Two small controversies at this month’s semi-annual meeting of the National Association of Realtors (NAR) point to a sea-change in Realtor attitudes on the use of listing data and the role of multiple listing services in helping agents, with agents becoming more open to the idea of creating centralized, agent-controlled sources for listing data on the web.
“I think the membership is pushing [NAR] in a direction they weren’t prepared for,” said Kathy Condon, president and CEO of MLS PIN.
Earlier this month, the NAR Mid-Year Conference in Washington, D.C., hosted a session on “Rethinking the Future of Real Estate,” presenting the results of 16 workshops held across the country with NAR members. According to attendees, the audience broke out into an open chant of “take back Realtor.com” at one point during the presentation; the session was so popular an impromptu second presentation of the results was held in the afternoon in order to accommodate agents who couldn’t get in.
“It was shoulder to shoulder – the standing room was gone, people were four or five deep in the hallways just trying to listen to this data,” said Kim Allard-Moccia, 2013 president of the Massachusetts Association of Realtors, who attended the meeting. “It’s a passionate issue for all Realtors. We want [Realtor.com] to be the best it can possible be. I don’t think anybody wants to just accept things [the way they are] when they could be improved.”
Since 1995, the Realtor.com website has been managed by independent, for-profit real estate data firm Move Inc., under a contract with NAR. NAR-affiliated MLSs are required to provide data to the site, increasing its accuracy, Realtors claim. But restrictions on how Move can use the MLS data mean that Realtor.com does not provide certain features popularized by sites like Zillow and Trulia, such as home price estimates.
Following the meetings, the association’s executive committee voted on Sunday to initiate talks with Move, to discuss potential changes to the site that would allow it to better compete with Zillow and Trulia. NAR CEO Dale Stinton warned, however, that NAR’s contract with Move does not permit it to simply switch partners and redesign the site.
In another meeting on Tuesday that later proved controversial, a committee governing MLS policy voted to reclassify providing a public-facing website as part of the basic, fundamental services which MLSs are able to require all their members to pay for.
Public-facing MLS sites allow consumers to search listings directly from the MLS, instead of going through a brokers’ website or a third-party aggregator. A small minority of the 900-odd U.S. MLSs already provide such public-facing sites, including the Berkshire County MLS in western Massachusetts, which is run by the Berkshire County Board of Realtors.
“Our website has been online since 1995,” said Sandy Carroll, CEO of the Berkshire board and its MLS. “In the beginning, our members saw our website as an alternative to creating their own sites. That has certainly changed, but even today our members see the benefits of extra exposure to their listings, open houses and market data in a neutral and well-trafficked location.”
In a few markets, such as Houston, Texas, large public-facing MLS sites have become the go-to source of listings for consumers. Many larger brokers oppose such sites, feeling that they compete with their own web sites for traffic and lead generation.
The decision to define such public-facing sites as a basic service which any MLS can set up and require members to pay for prompted outcry from larger brokers. Craig Cheatham, president and CEO of The Realty Alliance, a coalition of large independent brokers, wrote an open letter to NAR in the wake of the meeting hinting that members of his group might reconsider whether it was worth it for them to participate in their local MLSs at all if the policy were allowed to stand.
In the wake of the letter, NAR’s leadership attempted to have the new MLS policy put on hold and sent back to committee for further deliberation. But at the conference’s final board meeting, in which hundreds of local NAR members got a chance to vote on the association’s policies, members voted down the proposal, allowing the new policy to stay in place.
Condon said that MLS PIN did have a public-facing site in the early 2000s but had taken it down in response to broker-members’ concerns about competition. But she expected the possibility of re-launching such a site for MLS PIN to be a topic of discussion for the board in the near future, though she emphasized “we would never do it without speaking to our brokers first.”
The two surprise tiffs at the conference suggest that agents are rethinking how they can compete as an industry with Zillow and Trulia – and they may be open to ideas which were once anathema, such as the creation of a single, nation-wide MLS.
During the ReThink presentation, agents and brokers’ enthusiasm for reform prompted NAR CEO Dale Stinton to say, “You can’t ever talk about a national MLS without getting into trouble. You can’t talk about the number of associations without getting in to trouble. You can’t ever talk about professional standards without getting in to trouble,” according to NAR’s official summary of the session. “What I’m here to say on behalf of leadership is we’re ready to get in trouble.”
Other observers of the real estate space suggested that a simple willingness to change on the part of NAR’s leadership may not be enough. Consultant and former Realogy exec Rob Hanh suggested on his influential blog that the events at the meeting may well herald the coming of a civil war in real estate, with big brokers, MLSs, NAR and the web portal pursuing conflicting goals.
“The growing power of the Internet generally, and Trulia and Zillow specifically, inspire alarm in NAR, in the brokerages, and in the MLS. Diplomacy might yet work, since both Trulia and Zillow in public statements have done everything possible to kneel and kiss the ring of NAR, brokerages and MLSs. Perhaps deals may be struck that avoid open hostilities,” Hanh said. “But then, none of those might work if the fundamental question is … who shall rule [over real estate].”
Email: csullivan@thewarrengroup.com
