Bright offering its homegrown tech to brokers, other MLSs 

The nation's largest multiple listing service is now offering a suite of technology tools to its peers — and announced this week that it has signed on its first customer.

Bright MLS, which has more than 100,000 subscribers across several Mid-Atlantic states, has created six new products to support listing management, media coordination, broker administration, team collaboration, market analytics and advertising.

"People are questioning MLSs' value proposition almost daily," Ted Mucellin, Bright's chief strategy and operations officer, told Real Estate News in a phone interview.

"There have been quite a few policy changes that affect how an MLS could and should or would do its business. Then you see platforms put up by different tech companies, by different portals, by even brokers that are interacting with MLSs in different ways. So to stay at the forefront of that is obviously crucial to us."

Bright's leaders felt that no one could understand the needs of an MLS better than another MLS, and the new products can help MLSs work together "in a better way," Mucellin added.

Building what others can't — and creating new revenue streams

As Bright began to build the next iteration of its internal products, the company decided it made sense to offer them for sale to brokers and other MLSs. The products, dubbed "Bright Solutions," are available either individually or as a package, and the pricing is variable, according to Mucellin. 

"We're exploring freemium versions of these products. There's MLSs out there that only have 100 subscribers. We have 100,000, so we have the ability to build and program and create things that those others couldn't."

And, Mucellin added, "if we're building these as commercial enterprises, we can justify building them in greater and larger and more feature-rich ways" — something that also benefits Bright's subscribers. 

"It's about scope," he said. "If you're looking at a total addressable market of the entire United States and 500-some MLSs, that's a big business opportunity. Building for that opportunity is very different than just building internally."

Bright's first customer? Another large MLS

MLS Now, the largest MLS in Ohio at more than 14,000 subscribers, is the first organization to try out the new products. Bright's core offering, its listing management tool, will go live on the MLS Now platform in the next several months, according to Mucellin. 

"This [add/edit tool] encompasses a ton of different AI functionality," he said, including listing and photo descriptions, data matching, object identification and custom field entry.

Bright is trying to develop a freemium model around that particular tool.

"We think there are so many different products that agents like to use in conjunction with creating, publishing and marketing the listing, that if we ally with some of those third-party providers, the revenue generated from that can probably cover much, if not most of the cost," Mucellin said.

Solely Bright-funded

Unlike peers such as California Regional MLS and UtahRealEstate.com, Bright is not launching the products under a separate tech subsidiary, though in the future the MLS plans to debut products as part of joint ventures, according to Mucellin.

He declined to elaborate on the finances of Bright's new endeavor, other than to say that it doesn't involve any external financing and is solely Bright-funded and developed. Therefore, any profits or losses from the tools will go toward Bright's balance sheet.

Asked how Bright would avoid the ill fate of another MLS-funded tech venture, Remine, Mucellin said "everyone in the industry has a different take on what happened with Remine," but he thinks Bright has a "strong product market fit."

"We have intimate knowledge of what the industry needs because it's what we need," Mucellin said.

How do subscribers know if they're being offered the best tool? 

While creating or investing in tech tools and then offering them to subscribers in place of third-party tools could create a potential conflict of interest, Mucellin said Bright collects extensive feedback on its products.

"There's never been a subscriber-based company in existence that didn't have to think through, 'Are we providing our subscribers what they actually want, or are we providing them what we think they want?'" he said.

The products Bright is taking to market are those "that we know are successful and our agents and subscribers have appreciated," Mucellin said.

"We have gotten a lot of positive feedback, both internally and from the industry, about the [listing management] product. Many say it's the best out there. I certainly would."