There are many comments here about the useless of Trulia and Zillow and I agree with those comments – these companies COMPETE directly with individual agents who have local website – yet we are foolish enough to continue sending them listings. How stupid is that?

Realtor.com is also a competitor, and using PPC in local markets to find position and clients online. What is to stop a national MLS from doing yet the same thing. As it is now, we even have to compete against our local MLS board for space online.

Yet there will always be those who insist that consolidation is the way to go. In most cases they are the one with little or no web presence in their local markets.

Saul says that his ES says nothing about NAR control, so in that vein, who would operate it if not NAR? Would it be the same 50, or are we talking something newer and bigger for R.C to completely fly into the side of a mountain? More questions than answers seems to be the rule here because as per usual real engagement isn’t taking place.

Come on Saul, we know you’re reading- close the deal…

OK, with just the example of Foster and Weichert I get your meaning better. Sorry, I needed it in a local context. I agree that numbers do yield power….

So, in essence your saying franchises have a great influence than brokerages – got it. I agree.

SOMEONE is still going to make money at the MLS.

Might it be less? Yes. What industry has not had to deal with the web economy.

Fewer employees? Yes (…see above parens…)

More info, faster – and for free? Yes. The consumer demands it.

And hats off to the Wisconsin Realtors Associaton beginning to unite MLSs with the WIREX project.

Steve
Obeoman

If the “thing” is the best destination and resource for consumers, then the value will be there for Realtors. My request has always been the same – get the best, most comprehensive and accurate data/information and let the Realtors innovate from there.

The driving force behind this is not the big companies, but the smaller ones in my state. There are several big Regional MLS’s in Mi and the “elephant in the room” is NOT behind it.

The bottom line for most MLS boards is their members having to pay MLS fees to belong to different boards in order to get to the data. Everyone I spoke to and heard from is tired of that. To belong to 3 in my area is at a cost of 120.00 per month in MLS fees.

At this point, the Boards are in survival mode, they don’t want to lose their “identity”, and if this occurred they would be laying off staff. We would only be paying around 33.00 per month instead of the 120.00.

With the advent of IDX and agents selling homes far out of their area, here is what I am seeing. Potential buyers find a home on Trulia, or Zillow, calls agent with MLS number or address, agent can’t find it, we look stupid. Consumers can find it, but the Realtors can’t.

As an agent you look it up on r do com or Trulia, have to call the broker who has it listed. Many times it is sold or been off the market for years. Now how is that selling our value proposition to the consumer? How is that saving time?

IMO, NAR is trying to take back control that they lost many years ago by claiming the data again. Anyone know how it is working out with State wide MLS’s ?

IMHO, NAR is trying to perserve it’s identity, but the reason agents will go for it is access to all the data through a reliable source with rules for sold listings, compensation etc… They gave it away, now they want it back.

Why allow the seller and seller’s agency to dictate what the buyer pays the buyer’s agent?

Work with Buyer’s Agency agreements and negotiate the fees with your buyer rather than whatever the sellers are willing to dole out.

On the technology side – I agree mostly – the NAR’s ability to implement and innovate is pretty much nil but … Saul’s not speaking on NAR’s behalf (yet). NAR has an obligation to their membership to tell us what they are doing – something that they have not yet accomplished …

Steve, I can’t comment about how variable commissions are handled everywhere but in Phoenix I am positive that we CAN NOT select different amounts for different brokerage companies and different agents. I don’t believe it is alright anywhere but I know it is not in ARMLS. The “variable commission” (and all of my listings have it) refers to the total commission paid by the *seller* in the event the listing agent sells the house vs. a sale where a co-broke commission is being paid. It has *nothing* to do with how much commission is being paid to the agent writing the offer. That amount is set by what is stated in the MLS listing. The agent “accepts” that amount when they show the house. I believe they legally “accepted it” when they stepped over the threshold.

The reason a listing with a variable commission must state that it is a variable commission is to bring about a fair (full disclosure) playing field in the event of competing offers for the same listing. If the listing agent is going to charge the seller less if he procures the offer then the other agent has a right to know that, so he can let his buyer know, in the event they would like to improve their offer.

As for Zillow, Trulia, and the like: It doesn’t take a national MLS to get rid of those guys. When brokers wise up and stop feeding these guys their listings, the problem will solve itself. The reason that an MLS works so well, it the fact that it is a controlled organization with paid membership REQUIRING up to date information, a controlled method for showing homes, etc. Z and T have no way of controlling the information and holding it to a very high and accurate standard.

As for the National MLS. I’m a one man shop. I don’t list homes (on purpose, anyway), and I work strictly with buyers that I get from my online presence. A national MLS would not make things easier for a guy like me if only the listing agents are getting the leads and I would have to pay an outlandish fee for the data feed. BUT, therein lies the problem. IF there is one source to find homes across the country (national MLS), why would a prospective buyer go to any other site? So now, I’m paying a fee for the data feed and getting no traffic. Where would I get my leads then? How is that in my best interest? NOT WHAT I WANT. Even if I did start listing homes, I would have to have more agents to even have a chance to survive.

Yes, on the surface, it would be beneficial to buyers to have one place to look at every home listed across the country, but I agree with Danilo, I think it would crush the smaller companies like me that DO TEND and HAVE THE ABILITY to do revolutionary things.

If you only have the large franchises, where is the innovation going to come from? Coldwell Banker has two dead guys talking to each other on the wall. C21 just seems so old-fashioned to me. REMAX is a brand with a terrible, hard to read logo, who’s only mission is to have more agents than anyone in the world(I used to be a remax agent, and that’s the way I felt). It seems like everyone else is just trying to catch up. Where would the drive to revolutionize come from?

The whole thing is one big way for the NAR to create a monopoly over the information and preserve its existence for the foreseeable future, which this would definitely do the job.

There is a way for this to be done right, but it will never be done.

Being at the #1 brokerage is important to me, because it’s important to my clients. I’m not, however, at a national powerhouse brokerage. Instead, I have every confidence in my designated broker’s ability to identify a catastrophe, if there were one looming, and steer us clear. That’s his job as the broker, so that my job as an agent can be to focus on serving my client’s needs.

Regarding variable commissions in my local association, I can create a variable commission for any reason I want. There’s an agent, that happens to be a broker/owner, I honestly don’t care for, because in a cross-sale with him he was rather unkind with regard to the number of chickens he was sharing. I’ve come very, very close to creating a variable commission structure just for him, simply to correct a past annoyance. Most agents don’t bother to check on a variable commission’s details, assuming it is of the “dual agency” variety, and I feel confident he wouldn’t figure it out until the HUD 1 shows up, which would be too late. The unfortunate truth is, he’s likely to be involved in many cross-sales in the future, and although I’m annoyed with him, I’d be foolish to burn a bridge.

Which leads to my argument why I don’t believe we’ll ever see bigger brokerages bullying smaller brokerages around. It would simply be foolish. The short term gain would be met by a long term fail. In fact, the failure could be so severe as to completely destroy the notion of cooperation that exists today, and put residential real estate into the same category that commercial real estate is, where cooperation is the final fall-back, when every other means to a sale has been exhausted. It’s so archaic, inefficient, and utterly less rewarding to sellers.

Well, the answer is “no” if brokerage “A” has 100 agents/Realtors and brokerage “B” has 10,000 agents/Realtors. In the eyes of NAR, it’s the one with the greatest number of agents/Realtors that the broker represents. That is the flawed system currently in place and there are countless examples of this in your, mine and everyone else’s marketplace.

And I’m not talking about discounting your commission if you’re acting in the capacity of Dual Agency. I’m talking about a Long and Foster offering Weichert Realtors “300 chickens” if they bring the buyer, but offering another brokerage firm only “100 chickens” (in order to steal their agents and/or drive them out of business). If I tried to tell my sellers that we wouldn’t offer one brokerage as much as the other, they’d fire me in a second because I’m hurting their chances of an agent from the other firm from wanting to bring a buyer to the table.

I agree with you that the costs to many Realtors is exuberant because they have to use multiple MLS’s, but that cost is not worth the potential downfall this MLS 5.0 could have. On a side note…if you’re selling real estate in an area that’s big enough for multiple MLS’s, are you really the “local” expert?

Yes, all of this is “could be” and a guess. But isn’t a business plan or your marketing plan a “could be” and a guess too? Do you not look at the potential/”could be” downfalls when doing something business or personal? If you go in blind without looking at the big picture and potential downfalls, you will get burned before you know what even hit you.

And yes, the argument does have NAR in the middle of it because NAR is the one who’s going to own and run it. Who else should we all be talking about?

This project is way too big and way too expensive ($55 million) to just go ahead with it and try and fix the problems later and as we go along. That’s how the government does things (Democrats, Republicans, whomever) and we all know how well that works.

For example, my own local association allows for variable commissions. I can already say that XYZ brokerage or agent will earn more or less than a different brokerage or agent. In fact, it is OFTEN used to offer a discount to sellers, if the buyer is found by the listing agent. I personally have considered using it against brokerages that offer lower co-brokerage fees than I do, as a sort of price-match. I haven’t, but I could, and came darned close to doing so recently.

So again, I don’t find any merit to the what-if, and maybe this argument.

As to the pros of a single MLS versus the crazy listing environment we have now, I would offer this one to start: lower subscription rates…particularly for agents that work on the boundaries of 2 or more MLS’s. Those agents often list in more than one MLS, just to make sure it’s seen, which means they’ve joined more than one association, significantly increasing their costs. All because of the boundaries which are completely arbitrary and do not serve the best interests of our sellers, whose interests we should be looking out for as our #1 priority.

As well, if a national MLS drives Zillow or Trulia out of business, why is that a problem? How is that a concern for a REALTOR, whose job it is to secure the highest and best offer for my client? Is Zillow doing that for me now? Or more often am I working against the Zestimate to achieve success?

Finally, I’m not going to say this is a great idea either. Instead, I will say there’s merit to the idea, and one I’d like to see explored further. If there are flaws (I haven’t seen any flaws in the idea yet, but haven’t looked that close either), let’s fix them. I’m just having a hard time figuring out why the idea of a national MLS is indeed something we shouldn’t be striving to have. All of the arguments I’ve heard against the idea are focused on NAR. That’s akin to saying that because George Bush likes it I don’t, when you are a Democrat. Sorry, that type of argument doesn’t work for me.