In this season of 2025 budgeting and year end planning, you may want to take a look at WAV Group’s Brokerage Technology Roadmap Report to start to think about what you should be thinking about for your brokerage technology solutions moving forward. The good news is the leading brokerage technology vendors have been working to help brokers operate more efficient and profitable businesses.
Now that the attorneys have been awarded nearly $1 billion, I believe we are going to see a lot more attorneys come out the woodwork to try to find additional vulnerabilities in our policies and procedures/traditions. I believe the attorneys and DOJ are just getting warmed up. Here’s one potential vulnerability that keeps me up at night….
Since the Biden Administration announced their priority to “un-tie” real estate 4 years ago, I have been urging my MLS clients to get serious about opening up their subscription services to all licensees.
Today brokerages representing over 600,000 agents cannot or will not require NAR membership because of their proposed lawsuit settlements. Whether from litigation, DOJ rulings or the belief from brokerages (especially the $2 billion crowd) that NAR let them down, it is anything but business as usual right now. All Association leaders need to be open to new ways to doing business to be able to ride out this storm. Forward-looking, strategic AE’s recognize these vulnerabilities. They are effectively partnering with their volunteer leaders to push the envelope, eliminating outdated or poorly attended programs and focusing their attention on preparing for future scenarios that may be foisted on the industry from lawyers, the DOJ or some other unknown threat.
As the current chair of the National Small Business Association, the oldest non-partisan small business advocacy organization in the U.S., I was thrilled to see RFK Jr. express so much passion to provide support for small businesses to make it easier for all of us to survive and thrive. So, what did I learn from this fascinating session? It’s truly hard to summarize it, but I’ll highlight some of the points that stuck out the most for me.
Today, it is more important than ever that the real estate industry nurtures and protects its best and brightest staff executives. We need people that are thoughtfully helping the industry navigate the uncertain waters we are swimming in right now. I have noticed an alarming trend, though, counter to this need. In the past year or so, many progressive Association Executive leaders have been dismissed without cause, advance notice, or well-documented justification. It seems as though as the market has gotten tougher the number of firings has increased. This alarming trend made me think about a few things that may be lacking in training and governance orchestration we may want to consider.
The latest Association addition to North Carolina Regional MLS moves the organization beyond the walls of their state and opens them up as one of the MLSs gaining traction in the formation of Southeast MLS collaborations. They are arguable one of, if not the fastest growing MLS in the country when measured by the addition of new Associations and moving beyond contiguous markets. When examining their meteoric expansion, I observed a few lessons that can be leveraged by other markets to deliver brokers the broader data access they are demanding. In my opinion there are five key reasons NCRMLS is successfully expanding to support its brokers and the agents and clients they serve:
With the removal of compensation from the mls. Data quality is becoming an even more important benefit of MLSs. It’s not enough to just let your MLS customers self report on issues. MLSs need to consistently curate more comprehensive, accurate and timely real estate data insights to reinforce their core value proposition
MLSs mistakenly refer to their customers as members. They are NOT members. MLSs are not trade associations. They are technology companies. Have you ever heard Verizon, Apple or AT&T call their subscribers – “members”? Have you ever Starlink or Spectrum call their paid subscribers – “members”? These subscription-based technology companies think of every one of their paid subscribers as customers. They understand that every one of their customers has a choice to pay for their services or not so they continually focus on how to retain their customers
Approximately 75% of MLSs are owned by Associations today. With the history of being launched as a for profit arm of trade associations, MLSs naturally adopted the governance models and board make-up of their parent companies. Here’s why I believe that approach is no longer valid.
A second privately owned MLS has opted out of the NAR Anti-Trust Settlement stating that their rules were always more transparent than the standard NAR rules. A truly broker-centric, independent MLS, Resides.io MLS in Hilton Head, South Carolina is launching an inclusive concessions field and options for brokers to upload listing and buyers broker agreements. The organization is also building forms to make it easier for brokers to adapt to the new changes removing compensation as one of the center points of an MLS.
There is very little clarity today about the fast spreading news that Realtor Association shareholders of RE Colorado have given notice that they intend to sell their shares of the MLS to a private equity firm. The Realtor Associations want out of their investment, and it doesn't really matter why. To date no MLS has ever been sold to private equity investors. Some MLSs have been sold outright to fellow Associations and MLS, but to our knowledge, we never seen private equity enter this space until now. This could set off a wave of transactions if private equity starts to pay attention to the profitable business models of Multiple Listing Services.
