Duke Lane

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I'm frankly at a loss to understand exactly why an agent (who is typically licensed to sell real estate in only one state) needs to have access to "raw" listing data in other states, and especially in states clear across the country. If a California agent wants to know what's for sale in Connecticut, can't s/he simply look it up on Realtor.com and then contact a cooperating agent - the listing agent, perhaps, or at least someone from the listing brokerage, or even a colleague from, say, the CRS Council? After all, how am I - licensed and living in Texas - going to advise someone about a home for sale somewhere in New England? And exactly when am I going to schedule showings with them? I'm certainly of the opinion that I should have access to all of the listings I can sell. The idea of having over 900 MLSes in just 50 states - and multiple MLSes in postage stamp-sized states in New England - is as ridiculous as one big national MLS. On the other hand, one MLS per state - one repository for all the properties that I'm licensed to sell - makes perfect sense. (Even one for all of New England, which combined is less that 1/4 of Texas!) In that case, there is an economy of scale such that the budgetary issues - the ability to afford new technologies, etc. - brought to the fore by Rob's article are effectively solved. At the same time, it serves all of those who are licensed to sell the listings it has. (Those from other states can continue to do as they do now: refer the business to someone who knows the market. Real estate is, after all, "local," isn't it?) The idea that any MLS can charge $50K for an IDX data feed - to its own constituents?!? - gives rise to the question of how much the SOLE data source can charge (as Danilo raised the question: only the largest brokerages could afford it, and the rest necessarily go by the wayside). One has to wonder if anti-trust laws would even allow such an animal.

Forgive my naivete, but isn't Realtor.com - the official consumer site of NAR - supposed to fill the essential need of there being a single, national site for property searches? All MLSes are entitled to send their listings there at no charge, so in terms of meeting consumers' needs, it seems there is already something in place without creating a new monster. As to Realtors' ability to post listings on a national basis; to what end that is not already fulfilled by Realtor.com? What, in other words, is there NOT already on Realtor.com that would benefit a Realtor in Connecticut when viewing a listing in California? As Russ Bergeron noted, the primary purpose of an MLS is not advertising, but cooperation and a guarantee of compensation between brokers. Does the Connecticut broker need to know immediately that the buyer's agent is guaranteed, say, 3% that the referring broker (who cannot sell a home in California anyway) will share in as a referral fee? That's meaningless if the buyer doesn't end up buying the particular home the referring broker saw the BAC on. I'm in complete agreement with the concept of a statewide MLS - or at least, I should say, a statewide online data repository - wherein all of those licensed to be able to participate in the transaction have access to the data of all the properties they might help to sell. An El Paso, Texas, broker or agent can participate in the sale of a home in Longview, Texas, 750 miles away, but a Rhode Island broker can't list or sell a house even 100 miles away: why would they need to have access to compensation or seller information? Personally, I've never quite understood the necessity of there being 900+ MLSes in only 50 states except as a holdover from pre-technology days (who'd have wanted to drive the listing books from Omaha to Scottsbluff, 500 miles away?) or why Connecticut - with 5500 square miles and 3.5 million people - needs five MLSes while Texas - with 268,000 square miles and 23 million people - can get by with about the same number of MLSes, at least two of which (HAR and NTREIS) each cover areas more than a dozen times the size of the Nutmeg State! In either case, the ability of Realtors within the same state to have access to full listing data of homes within ALL of the state in which they're licensed - be they in Delware, Rhode Island or Connecticut, or California, Texas or Alaska - has a clear value. Major brokerages such as Coldwell Banker have solved their own "national MLS" issue by "invisibly" redirecting viewers to local brokerages' IDX websites, allowing users - consumers and Realtors - to seamlessly move around the country to see homes for sale in each region on what appears to be one website. Still, there is no need for a Coldwell Banker Residential agent in LA to either input listings or read full data for a CBR listing in Dallas or anywhere else. Perhaps the solution is to reconsider how Realtor.com should operate, or whether the contract with Move.com should be held "in perpetuity," potentially allowing NAR to create a separate site that does the things that aren't profitable for Move (now that it's making one!) and Realtor.com. If it's necessary to see additional data, couldn't a separate login - for example, using a state license number and NAR ID in combination - give that access to bona fide agents? A "national MLS" - or "MLS 5.0" if you prefer - seems to be nothing more than a solution in search of a problem. Until there actually IS a problem that everyone agrees on, the entire project should be shelved. All in my humble opinion, of course!

CDOM and the 60-day rule only cut short the simple step of checking an address's listing history. Any decent buyer's agent will check all listings statuses - active, withdrawn, expired, sold, etc. - on a property when a client shows a particular interest in it. One only needs basic math skills to determine how long a property has been on the market.