Cry-Baby Board of Realtor Associations and MLS’s Continue Desperate Rule-Making
January 6, 2008 — Greg
The Northwestern Wisconsin Multiple Listing Service, operated by the Realtors Association of Northwestern Wisconsin, is realizing that it is a lame monopoly that is going extinct, in fact, an MLS system. And they have decided to take the same ridiculous position that the Regional MLS of Minnesota and the Multiple Listing Service of Northern Illinois and Northwest MLS in Washington have taken…
They cry about it and demand that the term “MLS” is theirs and demand that people stop using it. Do they have a copyright or trademark on the term, you ask? Of course not, but that doesn’t matter to these cry-baby pissy-pant’s- what matters is they want to continue their monopoly of information.
Here’s how the MLS works:
Broker pays MLS a fee to become a member, Broker takes listing, Broker displays listing on MLS, Broker pays MLS more money to display MLS listings on website, MLS sets ridiculous rules that broker must follow or be completely cut off from using MLS information.
And the Boards of Realtors are the ones handing down this new trend after the National Association of Realtors decided that it would continue being irrelevant give that authority to the local Boards.
MLS’s around the country are seeing the writing on the wall. They know they are a monolpoly and that they cannot continue to control everything like they want to. So, instead of evolving and becoming a solution and making things better, these absurd MLS’s are rolling around on the floor kicking and screaming.
These MLS’s don’t want agents to be able to use the term “MLS” to advertise their services to the public. Although the information for the home searches on the agent websites come directly from their MLS, they don’t want the agents to be able to say so.
This precisely shows why we need new systems and websites to replace the MLS’s- or we need some real leadership at NAR to help connect the dots for these guys. All these MLS’s doing damaging things and NAR is just watching the crash-up derby from their comfortable position at 10,000 feet and that does not help the industry.
Inman has better coverage.
January 6, 2008 at 11:23 am
Greg - It should be mandatory for these idiots to publish the following disclaimer - “I am a closed-minded and small-minded individual that believes life and business should not evolve with the times.”
You must have gotten hammered with the storm that just moved through here???
January 7, 2008 at 8:29 am
Of course the party line is that the MLS searches provided through IDX arrangements may not include the entire MLS, as brokers have the ability to opt out. I suspect the real reason for wanting to restrict the use of the term is so as not to imply that the consumer actually has access to what “we” do, thereby diminishing our value. It’s a bunch of garbage, really. If we worried more about providing value beyond being a human search engine, this whole issue would go away. Conversely, the longer we publically imply that MLS access is our primary (or only) value, the sooner we will all looking for other work. How can we expect the public to value our services if we don’t seem to recognize our own real value? (Rhetorical question.)
January 7, 2008 at 6:15 pm
**sigh**
February 1, 2008 at 6:25 pm
Greg- I completely agree with you. Our brokerage works with NWMLS of Washington quite a bit and I believe that their philosophy is something like this…. The World revolves around them, They will return your phone calls IF they feel like it, and any problems you (the brokerage) have with data feeds will be resolved by the end of the fiscal year.
Jon- Your disclaimer should be printed in bold letters on every MLS/IDX application.