The MLS is not a product. It’s infrastructure. 

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The views expressed in this column are solely those of the author.

I have spent my career in this industry watching the multiple listing service do what it was designed to do: create a level playing field where brokers of every size, every model and every strategy can compete on merit.

The MLS made that possible. It is the reason a one-person boutique firm can compete for the same listing as a national franchise, and the reason consumers in this country have access to more comprehensive market information than buyers and sellers almost anywhere else in the world.

That is not a small thing. That is the structural foundation of the American real estate industry. Which is why what I am watching happen inside some MLS governance conversations today concerns me deeply.

How the MLS should — and should not — operate

Let me start with what the MLS actually is, because I think the industry has started to lose sight of it.

The MLS should operate as a cooperative without profit motive. It was created by brokers, for brokers, to facilitate the voluntary sharing of listing data between agents who have sellers and agents who have buyers. That is the purpose.

A seller sits down with an agent at the kitchen table, signs a listing agreement and consents to share that property with the brokerage community so that a buyer can be found as efficiently as possible. The MLS exists to support and protect that cooperative spirit.

It was never designed to be a lead generation platform. It was never designed to create a marketplace that intermediates the relationship between the listing broker and the buying public. And it was never designed to become a monetized product.

The listings that flow into the MLS were won through the skill, relationships and hard work of listing agents. Those agents and brokers made a cooperative agreement to share inventory with other brokers who have buyers. They did not agree to hand that inventory to third parties to build entirely different businesses on top of it.

That distinction matters enormously, and we have allowed it to blur for too long.

Outdated rules on listing distribution need retooling

Think about what actually happens when a listing agent wins a listing. That agent has prospected, built a relationship, delivered a compelling presentation, negotiated the terms and earned the seller's trust. That is where the real value is created.

What the industry has allowed to happen is that the agent who did the work to win the listing is increasingly surrendering the customer relationship and the ability to market that property to platforms that had nothing to do with creating the value in the first place.

Some of the decisions made around listing distribution and internet display in the early days of the internet should be reconsidered given the market dynamics we see today.

The MLS is not a product. It is infrastructure. There is a meaningful difference.

Infrastructure exists to serve the participants who built it and depend on it. A product exists to generate revenue for whoever controls it. When the MLS starts functioning more like a product, someone is capturing value that belongs to the brokers and sellers who created it.

That someone is rarely the broker. It is rarely the agent. And it is certainly not the seller sitting at the kitchen table who consented to share their home with the brokerage community, not with the internet at large.

Trust is key to a functional MLS

That brings us to the governance conversations happening inside some MLSs today. The MLS is becoming increasingly politicized. Not everywhere, and not in every boardroom — but the trend is real.

When an MLS writes rules with specific business models in mind, it is no longer functioning as neutral cooperative infrastructure. When policy decisions are made based on which firms they advantage or disadvantage, trust in the system starts to erode — and the MLS only works when everyone trusts it.

Remove that trust and you do not have a weaker MLS. You have a fragmented market where data lives in silos, consumers lose transparency and the firms with the most resources to build proprietary alternatives become the only ones positioned to benefit. That puts every member at risk, including the firms that think they are benefiting in the short term.

I run a long-established brokerage operating across multiple states, and Howard Hanna has the stability and operational depth to navigate industry change in ways many firms cannot.

I am not writing this to protect our competitive position. Howard Hanna will be fine. I am writing this because the broker community — large and small, independent and franchise, traditional and alternative model — has a shared interest in keeping the MLS what it was designed to be. The moment we allow it to become something else, we lose the infrastructure that makes cooperative competition possible in the first place.

At Howard Hanna, we have invested heavily in listing technology, data management and protecting the intellectual property connected to the listings our agents create. We have made those investments because brokers increasingly need to think about data as a long-term strategic asset.

At the same time, brokers are trying to respond to changing consumer expectations. Controlled distribution strategies, delayed marketing strategies and products like HannaList and Find It First are not attempts to abandon cooperation. They are attempts to modernize marketing strategy while still participating fully within the cooperative framework. There is a significant difference between modernization and fragmentation.

More participation in MLS governance needed

I also want to say something directly to my fellow broker leaders who are not engaging in MLS governance: that has to change. When brokers disengage from governance conversations, the vacuum gets filled by narrower interests, institutional inertia and policy decisions increasingly disconnected from the realities of operating a brokerage.

That is how you end up with boards functioning more like regulatory bodies than strategic partners. And a broker who increasingly views their MLS as a regulator rather than a cooperative partner eventually starts looking for alternatives.

Part of the consolidation conversation consuming the industry right now is a symptom of this. The MLSs serving their members best are not necessarily the largest ones. They are the ones led by boards willing to ask hard questions, govern in the interest of all brokers and remain disciplined about what the MLS is and is not supposed to do.

Size is not the variable. Leadership and purpose are.

MLS must return to neutrality to restore trust

What the MLS needs to become — and what the best MLSs already are — is a neutral data services cooperative serving horizontal competitors without deference to business model and without an appetite for monetizing the inventory brokers created.

That means equal standing for every participant. The MLS does not pick winners. It provides the infrastructure within which the market picks winners. And it means the listings won at kitchen tables across America remain connected to the brokers and agents who earned them.

The role of the MLS is to make sure listings are shared cooperatively with other brokers. It is not to dictate every aspect of public distribution strategy beyond the cooperative itself.

Brokers who develop differentiated distribution or marketing strategies are not abandoning cooperation. In many cases, they are trying to innovate, create value for sellers and strengthen the customer relationship in a changing market.

I believe in the MLS as much today as my grandfather and other co-brokers did when they helped organize it in the first place. I believe in what it makes possible for brokers, agents and the consumers we serve.

We built a broker cooperative worth protecting. But protecting it requires neutrality, trust, modernization and a clear understanding of the role the MLS was originally created to serve.

Howard "Hoby" Hanna IV is CEO of Howard Hanna Real Estate Services, the largest family-owned and -operated real estate brokerage in the United States. Howard Hanna provides brokerage, mortgage, title and insurance services across 15 states and operates more than 500 offices with 15,000 sales associates and staff.