‘Ask T3’: What’s next for MLSs? 

Editor's note: The Ask T3 series explores some of the biggest questions in real estate with thoughtful insight from industry professionals. Check out our top takeaways and watch the latest episode from host Nick Bailey, chief real estate officer at T3 Sixty. (Real Estate News is an editorially independent division of T3 Sixty.)

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On the latest episode of Ask T3, two industry leaders join host Nick Bailey to discuss the pivotal point multiple listing services have reached amid widespread debate about listings transparency and pre-marketing.

Toronto Regional Real Estate Board CEO John DiMichele and Council of Multiple Listing Services CEO Denee Evans agree big changes are afoot and fundamental questions are being asked about the future of MLSs. The debate is not just about how they provide listings to real estate agents, but how the system as a whole functions.

"I think that it really is starting to change," said Evans, whose conversations with other industry professionals have become "fundamentally different" since she took the helm at CMLS a decade ago — a role she is leaving at the end of the year. "They are really exploring the things that we used to hold sacred," the topics that "would have never even been brought up in a board meeting."

A return to the past? One of those topics — how the MLS serves agents and their clients — is at the heart of the Clear Cooperation debate, said DiMichele, who is concerned that some of the proposed changes to listings could take the industry backward if they are implemented.

"Without that cooperative, we'd go back to the '50s," he said. "Running around looking for listings, driving your clients or them going by a listing and seeing a sign that they actually don't have access to through the MLS — I think these are the core issues that are going to either diminish its value or actually hurt the MLS."

It's a point both tried to drive home during a panel at the T3 Sixty Leadership Summit on May 21. The consequences of a fractured market system, they argued, would include incomplete data, delayed listings and more private deals.

Agents and consumers 'lose' without transparency: In March, the National Association of Realtors decided to keep its controversial Clear Cooperation Policy but added a delayed marketing option. Canada's Realtor Cooperation Policy mirrors the CCP, DiMichele explained, and the MLSs there also create rules for how that policy is to be interpreted.

"Consider who loses if we're not having that one fundamental piece of transparency within the MLS: Not only do the Realtors lose, but the consumers lose, and it skews your market statistics," he said. "There's just so many things that go wrong when you do that."

Put buyers and sellers first: Evans said she is a "firm believer in competition," but she also believes industry policies and practices should "serve the consumers, and not necessarily shareholders."

"I am hopeful and optimistic the industry will make decisions and push forward to continue to create a sufficient marketplace of MLS where the consumers have access to all of the listings," Evans said — and agents need to know what inventory is available to serve their clients.

"If we get to a place where we're being fractured and you have to go into offices or call other places just to know, that puts you at a disadvantage to the consumer," she said. "And I think that puts us as an industry at a disadvantage to the consumer."

Consolidation and evolution: In the U.S., MLS consolidation has been a trend in recent years, with the total number operating across the country declining by about 20% since 2017. But Evans, who has seen "some really great partnerships with associations and MLSs as being separate entities," believes more MLSs will become independent moving forward.

"We've got to grab these opportunities and make sure that the MLSs are doing MLS really, really well, and evolving and innovating" she said. The association also has "a really important role," she added, "but they have to be good partners."