Where Real Estate Gets Its Dirt

MLS Mega Merger and Boomers vs. First Time Home Buyers

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Overview

Rob and Greg discuss a major MLS merger in South Florida, creating one of the largest MLSs in the country and what it signals for future consolidation. They debate whether this is the start of a larger wave of “mega mergers,” and what it could mean for markets like Texas and California. The conversation then shifts to a major housing trend: first-time homebuyers dropping to historic lows while boomers dominate the market. They explore whether affordability, interest rates, or generational shifts are driving the change—and what it could mean long-term for the housing industry.

Key Takeaways

  • Major MLS merger in Florida:Miami and Beaches MLS combine into a ~93,000-member entity, now the third largest in the U.S.
  • Consolidation trend:This could be the beginning of more “mega mergers” as MLSs look to scale and reduce fragmentation.
  • Operational challenges ahead:System consolidation, leadership transition, and cultural differences will shape how successful the merger is.
  • First-time buyers at record low:Only 21% of buyers are first-time homeowners—the lowest ever recorded.
  • Boomers dominating purchases:Boomers now make up 42% of buyers, largely driven by downsizing and relocation.
  • Debate: Are boomers competing with first-time buyers?Rob argues they may be targeting similar homes; Greg يرى them as different segments with different priorities.
  • Affordability crisis remains core issue:High prices, interest rates, and low inventory continue to block entry for new buyers.
  • Bigger-picture concern:Long-term affordability challenges could reshape housing demand—and even influence future political and economic policy.

Links

South Florida Just Became a Superpower
Baby Boomers Remain Largest Share of Home Buyers as First-Time Buying Falls to Record Low

Connect with Rob and Greg

Rob’s Website 

Greg’s Website 

Watch us on YouTube

Our Sponsors:

Cotality 

Notorious VIP

The Giant Steps Job Board 

Production and Editing Services by Sunbound Studios

Giant Steps offers free “Pre-marketing Listing Toolkit”

We Built a Pre-Market Listings Toolkit for MLS Leaders. Here’s Why — and It’s Yours.

“If you’ve been following the real estate industry over the past year, you know the conversation around private listings and pre-marketing has moved fast. Zillow Preview, the Compass-Redfin partnership, eXp’s deals with Homes.com and Realtor.com — it feels like the landscape shifts every few weeks. And if you’re an MLS executive or board member trying to brief your leadership team on what’s happening, keeping materials current is its own full-time job.

We know because we’ve been living it.

At Giant Steps, we work with MLS organizations and proptech companies navigating exactly this kind of complexity. Over the past several months, we’ve been fielding the same questions from clients and colleagues: What’s the difference between a pocket listing and a private listing? How does Zillow Preview actually work? What does this mean for my MLS?

So we decided to build a set of materials that any MLS organization can use to get their board and leadership up to speed — quickly, clearly, and without spin…


Head over to the Giant Steps Advisors blog to download the PDFs

HAR Goes Real-Time

Repliers Partners with HAR.com to Expand Real-Time MLS Data Access

“This partnership reflects our philosophy of giving world-class services to our subscribers with valuable tools to build better and faster, while gaining new data insights and security features made possible by real-time data consumption through Repliers.”

— Rene Galvan, President and CEO, Houston Association of REALTORS®

HAR just made Repliers the exclusive platform for real-time MLS data distribution to its subscribers and vendors. One shared infrastructure layer. No more lag, no more brittle pipelines, no more every-vendor-builds-their-own-data-stack.

But the interesting part isn’t the MLS data. Everybody’s got MLS data. It’s that HAR is throwing in three proprietary datasets at no cost: member pageviews and leads from HAR.com, real-time showing activity from ShowingSmart, and verified agent performance ratings. Buyer demand signals, market momentum, consumer behavior. That’s the good stuff.

Shared infrastructure instead of redundant data plumbing. That’s where the industry needs to go, and HAR continues to be one of the most forward-thinking MLSs in the country.

ICE [Sponsor]

The new MLS platform

If you haven’t heard, ICE continues to invest in modernizing the MLS experience, and the result is the Paragon Connect MLS platform. 

Paragon Connect is a new experience for Paragon users, a modern MLS platform that works the same on desktop and mobile, and users are impressed.

In the recent Paragon Connect CSAT survey, the numbers tell a compelling story.

44% of end users — nearly half of all respondents — rated their experience a 5, “Very Satisfied.” That’s nearly 45% of users who didn’t just tolerate the platform. They loved it.

When you look at the scores, the trend is clear. The largest group landed at the top of the scale, with scores of 3 and above, making up over 80% of responses. 

That’s a user base that is engaged, invested, and — most importantly — satisfied.

For MLS organizations still evaluating whether Paragon Connect is ready for their membership, this data is worth paying attention to. End user satisfaction is one of the hardest metrics to move in this industry. Scores like these reflect real investment in the platform and a genuine commitment to the user experience.

The agents have spoken. The data backs it up. If Paragon Connect has been on your radar, now might be the right time to take a closer look.

South Florida Just Became a Superpower

Dionna Hall

MIAMI REALTORS® and RWorld Announce Merger Creating the World’s Largest Local Realtor Association

“Two of the strongest MLS and Realtor organizations in the U.S. are now one, building on South Florida’s momentum as a global real estate powerhouse and shaping the industry’s next frontier.” — Alfredo Pujol, Chairman of the Board, MIAMI REALTORS®

93,000 members. Read that number again.

MIAMI REALTORS® (56,000 members, the largest local association in the U.S.) and RWorld (37,000, the third largest) are merging into a single organization, Miami and South Florida REALTORS®, effective May 11. MSFR MLS? That’s larger than 47 state associations. More than double the next biggest local association. And when they combine the MLSs, it’ll be the third-largest MLS in the country behind Bright and CRMLS.

This isn’t two small boards merging because they can’t afford their tech stack anymore. This is the #1 and #3 local associations in the country looking at each other across the Broward County line and saying, “This is ridiculous — it’s time.”

Knowing a little bit about the data licensing has worked in the past this is going to be a HUGE win for brokers and agents.

A few things that jumped out:

Teresa King Kinney and Dionna Hall will serve as Co-CEOs, continuing what the press release correctly notes is 60+ years of women’s leadership across both organizations. Kinney retires at the end of 2026 after 33 years running MIAMI, with Hall taking over as sole CEO in 2027. That’s how you do a leadership transition — you don’t just announce it, you build a bridge.

Jonathan Dolphus becomes the first African American Chairman of the Board in the history of either organization. Super cool.

The MLS piece is interesting. Both systems — Flexmls and Matrix — will keep running initially, with a combined MLS coming later (cage match?). Members get access to both platforms. And the combined MLS will have data exchanges with 11 of the largest MLSs in the U.S. and Canada, plus they’re joining the Global Data Exchange. For an association that already has 437 international agreements, South Florida just became even more of a magnet for global real estate.

Division boards for both MIAMI and RWorld will stick around to preserve each organization’s culture. Smart. The mergers that blow up are the ones where one side feels like they got absorbed. This looks more like a marriage than an acquisition.

$69 billion in total real estate volume in 2025. 93,000 members. Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, St. Lucie, and parts of Martin counties — basically the entire southeast coast of Florida under one roof.

NAR called it the “largest, fastest, and most seamless merger” in its history. We’ll see about the seamless part — that’s always easier to say on day one. But the ambition here is real, and the structure looks like they actually thought it through.

My hat’s off to Pujol, Dolphus, Kinney, and Dionna. This is what it looks like when two organizations merge from a position of strength instead of desperation.

The consolidation continues…

Realtracs Says the Quiet Part Out Loud

Who Owns Listing Data? We Say Brokers Do.

“The uncomfortable reality is that our industry treats listing data as if they have a right to use it however they want. Brokers and agents earn listings and invest in them. The data that follows should not be treated as a commodity. It’s their work product and a business asset.”

Back in February, Realtracs restructured into three entities — a holding company, a product company, and an investment arm — with a new 7-member board stacked with independent directors. Stuart White said the governance model needed to evolve because over 30% of new Realtracs users were coming from outside Middle Tennessee. It was a smart, quiet move that most people outside Nashville probably missed.

Now we know what the restructuring was for.

Realtracs just killed their Participation Agreement — the standard MLS contract that every broker signs — and replaced it with something called a Brokerage Services Agreement. And the difference isn’t cosmetic. The new agreement explicitly states that the listing broker owns their listing content and the data that comes with it. Not the MLS. Not the association. The broker.

That’s a big deal. And here’s why.

For decades, the industry has operated in this hazy middle ground where nobody really defined who owned the data. MLSs collected it, distributed it, licensed it, monetized it — all under the catch-all phrase “for MLS purposes.” Brokers created the listings but had very little say in where the data went or what was done with it once it entered the system.

Realtracs is saying: that’s over. Under the new agreement, listing data can only move in ways that serve the brokerage’s economic interest or operational efficiency. If it doesn’t serve the broker, it doesn’t happen.

Read that again. If it doesn’t serve the broker, it doesn’t happen.

Now — will every MLS follow suit? No. Some MLSs have built entire business models around the idea that listing data is their asset. Data licensing, third-party feeds, analytics products — all of that gets a lot more complicated when the broker has explicit ownership rights and a legal foundation to enforce them.

But someone had to go first. And the fact that it’s Realtracs — an MLS that just restructured specifically to move faster and align more closely with brokers — tells you this isn’t a press release. It’s a strategy.

I just worry about 2nd and 3rd order consequences here. But I’ll wait to comment on those later since I’m told Realtracs will have more news to share soon.

The Southeast Just Got Bigger

Southeast MLS Alliance Expands with Addition of realMLS in Northeast Florida

“The Southeast MLS Alliance was built on the idea that stronger regional connections lead to better outcomes for everyone in the transaction — agents, brokers, and consumers. Adding realMLS and the Northeast Florida market to that network is a natural fit. Each addition to the Alliance expands the value of membership for every MLS and every professional already part of it.” — Joseph Cullom, CEO, CHS Regional MLS

The Southeast MLS Alliance — CHS Regional MLS (Charleston), Realtracs (Nashville), Canopy MLS (Charlotte), and Georgia MLS — just added realMLS out of Jacksonville. That brings the network to 118,000+ subscribers stretched across five major southeastern markets.

Look at the geography for a second. Nashville. Charlotte. Atlanta. Charleston. And now Jacksonville. That’s an arc from Tennessee to the Florida coast with very few gaps in between. If you’re an agent working a relocation referral from Charlotte to Jacksonville, or Charleston to Nashville, you’re now looking at the same data inside your MLS platform. No second login. No calling a friend of a friend.

This is the quiet version of MLS consolidation. Nobody merged. Nobody got acquired. Nobody’s brand disappeared. They just… connected the pipes. Shared active and historical listing data. And every time another MLS joins, the value of being in the network goes up for everybody already there. It’s the network effect working exactly as designed.

Nicole Jensen at realMLS called it “eliminating barriers,” which is a phrase that gets thrown around a lot in press releases. But in this case, it’s actually what’s happening. Agents in Jacksonville can now see listing data across five southeastern markets without leaving their platform.

With the MLS count now below 500 and dropping, alliances like this are one answer to the consolidation question. You don’t have to merge to get the benefits of scale. You just have to be willing to share.

My hat’s off to Cullom and the Alliance for building something that keeps growing, as I’m fond of saying the best marketing is having a good product.

ICE [Sponsor]

The world envies our MLS system — Do we appreciate it enough?

Every portal, every AI tool, every slick PropTech platform? They all run on MLS data. Strip that away and you’ve got a very expensive app that shows nothing. The MLS is the quiet engine room of American real estate — and at a time when the industry is navigating more change than ever, that foundation matters more, not less.

Lucie Fortier makes that case better than most in her latest piece. Worth a read. 

IDX: The Original Sin?

The Industry Relations Podcast is now available on your favorite podcast player!

Overview

Rob and Greg break down NAR’s latest settlement move, Zillow’s shift toward pre-marketing, and what it all means for the industry. The back half turns into a heated debate on new “public marketing” laws, the definition of marketing itself, and whether the MLS is a listing platform or a broker cooperative.

Key Takeaways

  • NAR’s new settlement strategy is more proactive—but may face legal pushback
  • Zillow’s “Preview” signals a major shift toward pre-marketing
  • Portal competition remains intense across Zillow, Homes.com, and others
  • New state laws are vague and raise more questions than answers
  • “What is marketing?” is becoming a core industry debate
  • The MLS identity crisis: platform vs. cooperative
  • Pre-marketing continues to reshape listing strategy
  • Consumer expectations could determine where this all goes

Connect with Rob and Greg

Rob’s Website 

Greg’s Website 

Watch us on YouTube

Our Sponsors:

Cotality 

Notorious VIP

The Giant Steps Job Board 

Production and Editing Services by Sunbound Studios

NAR Closes the Other Loop

National Association of REALTORS® Reaches Agreement to Resolve Nationwide Homebuyer Claims in Tuccori v. At World Properties

“NAR will pay $52.25 million into a settlement fund over a multi-year period… The settlement covers REALTOR® members, state and local REALTOR® associations (including those that do, and do not, operate Multiple Listing Services (MLSs)), REALTOR® MLSs, non-REALTOR® MLSs, and real estate brokerages with a REALTOR® as principal… This extends protection to a broad segment of the industry and represents a more comprehensive release than has been achieved in any previous NAR settlement.”

Remember the $418 million Sitzer-Burnett settlement? That was the seller side.

This is the other side of the trade.

Tuccori is the buy-side class action — homebuyers claiming they were the ones actually paying the buyer-agent commission all along through inflated home prices. And in case you were wondering whatever happened to Batton, the other buyer case that’s been hanging around since 2019 — NAR is paying to make that one go away too. They’ll seek a stay in Batton because, as the release puts it, “NAR’s settlement in Tuccori is intended to release the claims in the Batton case.”

Translation: we’re buying our way out of both. Great strategy but we shall see.

A few things worth noting:

$52.25 million is a lot cheaper than $418 million. Whatever you think about the merits of the buy-side theory, the plaintiffs’ bar clearly thinks it’s a harder case to win than the seller side was. Buyers didn’t sign the listing agreement. Buyers didn’t pay the commission directly. The damages theory is a longer walk.

The release is broader than anything before it. Non-REALTOR MLSs are in. Brokerages with a REALTOR principal are in. State and local associations that don’t operate an MLS are in. If you were worried about being the next named defendant, this probably matters to you more than the dollar figure. Seems like NAR is not forgetting the large brokerages this time around.

It’s opt-in. Meaning the folks who already settled separately — or who’ve been named in their own cases — don’t get to free-ride. You have to raise your hand.

The headline number will get the attention. But the real story here is NAR continuing to clean up the legal landscape one case at a time, buying peace for as much of the industry as they can drag under the tent. After the year they’ve had, writing a $52M check to make the buy-side disappear is probably the best Monday they’ve had in a while.

And on another note, I got wind of this directly from NAR the day before the news came out. As I mentioned in a previous post this is not your old, “shut up the adults are talking” NAR. This story is representative of the post settlement NAR, under Nykia. The Doctor is in.

Sponsored By ICE