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Denee Evans, CEO of the Council of Multiple Listing Services, came to the real estate industry a decade ago, when the word “antitrust” was occasionally whispered at events in reference to the U.S. Department of Justice and a desire to avoid its probing eye.
Now, that whisper has become a roar, and Evans is in charge of shepherding some 225 MLSs through one of the most tumultuous times in the industry’s history. In particular, most of CMLS’s members must implement several rule changes in a proposed nationwide settlement between the National Association of Realtors and homeseller plaintiffs in multiple antitrust lawsuits.
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The changes are set to go into effect on Aug. 17, including a prohibition on listing brokers making offers of compensation to buyer brokers on MLSs and a requirement that brokers and agents sign contracts with buyers they are working with before a buyer tours a home.
Evans, who lives in the Las Vegas area, will be taking the stage at Inman Connect Las Vegas next week. In an interview, she told Inman what her members are asking her about, changes MLSs are considering as they implement the NAR settlement and why she believes NAR will not be creating new MLS rules in the next six to 12 months, but may offer guidance on the settlement’s requirements.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Inman: Do you know yet what you’re going to be talking about at ICLV?
Denee Evans: I get to interview [Chief Strategy Officer Blair Hardiek] for the Las Vegas Aces, which is our WNBA team, about building a winning culture. I’m super excited about that because I have been a season ticket holder since they came to Vegas and sort of watched that whole building of that organization to where we just did back-to-back world championships.
I’ll also be talking on the MLS, where we’re at today with a few other CEOs of MLSs. Basketball and MLS: those are two of my favorite topics. Also, I will be on a panel for women leading in real estate. That would be another one of my passions, to help support women growing in their careers and leading.
Your panel on MLS operations and what comes next after the commission lawsuits – is there anything you want to say about that right now?
CMLS did publish a resource document for our members that if they were going to implement concessions going forward as a field, we gave some guidance on how they could potentially do that, everywhere from not implementing [the field] to having the most options about it. We provided five different options because it’s going to depend on that marketplace. What did the members there want? How do they meet the needs of consumers?
We’re at a point of change, and so that just requires us to change and think about things differently. Every part of the industry, whether you’re an agent, a broker, an MLS, a vendor, we all still provide great service to the consumers and help them navigate the journey of homeownership, so how do we embrace this change and still serve them?
Change is always uncomfortable. But I think the more we can lean into that and understand how we can take this opportunity to just continue to provide new and different value and just embrace that, I think will be important.
In that vein, what is it that you’re being asked the most about right now from your members?
A lot of the questions are like, “How do we comply with the settlement?” which is not necessarily something CMLS would do specifically, but that’s why we did the resource of, if you’re going to do concessions, what that might look like. We’ve been holding our MLS Matters [webinars], where people can share what they’re doing on different areas, and bringing them together to talk about opportunities with the changes that are coming. It’s a great opportunity for MLSs, and their boards of directors, to really explore innovative options of how to serve the market.
I think we’re going to see less direct “must-do’s” in the future within our environment and it’s going to leave the opportunity for MLSs to be more innovative, to serve their subscribers and their subscribers’ consumers.
When you say “less direct must-do’s,” do you mean there will be fewer rules from NAR?
Yeah, I think we’ll see less of that in the future, just as we work through the changes that are happening right now. There are a lot of questions on the forms, on the buyers’ rep agreements, on the fields, on the changes, on how much data do we keep from the past. Those are going to be a lot of individual decisions at the MLS level, and for their board of directors — which is agents and brokers — to have the thoughtful discussions of what makes sense in their marketplace.
When we were working on this resource about the concessions field, initially we were talking about potentially sending it out as a best practice. Then we were like, well, we don’t think this is a best practice, we’re thinking these are pick your own adventure — what fits for your marketplace. Truly, the best practice is that you’re having really thoughtful conversations in your market about what fits.
That expands over to lots of different topics right now, and also: What is our potential future? We’ve got to just engage in those really thoughtful conversations about what could it look like, and what are the needs of the consumers, what are the needs of the professionals, and how are we going to continue to meet those and be that efficient, transparent marketplace that is MLS.
When you said you think there’ll be fewer NAR MLS rules, at least in the near future, why do you think that is?
We need to implement what’s happening right now. Even that Aug. 17 deadline for the changes, that’s earlier than what the settlement requires. But I think NAR did that just to make sure we had time at MLSs to be able to implement those changes. Once that date passes, there’s going to be more and more learnings and understandings of how it’s really working in the marketplace and if there are changes that need to happen. Are there changes or refinements that need to be made? That’s going to be a given. That communication between subscribers and their MLS is going to be super important over the next six to 12 months, as we make sure we can continue to provide that marketplace.
Part of the reason I ask is because there haven’t been any MLS rules coming out of the Multiple Listing Issues and Policies Committee at NAR for a while now.
What we might see out of them is maybe some clarification or some more guidance around the current settlement. We think we have some answers now, and we’re making changes based on what we know. But I think there’s going to be some dynamics to this where we’re going to need to get additional feedback in markets, and it’ll be a little different per marketplace. So maybe that group has some requests to say, “Clarify this. Give us some more guidance on this.” I think we still have some bumps in front of us to work through as an industry, but I’m confident that we will get through it. We’ve got to really focus and make sure we get this we get this down, we get it right, and we continue to serve the marketplace.
What sort of bumps do you see?
There’s always this idea of how it works, like, in theory, and then when it actually goes out to market. One big thing could be consumer behavior. Is it going to change much based on this, or they have new requests or different, or how is that going to play out when these agreements roll out in the marketplace? Is there things that need to be altered?
I had lunch with Helen Hanna years ago, and she said her dad always told her that we had this sellers multi-list, but we needed a buyers multi-list. We’ve made [the MLS] a two-sided market at this point, but not necessarily as conscious as we could be of really matching buyers and sellers in a more formalized way. I think we could be at a place with the agreements, that maybe that really evolves us to this more robust and comprehensive marketplace of both the buyer and the seller in some new way.
How do you see that happening?
There’s a lot of smart people in the industry that have started talking about that a little bit. There’s a real opportunity there because the buyer side is just as important as the sell side. They’ve both got to be there to make it this marketplace.
Is there a reason you think that the settlement itself would lead to that?
The settlement has some key elements that cause fundamental change to to how things are working. Within that, I don’t know where the saying comes from, but “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” It just creates this moment. COVID was a perfect one. That was just awful, but a couple of those silver linings that came from [it are] e-signatures and online signings and all these things that would have taken us years to actually get movement on, but because of that severe disruption and event happening, it allowed us to move exponentially on a lot of important things, specifically for our industry, [such as] virtual tours and videos.
Is there any specific thing you’re thinking of that you might want to ask NAR’s MLS committee for guidance about?
I wouldn’t have an answer to that until after the 17th, as we’re just waiting for our members to give us more feedback.
You were talking about how it will depend on the marketplace, how these changes are implemented. Initially, you were talking specifically about concessions. What sort of factors will determine which way an MLS will go on that?
I’ve heard feedback across the board. Their discussions are from “We’re not implementing anything; we’re just removing a field” and “We’re deleting all data” to some MLSs believe that it’s still an opportunity to inform the marketplace and [for] transparency if a seller is wanting to offer an incentive. We issued four options or five options, and I think there’s probably an equal number utilizing each one of those.
So you’re not telling them, “This one’s the best practice.” You’re saying, “Here are your options; talk about it.”
Yep, the best practice is that you’re talking about it and you’re making a very thoughtful decision on which one of these fits your marketplace and also for rolling it out. One of the challenges is when there’s a policy and there’s one way to do it, it creates consistency. It’s really hard to scale a product when to scale it [is to] implement it in 500 MLSs and they’re all different. So rolling it out maybe in four or five different ways versus 500 different ways is beneficial for consumers, for the professionals, and then for the vendors that support the industry and provide these products and services.
You’ve heard that some MLSs are deleting their commission data?
I haven’t confirmed that, but it’s the discussion around previous data. How long do you hold on to it for? Do you capture it going forward? There’s been a lot of discussion around that as to what makes the most sense because you do need information for appraisers. You need information for market stats. Who is it made available to? Is it available to just the staff? Is it available to the subscribers? Is it not available at all? Again, I’m hearing a lot of different options across the country, which I think is good, because that means they’re all having their own discussions about what fits their marketplace and what are their needs.
I don’t know if you saw my interview with Ed Zorn, but he was talking about how, as a broker himself, how he was planning to use the commission data in future sales, like when he’s talking to sellers, saying, “We’ve changed this thing and we need to think about what that means for how much we’re gonna set for a list price and potentially offer as a concession.” So I think that, as a broker, he probably wouldn’t be very happy if that data were deleted.
It’s very interesting. I don’t even have anybody to refer you to, but I do think that’s been an active conversation and have heard different ways that they’re going to be capturing that and who they’re going to make it available to.
Is there anything you think MLSs should be doing to avoid antitrust trouble in the future?
If anything, I’d say comes back to those individual market decisions. How are you best serving your market? Compete on service. Compete on value. Competition is the heart of our industry.
You’ve talked a lot about opportunities coming out of all this. What specific opportunities are you talking about?
It’s more a mindset about opportunity within the disruption. Putting on a lens of: Where are the opportunities in this? How do I use this to better serve my subscribers? How does it better serve consumers? There was the old way. That was then, and there’s a point in time where we’ve got to move forward. I don’t have specifics because I would be telling you my members’ ideas, I guess.
If we use that knowledge and approach it just kind of changes our attitude about it and allows us to be open to new ideas. That’s the other thing that disruption and change does is it broadens the ability of what’s possible a little bit, thinking that maybe people wouldn’t be open to doing before.
Is there anything you’re telling your members not to do?
I think my biggest thing is not to have your head so down in the day-to-day of just implementing what it is, that you’re not still looking up and saying, “Where are we going?” Because there are a lot of people out there who are looking up and designing that future, and if we spend the next six months getting through this just head down, we’re going to be behind.
There are a lot of changes happening in a very short time frame, but we’ve got to make sure and keep our heads up and still talk about “Where’s the puck going, what’s in front of us, where do we want it to be, and how do we continue to build and make those things happen at the same time?” That’s really challenging because there’s a lot of resources going to put the changes into effect that we’re required to do. Then you’ve got to be thinking about “Where do I need to be in six months?” because the change in technology and information and data is happening so much faster today, and so it’s even more important that we’re just keeping our head up and saying, “What do we still need to build, design and innovate?”
Who do you think is thinking about that?
Everything from Wall Street to current participants in the marketplace to the person in their garage. They’re not necessarily slowing down for any of this, whereas the challenges for the MLSs and the brokerages are there are some significant changes we need to implement. We have to do that as well as still say there’s all this new stuff still happening. So we have to keep our eye out for it and make sure that we’re able to support those ideas as other companies may roll those out. We can still power them by way of what the MLS provides.
These are mandates coming out of NAR because of the settlement. Do you think that’s hindering MLSs’ ability to look toward the future in that way, having to implement all of this stuff?
Policy comes out, changes come out. MLSs are used to implementing that. I think the biggest challenge for us is just how tight that timeframe got. It’s a lot of change very quick, and there’s not, I think, quite as much information about what the changes must be or the specifics to them. There are more decisions to be made in each marketplace. That’s one of the other challenging pieces to this, the timeframe, the amount of detail, and that this is so much happening at one very small point in time.
Alright, anything else you’d like to add before we finish?
When people say “the MLS” [they] make it like it’s some The Wizard of Oz behind a curtain. Really own and embrace that the MLS is made up of brokers and agents. Yes, there is the MLS CEO, MLS staff, but really the ones making those decisions and helping to move the MLS forward are the people who are out in the marketplace.
It is the industry that actually makes up these boards of directors and these decision-making bodies to move us forward. So be active participants, even if you’re not on a board, give your feedback in a constructive way that helps us continue to navigate our future and design what needs to happen to power those professionals to serve their consumers.
