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Two months after adding listing seller concession fields to its platforms, the nation’s largest multiple listing service is dropping fields that allowed listing brokers to specify how much a seller is willing to offer.
On May 29, California Regional MLS (CRMLS) added a concessions-in-price data field so that listing agents and brokers could list how much a seller was willing to contribute monetarily toward a buyer’s costs in the transaction.
A second data field indicated the type of concession, i.e. whether the amount being offered was a dollar amount or a percentage of the sales price.
CRMLS added the fields in anticipation of nationwide business practice changes associated with a proposed settlement between the National Association of Realtors and homeseller plaintiffs in multiple antitrust lawsuits.
The NAR settlement includes several rule changes set to go into effect on Aug. 17, including a prohibition on listing brokers making offers of compensation to buyer brokers on MLSs.
Due to that ban, some MLSs, including CRMLS, have added data fields to indicate a seller’s willingness to offer concessions that buyers could use for closing costs, including buyer agent compensation, if buyers so choose; the amount being offered; and whether that amount is a dollar amount or a percentage.
CRMLS is keeping the former field, which allows listing brokers and agents to indicate with a “Yes” or “No” whether a seller will consider concessions.
But on July 30, the latter two fields will be removed from the Matrix, Paragon and Flexmls systems CRMLS’s 110,000 or so subscribers use due to changes in transaction forms from the California Association of Realtors, according to CRMLS CEO Art Carter.
Art Carter
“C.A.R. has modified the proposed Residential Listing Agreement (RLA) form and the accompanying Multiple Listing Service Addendum (MLSA) form to remove all seller instructions to supporting these fields,” Carter told Inman in a statement.
Earlier this month, C.A.R. released new transaction forms without broker-to-broker offers of compensation, following an inquiry from the Department of Justice. Inman was able to obtain two of the new forms: a residential listing agreement and a multiple listing service addendum.
The new listing agreement removes references to seller concessions. Instead, that language was moved to the MLS addendum, which includes terms that indicate that a seller either does or does not authorize their broker to put in the MLS that the seller is willing to consider offers asking for concessions.
If the seller does authorize this, the document states, “Even if permitted by the MLS, no amount of the possible concession will be stated in MLS, either as a percent of the purchase price or a flat fee, unless Seller notifies Broker in writing of the amount.”
According to Carter, it was the C.A.R. form changes that prompted CRMLS to drop the fields, not any influence from the DOJ or the plaintiffs’ attorneys in major commission cases.
There also wasn’t anything concerning about how CRMLS’s subscribers were using the field, Carter told Inman.
“Only about 50 percent of the approximately 3,000 listings that used the new CiP fields specified a dollar or percentage amount,” Carter said.
There has been some speculation that listing seller concession fields may be used by brokers and agents as a replacement for the compensation fields that will be removed from MLSs by mid-August, particularly since the new fields allowed them to enter specific amounts and they could be listed as a percentage of the sales price — just as compensation fields do now. This move may serve to allay that speculation.
Ed Zorn
In an interview with CRMLS General Counsel Ed Zorn earlier this month, Zorn told Inman, “We’re very much behind concessions, and we’re very much behind concessions that include a specific dollar amount or percentage specifically for the lower-end properties, the properties that would be used or are subject to potential [Federal Housing Administration] financing or [Department of Veterans Affairs] financing.”
Zorn argued that the buyers of such homes would need the reassurance offered by that specificity. Asked whether CRMLS is doing something else to offer reassurance to such buyers, Carter declined to comment.
