A national multiple listing service run by the National Association of Realtors should be ready by late summer, the large trade association announced today.
NAR has been working for the last decade to put all of the nation’s agent-represented homes for sale into one database, consolidating the 800-plus multiple listing services in the U.S. in the process.
"Everybody has been on board with the national MLS idea for a long time and we’ve been working on it for the last decade," the trade group said in a press release.
Brian Boero, co-founder of real estate marketing and design firm 1000watt, who predicted NAR’s national MLS move in one of his "Friday Flash" blog posts five years ago, said, "It’s a great move by NAR. I wonder what took them so long."
"It’s about damn time," said Matt Cohen, chief technology officer of real estate consulting firm Clareity Consulting.
"In some cities there were five or more MLSs!" Cohen said. "How and why did that even happen?"
Many third-party MLS vendors, such as Greg Robertson, co-founder of W&R Studios, are ecstatic. "Now we won’t have to make multiple versions of one product to work with each MLS. We can just make one!"
Some brokers, who have been concerned about the businesses third-party listing portals like Zillow, Trulia and realtor.com have built using listing data, are expressing relief.
"Hallelujah," said the spokesman of a large Minneapolis-based brokerage that pulled all of its listings from the big three portals last year.
However, the brokerage will not send its listings to the national MLS because the firm wants to continue focusing on generating leads from its own website, the spokesman said.
Zillow, Trulia and realtor.com, which had been battling for consumer eyeballs as de-facto nationwide MLSs in recent years, are working to carve out a new niche.
"We’ll still be a leader on mobile," one Zillow exec said.
Editor’s note: For further context on this report, please check this story’s date. And note that all or portions of this article may be based entirely on anonymous and/or fictitious sources and erroneous and/or facetious information.
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