and valuable—as it previously was.
According to a new report by Victor Lund of MLS consulting firm WAV Group, the brawl between Zillow and Compass is not a technology story or a portal story—it’s a policy failure story, triggered by the National Association of Realtors®’ (NAR) Clear Cooperation Policy (CCP).
Adopted in 2019, CCP required that any listing publicly marketed by a broker must be submitted to the MLS within one business day; the intent was to prevent private listing networks that could disadvantage buyers and smaller brokerages.
But Lund argues the rule conflated two distinct issues—the obligation to submit listings to the MLS in a reasonable timeframe and the mandate governing how and when listings could be marketed prior to that submission. By collapsing the distinction, the rule forced brokers into a single choice: submit to the MLS and lose control of your pre-market strategy or operate outside the MLS entirely and forfeit cooperative access.
The report calls it a trap, and argues sophisticated brokerage brands found the exits. The brands representing more than half of agents and listings in America, the report argues, have made their answer clear.
The industry’s response has been swift and divided.
On March 25, the Council of Multiple Listing Services (CMLS) published a pointed statement rejecting what it called a false narrative spreading in real estate—one that suggests sellers benefit when their listings are not broadly exposed, that listing brokerages have a fiduciary duty to withhold facts from other brokers and their buyers, and that MLSs work against real estate professionals.
Asked to identify who is driving that narrative, a CMLS spokesperson declined to point fingers. “We are not interested in turning this into a story about one company or one brokerage,” they say. “The broader concern is an industry narrative that says broad exposure can harm sellers, that routine listing information should be hidden, or that rules designed to support transparency and cooperation are somehow anti-consumer.”
On the core of seller choice—the framing brokerages have used to justify premarketing—CMLS is skeptical.
“Most sellers follow the advice they receive from their agents, and the firms pushing to change these rules often have their own business interests in doing so,” the spokesperson tells RISMedia. “In an open MLS marketplace, a seller gets broad exposure, more potential buyer competition, and a more transparent test of price and demand. In a more private or fractured system, exposure can narrow, important information can be withheld and the largest firms can benefit first from private control of inventory while still relying on the shared system later. That is not a pro-consumer improvement.”
CMLS stops short of saying premarketing can never be acceptable—but sets a high bar. “Any approach would need to preserve the fundamentals that make the MLS work: equal access, transparency, fair enforcement and consumer protection,” the spokesperson says. “Hiding houses should not be a competitive advantage.”
But not every MLS leader is reading the moment the same way. Brian Donnellan, president and CEO of Bright MLS, struck a notably different tone in the wake of Zillow’s announcement that it was joining the premarket brigade.
“Technology, especially AI, is changing how consumers search, how information is shared and how brokers think about protecting their data, relationships and value,” he tells RISMedia. “If we want the MLS to remain the most trusted source of property information in an AI-driven world, our distribution policies must reflect the reality of today’s marketplace.”
“At Bright, we believe the MLS should be a partner in broker innovation and growth, rather than an obstacle to it,” he continues, “and that may require giving brokers more choices and more control over how their data shows up outside the MLS.”
Donnellan stops well short of endorsing premarketing outright (the MLS has long offered premarketing flexibility), but his urging against MLSs becoming “obstacles” to broker innovation echoes the WAV Group’s central critique more than it does CMLS’s statement.
The data gap
Underneath the policy debate is a quieter crisis that may outlast it: what happens to the data record when premarketing happens outside the MLS entirely.
The MLS has always been the place where a property’s full market story lives—every status change, every price cut, every day it sits unsold. But if a listing spends two weeks on Zillow Preview before hitting the MLS and that window is never captured in the MLS record, a gap opens in the historical record that nobody is positioned to fill.
Sam DeBord, CEO of the Real Estate Standards Organization (RESO)—a body that establishes common data standards across MLS systems—frames it carefully.
“All marketing information about real estate listings has value,” he tells RISMedia. “It might require a slightly different analysis if it relates to time periods in exclusive portal interfaces or private broker or MLS groups. But it’s still factual information that informs everyone from consumers to urban developers, regulators and banks.”
DeBord’s concern isn’t just about individual listings disappearing from the record. It’s about fragmentation at scale.
“As these business practices change, it’s critical that all parties simultaneously ensure that this valuable data doesn’t disappear into proprietary silos,” he says. “Consumers, businesses, developers, even governments rely on this information to make quality, data-driven decisions. Practices that ensure upfront input of listing information in the shared MLS system while allowing for flexible marketing options at the same time should be the goal of all stakeholders, as they all benefit long-term from the comprehensive dataset that the MLS can provide.”
On WAV Group’s argument that the MLS is fundamentally a data company—and that its governance culture has drifted too far toward rule-making at the expense of serving that data mission—DeBord pushes back on the framing without dismissing the underlying concern.
“The MLS as a simple ‘data company’ is a bit like calling a hospital a data company,” he argues. “They both generate enormous amounts of valuable data for the consumers and professionals involved, but they do so for a broader transaction-based purpose. They also do it under a critical set of common rules that ensure data quality. Rules and compliance are the essence of why the organization isn’t just some data scraper or unvetted advertising platform. The rules-based system continues to be the foundation of MLS, and it ensures more than data collection. It provides market visibility, standardized access and cooperative transaction behavior that make inventory liquid and transactions efficient.”
That tension—between the MLS as a neutral data infrastructure that serves broker needs without judgment, and the MLS as a rules-based cooperative with an obligation to protect the market’s integrity—is a conflict that appears to be at the core of the premarket debate, even if it isn’t the one most people are talking about.
