After a number of inquiries, the owner of NationalMLS.com and NationalMLS.org has decided to place both domain names up for sale as a package for a minimum bid amount of $500,000.
“This is an idea for someone who is a huge disrupter or an incumbent — a group that is trying to build a national MLS, for instance,” said domain owner Mark Saavedra, who has been in the real estate tech business for about 20 years.
He thinks the National Association of Realtors might be an obvious buyer.
“I think real estate technology is going to heat up with some new entrants in 2016 because of Zillow, News Corp.’s purchase of Move Inc., which licenses realtor.com from the National Association of Realtors, the creation of the Broker Public Portal, the Upstream initiative and NAR’s influence on a national MLS,” he said.
“I mean, if you are the National Association of Realtors, shouldn’t you make sure to have a hand in the national MLS, which is inevitable?” said Saavedra.
He pointed to a comment made by Cary Sylvester, VP of Industry Development at Keller Williams in an Inman article a year ago, in which she said: “The ideal MLS would be a national one.”
Nationalmls.com is also being marketed as a possible tool for sellers; it could also be used as a consumer-facing MLS website. And it could allow agents to share data nationwide.
Meanwhile, potential buyers are showing interest from overseas. A Chinese group has made an approach, and interest has also come from London in the past few weeks.
