Local Multiple Listing Services (MLS) have long held a critical role in the purchase and sale of residential real estate. Home buyers and sellers take the MLS for granted, and typically assume they have no stake in the relationship between an MLS and its member brokers – if they consider it at all.
Inman News reported reported yesterday that broker members of The Realty Alliance, a national organization that includes Koenig & Strey and Baird & Warner locally, are frustrated with the MLS and poised to precipitate major changes. According to the Inman article a Realty Alliance spokesperson “warned” participants at an MLS conference that “brokers had lost faith in the way the industry is set up and were prepared to do something about it.”
A blog post at Clareity has a laundry list of broker grievances with MLS organizations, not all of which apply to every broker and every MLS.
Feel free to speculate on what changes are likely, and what they would portend for buyers, sellers and real estate agents.