Open Real Estate ‘open to all’ — but ‘no private listings allowed' 

Editor's note: The Playmakers podcast explores the biggest shifts in real estate with those who are shaping the industry's future. Check out our top takeaways and watch the latest episode from host Andrew Flachner, co-founder of RealScout.

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This week's announcement of Open Real Estate, a new listings platform sponsored by Keller Williams, HomeServices of America, AGNT and Real REMAX Group, is making waves across the industry.

The initiative, which will allow agents to submit listings to the platform for distribution to MLSs and portals — or for viewing by other participating agents only — is described as a blueprint that will be built out with input from participants, leaving many open questions. 

The latest episode of Playmakers, released Oct. 27, brought together 10 brokerage leaders to help answer some of those questions, from the nuts and bolts of the platform to the motivation behind it and how it might affect the future of listings access. 

The conversation with host Andrew Flachner included a bevy of brokerage heavy hitters: James Dwiggins, president of AGNT subsidiary NextHome; Tamir Poleg, CEO of Real REMAX Group; Michele Harrington, CEO of FirstTeam; Bess Friedman, CEO of Brown Harris Stevens; Chris Kelly, president and CEO of HomeServices of America; Anthony Lamacchia, CEO of Lamacchia Realty; Chris Czarnecki, president and CEO of Keller Williams; Jason Abrams, chief industry and strategy officer at Keller Williams; OB Jacobi, co-president of Windermere Real Estate; and Leo Pareja, CEO of AGNT. 

Here's what they had to say. 

What is Open Real Estate? 

"It's a data layer," Poleg said. "It creates a way for agents to send listings to one place, and that place then distributes those listings to MLSs, to portals, to all of the stakeholders in the industry. So essentially, it's a data sharing platform on the residential side that serves obviously agents and should benefit consumers."

While it may be a new layer, OpenRE is expected to eliminate redundancy, Kelly explained. "To us, it's actually looking to simplify the process as opposed to layering on another layer of complexity to what we currently experience today." 

Friedman also highlighted the cooperative aspect of the platform: "It's a data-sharing initiative where people come together, sharing listing information with rules in place. There's no private listings allowed here."

Is it a competitor to the MLS? 

"I don't think it competes with the MLS, and the reason I say that is open real estate is a data repository," Dwiggins said. "I don't think ORE is looking at how to deal with local governance, like lock boxes and showings and all the rules at the local level" which are within the domain of the MLS, while OpenRE has national scope, he explained. 

"I think the big question will be rulemaking. That's certainly a conversation worth having. I believe that MLSs are going to have to look at what rules they're enforcing because at some point ORE will have a standard set of rules."

Pareja was more direct: "We do not want to replace an MLS system. We're not a national MLS platform. We just want to make sure that there is a national dataset that's accurate, complete and available for all."

Who can participate? 

"This is absolutely open to all," Czarnecki said, "and it will always be open to everyone who wants to ascribe to those principles that we think are so important to the consumers."

What are those principles? "One is expand buyer opportunity. The second is empower informed seller decisions. The third is protect data integrity and then promote fair competition," Poleg explained. "If a brokerage believes in all those four, and I believe that every brokerage should believe in all those four, they're welcome to join."

Pareja noted that "there have been early responses from folks that people didn't expect that may be market participants," though he didn't identify any specific brokerages. 

While the vision is to create a listings repository accessible to all brokers, "if a brokerage is doing something different, and they don't participate and they don't contribute, there would be a lack of access," Pareja acknowledged. "But look, the goal is the opposite. The goal is to invite everybody, have an all-inclusive tent, because the consumer wins when they have the complete dataset. We are not attempting to have any walled gardens whatsoever, and we want as much information available to as many people as possible."

Why is another platform needed — and why now?

Many of the brokerage leaders emphasized the importance of maintaining a transparent, open real estate marketplace, noting that the alternative — a proliferation of private listings and no centralized access point — could lead to the type of fragmented system seen in other countries, or worse.

It's a mess outside the US: "What we have largely taken for granted in the United States, which is the way this kind of transparent, open real estate market works, is not how it happens in other parts of the world," Kelly noted.

Poleg agreed, citing his own experience: "As somebody who actually bought and sold properties in a different reality, it's just so much worse. I think that it's difficult for people to try and imagine what the industry could look like if we don't have that type of transparency, but trust me … it's not a good experience."

Responding to a threat: As for the timing of the initiative, Friedman pointed to the escalating battle over how listings are marketed and accessed. "I don't think we had this sort of push with private listing networks and this huge company with huge market share fragmenting the market, threatening fair housing, threatening transparency, hiding metrics like days on market. I mean, all of those things are creating incredible chaos in our industry, and it's not good," she said.

"We have to make sure that agents are always doing the right thing, and transparency makes sure that happens."

The American Dream is on the line: Beyond the inefficiency of a closed market, the financial stakes for consumers are incredibly high, Pareja emphasized. "Affordability is a massive issue. Inventory is a massive issue. To hide inventory and exacerbate that when interest rates are at historic highs with prices at historic highs, it's just irresponsible," he said. 

At the core of the initiative, he added, is the preservation of the American Dream, "which is homeownership, which powers the middle class … [which] is the single most important lever that exists for wealth creation in this country, which then turns into how you fund sending your kids to college or starting that small business through a line of credit. That's what's at risk."