Where Real Estate Gets Its Dirt

Consolidate, Cooperate or Cash Out

From T3 Sixty:

Strategic Paths for MLS Leadership: Consolidation, Cooperation or Sale

“When MLS leadership decides to make a move, there are three primary paths to consider: full consolidation, cooperation or an outright sale. Preparing for each requires addressing distinct operational, financial and governance hurdles.”

Eben Moran lays out the three doors pretty cleanly. Merge into one organization. Share a data feed with your neighbor while keeping your own brand, rules and local fields. Or sell to a private equity group, a tech vendor or a broker coalition.

My favorite detail is the timelines. Consolidation and cooperation each run 12 to 24 months. A sale? Three to six months from valuation to closing. Turns out the fastest way to change your MLS is to stop owning it. (Whether that’s a feature or a bug depends on who you ask at the lobby bar.)

These conversations are only going to increase. Subscriber counts are flat, budgets are tight, and the “go it alone” math gets harder every year.

Disclosure (shameless plug?): T3 Sixty has brought my company, Giant Steps, into a few of these discussions, mostly on the valuation side. That’s usually where things get real. Everyone loves the idea of exploring a merger right up until someone has to put a number on what each MLS is actually worth, and what that number buys at the board table. Eben makes the same point: agreeing to explore is the easy part.

If you want to go deeper on the numbers, Ohan Antebian on our team wrote a white paper on exactly this: Valuation, Ownership and Growth Models for MLS Organizations.

My advice: get the valuation done before you need it. Even if you never merge, cooperate or sell, knowing what your MLS is worth changes how your board weighs every other decision. You can’t negotiate from a number you don’t have.

We still have a few slots open at NAR NXT if you are interested:

Click Here => Meet with Giant Steps Advisors in New Orleans

CRMLS Vs. Compass

Super fun to join James and Keith on their pod, Real Estate Insiders Unfiltered Podcast. I was just happy to have some backup on my conversations with Rob.

“Put it in your ears kids!”

Everybody got paid but the sellers

$711 million is sitting in the commission suit settlement fund, so when do payouts start?

…it remains unknown when and how much eligible class members will receive from the settlement fund.

Nobody in this business is going to lose a minute of sleep over that, and we should be honest about why.

AJ LaTrace at Inman got the filings first. As of September 30th there was $711,251,720.86 parked in Morgan Stanley accounts, which threw off $17,705,101.82 in interest over nine months. The appeals are finished. JND Legal Administration, the administrator, is in the middle of a court-ordered audit it didn’t ask for, and in August it tried to get one of the special masters disqualified. That went about as well as you’d expect.

Three years ago last Saturday a Missouri jury found the commission structure was rigged. Since then this industry rewrote the forms, retrained the entire membership on buyer agreements, changed how compensation gets displayed in every MLS in the country, and absorbed a wave of follow-on suits it is still absorbing. What it got back was a release covering the associations, hundreds of MLSs, thousands of small brokerages and their agents, and practice changes that are settled law now. The “it’s still on appeal” argument died in August.

That was a good trade. I think most of this industry would make it again.

Here’s the part worth remembering. The release stopped at $2 billion. Every brokerage with an NAR member as principal and 2022 residential volume at or under that line got covered for free. Everything above it got carved out and handed an invoice: 0.0025 times average annual transaction volume, deposited within 120 days, to buy into a deal it had no part in negotiating. Michael Ketchmark, plaintiffs’ lead counsel, told Inman at the time that the $2 billion “was a negotiated number with NAR.” Inman counted 93 firms on the wrong side of it.

So yes, it was a good settlement. It was a good settlement for NAR, for the associations, for the MLSs, and for every brokerage under the line, which is nearly all of them. Ninety-three firms landed on the other side of that line, each one free to buy into a deal it had no part in writing. If you want to know whether this industry got off easy, don’t ask NAR. Ask one of them.

Beyond search: three ways AI can help strengthen MLS technology [Sponsor]

Search and reporting are where most people first notice AI in real estate. They are also just the starting point. MLS organizations have an opportunity to tap into using AI in ways that go beyond platform search, helping agents work smarter, improving data quality and creating a more personalized experience for everyone involved.

Here are three areas where AI can make a practical difference across MLS technology:

1. Predictive market insights

Timing matters in real estate, and AI can help MLSs, brokers and agents see shifts sooner. By analyzing historical trends, current conditions, and outside factors such as interest rates and economic indicators, AI can help surface patterns that are often easy to miss.

Consider a neighborhood where inventory is tightening ahead of a price increase, or an area where search and engagement data point to rising buyer demand. Insights like these are actionable. Agents can use them to refine pricing strategies, advise clients with more confidence and adjust marketing while conditions are still changing.

For MLSs, the same analytics can inform strategic planning by showing where the market is heading and how the platform can best serve its members.

2. Conversational tools and voice search

MLS platforms are powerful, but they can be challenging to navigate, particularly for newer agents or anyone working across several systems. AI-powered virtual assistants can offer a simpler way in. They can walk a user through entering a listing, adjusting a search filter or finding a specific report at any hour.

Voice search is also becoming increasingly popular. An agent between showings could ask for “three-bedroom homes in Riverside under $500K” and see results right away, without typing. Features like these make the MLS platform easier to use, encourage adoption, and help it feel current and responsive.

3. Fraud detection and risk management

Confidence in listing data is central to how an MLS operates. AI can help protect it by monitoring for unusual activity, such as sudden and unexplained price changes, duplicate entries or patterns that suggest manipulation.

It can also support agent verification by flagging inconsistent credentials or irregular login behavior that may point to impersonation. As platforms connect to more systems and data moves between them, safeguards like these become more important. Identifying risk early helps MLSs maintain data integrity, protect users, and support compliance without adding to staff workload.

Why it matters

Each of these use cases benefit the whole real estate ecosystem: MLSs, agents, brokers and consumers. Agents and brokers can spend more time on client relationships, consumers get a better experience, and platforms become more intuitive and efficient.
MLSs that explore AI thoughtfully will be better positioned to lead on innovation and collaboration as the industry evolves.

See why more than 200 MLS organizations across the U.S. trust Paragon Connect to provide best-in-class real estate solutions to help their members work faster, smarter and stand out.

Learn more about Paragon Connect

Many thanks to ICE for sponsoring Vendor Alley this month.


Join Us in New Orleans!

NAR NXT in New Orleans: beignets, bourbon, and a lot of opinions about the future of real estate. We’ll bring the opinions. If you’re an MLS, association or proptech company trying to make sense of where things are headed (and what it means for your 2027 plans), let’s grab some time. See link below:

Click Here => Meet with Giant Steps Advisors in New Orleans

ListHub 2.0?

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

Overview

Rob and Greg break down Open Real Estate (ORE), a new initiative from eXp, Real, RE/MAX, Keller Williams, and Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices to build a broker-run listing cooperative. They debate whether ORE is a national MLS or a syndication platform, whether a Q1 2027 launch is realistic, and what ORE could mean for MLSs, Compass, and government regulation of the industry.

Key Takeaways

  • ORE aims to prevent inventory fragmentation driven by Compass’s private listing strategy.
  • Greg gives ORE a one-out-of-ten chance of success but thinks MLSs and portals should help anyway.
  • Rob says mandatory submission plus cooperation makes ORE a national MLS, whatever it’s called.
  • Greg sees ORE as closer to ListHub 2.0, a data feed that works alongside MLSs.
  • Rob asks why ORE doesn’t just buy ListHub from Realtor.com instead of building from scratch.
  • Neither host believes ORE can launch by Q1 2027 with RFPs only now going out.
  • ORE’s early principles include submission within one business day and public or participant-only listing options.
  • ORE could become the industry’s new rulemaker, giving MLSs cover against Compass.
  • Pricing like a dollar per listing could push smaller MLSs toward consolidation.
  • Greg credits ORE for bringing a solution to the table instead of filing lawsuits.
  • Greg wonders if ORE gives Robert Reffkin a face-saving way out of his fight with MLSs.
  • Rob argues ORE’s real goal is removing inventory as a way for brokerages to compete for agents.
  • Rob warns that ORE’s consumer-protection rhetoric could invite government regulation of the MLS.
  • In 2004 congressional testimony, industry leaders defended the MLS as a private broker-to-broker cooperative.

Links

Vendor Alley: Upstream 2.0? Not Quite. 

Inman: KW, AGNT, HomeServices of America, Real REMAX fight private listing with new collaboration 

BAM (Video) : REAL, eXp, Keller Williams & Berkshire Hathaway Announce Historic Team Up 

Notorious POD (Video): Reaction Video – Open Real Estate

Are you an MLS Exec going to NAR NXT?  Book a meeting with Greg/Giant Steps 

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

Upstream 2.0? Not quite.

KW, AGNT, HomeServices of America, Real, and RE/MAX Fight Private Listings With New Collaboration

“This effort is bigger than any one company.”

Keller Williams, AGNT (eXp and NextHome), HomeServices of America, Real, and RE/MAX launched Open Real Estate today, with Brown Harris Stevens, Lamacchia, Samson, and Windermere signed on as participating members.

One thing I love is that they dropped the news right before Compass’ annual retreat. Now Reffkin will be on stage trying to defend his bullshit “Seller’s Choice” narrative against a backdrop of multiple lawsuits, inquiries from local, state, and national politicians, and some of the largest real estate firms in the business advocating for transparency and consumers. And some Compass agents are already losing faith. Who wants all this drama?

Okay, back to the announcement. After reading a bunch and watching this video, here’s what I’ve come up with.

The idea (not the execution) is simple. A broker enters a listing once, using standard fields, and it goes to every member brokerage, the local MLS, portals, appraisers, and data services. The listing has to be in the database within one business day of the listing agreement being signed. The listing broker then picks “Market,” which is public, or “Participant,” which only agents at member brokerages can see and nobody can market publicly.

A submission deadline, and every member sees every listing. That’s a cooperation rule. This time, the brokers wrote it.

Here are some high-level takeaways:

  • Open Real Estate is pushing back against the industry’s move toward inventory fragmentation and worries we’re heading toward a European model.
  • Open Real Estate has lost confidence that the MLS industry is going to solve this problem. This may be due to some MLS organizations bending the knee to Compass or the onslaught of lawsuits. (Sprinkle in some resentment about paying hundreds of millions of dollars in settlements following the NAR litigation.)
  • Open Real Estate is tired of dealing with so many MLS organizations and outdated technology.
  • Open Real Estate believes listing data is worth more than what brokers are currently being compensated for, and it plans to “democratize” the sharing of any revenues generated with Open Real Estate participants.
  • Open Real Estate doesn’t want to be a consumer-facing portal.
  • There’s no cost to sign up.
  • RFPs are out. They want to use “third-party, best-in-class technology.”
  • The plan is to be operational in Q1 2027.
  • Open Real Estate is ready to make “massive investments.”

I can see why they’re doing it. Brokers are running on razor-thin margins and looking for ways to replace lost commission revenue. Several of these firms wrote big checks to settle the commission lawsuits after NAR lost Sitzer-Burnett. And all of them have spent years dealing with hundreds of MLSs, each with its own rules, fields, and fees.

If your listings are your most valuable asset, building your own pipe and getting paid for what flows through it makes business sense. Who could blame them? Although it’s not that easy.

From what I understand, you need a complete dataset for anyone to be truly interested. Not 25%, not 50%, not 75%. And these firms aren’t there.

As I’ve stated, I don’t think these firms were particularly happy with how some MLS organizations bent the knee to Compass. But I do see something that might help many MLSs.

Since the settlement, NAR has been “de-risking,” pushing MLS policy decisions down to local MLSs. That leaves a lot of MLS executives defending rules on their own. A national group of big brokers with its own cooperation standard might be just the ticket for MLSs tired of making up excuses.

I could see Open Real Estate starting to charge MLSs for listing data, and not every MLS will be able to pay. The big ones will. The smaller ones might not, and that could set off another round of consolidation.

But running a broker cooperative is hard. Ask any MLS executive.

Rules need enforcement, enforcement needs staff and governance, and at some point, somebody has to fine a member’s top producer.

Open Real Estate has no leadership, no staff, and no final governance structure yet. It hasn’t picked a technology partner, and the RFP process with “several national technology vendors” wraps up in Q1 2027.

I think declaring they’ll be “operational” by Q1 2027 is a mistake. And I’m not really talking about the tech.

It’s never the tech. It’s the politics.

What about BLX? I thought KW and HomeServices had already announced something tech-wise with Cotality. This all sounds very familiar.

Here’s a quote from Kevin Greene, general manager of Real Estate Solutions at Cotality, in RISMedia on July 10, 2026:

“The MLS remains the essential bedrock of the local real estate marketplace. It is the definitive environment for compilation and broker-to-broker cooperation,” Greene states. “BLX is not a replacement marketplace; it is a broker’s private portfolio management tool. The two systems work in unison. The broker gains deep visibility into their own internal business inventory across their regional or national footprint, while the MLS continues to provide the comprehensive, hyperlocal market intelligence that every agent needs to advise clients and close transactions.”

Will Open Real Estate sync both ways the way BLX does? Leo says yes in the BAM video.

Again, I’m skeptical.

And what about Compass?

Back in February Robert Reffkin floated a national listing platform jointly owned by a coalition of brokerages, with “no disproportionate ownership” by Compass and an independent board.

Today, his biggest competitors launched something that looks a lot like it.

He just isn’t on the cap table.

On paper, Open Real Estate runs straight at his exclusive-listing strategy: Get it in within a day, and every member sees it.

But that strategy has brought Compass plenty of headaches and lawsuits. If Reffkin is looking for a way out, could a broker-run cooperative that isn’t an MLS be it?

Joining means playing by his rivals’ rules. Staying out means fighting them on another front.

Lots for him to think about.

Right now, it’s a letter, a website, and eight logos. It’s an interesting idea with a lot of hard parts left.

By Q1 2027, we’ll know whether it’s a platform or a press release.

Stop Losing Agents Unexpectedly: How to Build a Proactive Retention System [Sponsor]

30% of brokers lost an agent unexpectedly last year. The brokers who didn’t? They have systems in place. Here’s how to get there, in 15 minutes.

The problem, quickly

If you’ve been following this series, you already know the shape of it. Brokers say retention matters more than recruiting (74%), but almost none of them treat it as a top growth priority (2%). The blind spot behind that gap is informal monitoring: gut instinct, check-ins, and production trends, with almost no structured data behind any of it.

The cost of that blind spot is real. $18,036 and 200 days for every agent lost unexpectedly. And the warning window is often too narrow to use: 26% of brokers get little to no notice at all before an agent walks, and among those who do notice something, a third only get one to three months to act.

The system approach

Closing this gap isn’t about working harder at the same informal methods. It’s about moving from gut instinct to data-driven signals:

  • Real-time production monitoring that pulls from data your brokerage already has, no new manual tracking required.
  • Behavioral pattern detection that flags the early, quiet shifts, engagement pulling back, activity changing, before an agent decides to walk.
  • Automated alerts to your leadership team, so the signal doesn’t depend on one person’s bandwidth catching it in a busy week.

How it changes your outcome

  • Instead of 30% surprise departures, brokers running a system report far fewer.
  • Instead of landing at “somewhat confident,” brokers report genuine confidence they’d catch a flight risk in time.
  • Instead of scrambling to chase a replacement, brokers get ahead of it with a proactive retention conversation.
  • Instead of absorbing a 200-day ramp-up hit, brokers protect the pipeline before it’s ever at risk.

What the data backs up

The report’s own finding makes the case simply: brokers who move even one step past pure gut instinct, a regular check-in cadence, a simple tracking list, report meaningfully higher confidence than those relying on observation alone. You don’t need a perfect system to see the benefit. You need a system that’s more than a feeling.

See it in 15 minutes

This isn’t a band-aid on informal monitoring. It’s the system that replaces it.

Schedule a 15-Min Demo

Many thanks to Lone Wolf for sponsoring Vendor Alley this month.

Exhibit B

In Its Own Words: What Compass’s Lawsuit Reveals About Itself

CRMLS’s Art Carter and Ed Zorn sat down with Compass’s antitrust complaint against them and read it slowly. They stopped at paragraph 3:

“One reason homeowners like having this choice is that they can use pre-MLS public marketing to test the price of a home with real-world feedback from agents and their clients, which helps ensure the home is not overpriced when it lists in the MLS…”

Compass says about 48% of its sellers used this “phased marketing” where their MLS allowed it.

Last week I wrote about paragraph 76 of the six-MLS complaint, which says Compass agents build their CMAs on everybody else’s comps. Turns out that’s only half of it. According to Compass’s own complaint, about half its sellers also need everybody else’s agents to tell them what the house is worth. The comps aren’t enough. They want live feedback from the competition too, before the listing goes anywhere those competitors’ buyers can see it. Carter and Zorn ask it more politely:

“Why would a competent agent representing a seller need input and feedback from competing agents just to determine what the list price of a property should be?”

Price is the number one objection sellers raise. Compass’s answer is to let the other brokers argue it for them. Strange thing for a technology company to tell a federal judge about half its listings.

It gets worse. Same paragraph, Compass says the strategy avoids listings getting “permanently soiled by price cuts and extended ‘days on market’ that hurt the perceived value of the homes.” Zorn has been working this angle since THRIVE in September. California’s agency disclosure form (Civil Code 2079.16) says the listing agent owes the buyer a duty to disclose facts that materially affect value. If DOM and price cuts permanently soil value, they’re material. Compass just said so in a federal filing. Then it threw in the 4.6% premium its phased-marketing homes supposedly sell for, which reads an awful lot like a damages number. Hagens Berman already noticed that one in Chicago.

The fact-check section is fun too. Compass says CRMLS licenses data to portals while “paying Compass nothing.” CRMLS says it emailed Compass brokers five times this spring with instructions to collect $24,443.78 in revenue share. Compass says sellers of other goods don’t have to show price history. CRMLS posted screenshots from Edmunds (Porsche Macans natch!) and Amazon. Compass says consumers can’t get into the CRMLS database. CRMLS counts more than 12.5 million consumer logins to its client portals last year.

Yikes!

This is one side of a lawsuit arguing its case in public, and Compass’s lawyers will have answers (I’m assuming). But “test the price” isn’t a lawyer’s flourish. It’s the listing presentation.

The CMA is the price test. If you need your competitors to tell you what the house is worth, the least you can do is let their buyers see it. Last week the CMA was Exhibit A. This week Compass filed Exhibit B itself.

(Same disclosure as last week: I consult with Lone Wolf on Cloud CMA. The dog is still a very good boy.)

The CMA is now Exhibit A

Six MLSs Sue Compass, Seeking to Block Lawsuits and Affirm Rules

So, I helped break this news yesterday that ARMLS, BridgeMLS, Canopy, REcolorado, Hive and Doorify filed in the Southern District of New York on Tuesday, same court as CRMLS, same ask: declare the cooperation rules legal and tell Compass to stop threatening to sue us. Rob already did the legal read, and even he admits it’s a well-drafted complaint.

But there’s one paragraph nobody has written about. Paragraph 76:

“Brokers use records of past sales and current listings in the MLS, including detailed sales information (such as closing price, marketing time, and concessions), to prepare comparative market analyses (“CMAs”) for potential sellers. Brokers then use these CMAs to persuade a seller to hire them, to recommend listing prices, and to advise on timing and other aspects of the sale. The Cooperation Rules thus prevent non-cooperating brokers from profiting from the cooperative’s shared information while withholding their own publicly marketed listings, which other brokers cannot then use in preparing their CMAs.”

For a year and a half this fight has been framed around the buyer. Can my buyer see your listing? Six MLSs just moved it to the listing appointment, and I’m here for it.

Every CMA ever made is built on somebody else’s closed sales. The comps are your competitor’s listings, your competitor’s price reductions, your competitor’s days on market, your competitor’s concessions. You never contributed a single one of them. The cooperative did. That’s the deal. You put yours in, you get everyone’s out, and the agent at the one-person shop walks into the listing presentation with the same data as the agent from the biggest brokerage in America.

Now look at Compass’s three-phase strategy. Private Exclusive, then Coming Soon on Compass.com, then (maybe) the MLS. Reffkin’s own line is that Compass should be known for having “more inventory than any other website or brokerage.” Fine. But the complaint’s point is that a listing which arrives in the MLS after it’s sold, or arrives without the price history and the DOM, isn’t a comp. It’s a receipt. Every Compass agent still gets to build CMAs on everybody else’s data. Everybody else gets to build CMAs on whatever Compass decided to share, whenever Compass decided to share it.

Now as many of you know, I’ve spent a long time on CMAs (I even wrote a book about them, so grain of salt). In our 2026 survey with Lone Wolf, a third of agents said they’d lost a listing over price, and price was the number one objection sellers raised. The CMA is how you win that argument. It’s the one document in the business where the data is the pitch. Degrade the data and you degrade every agent’s ability to tell a seller the truth about what their house is worth. Except, of course, the agents at the brokerage holding the inventory.

That’s the free ride. Not the buyer search. The listing presentation.

Rob’s answer (beyond blowing everything up) to all of this is to make Limited Exposure the only status and let brokers market however they want, as long as everything goes in the MLS. Notice that his fix and the MLSs’ complaint agree on the one thing that matters for the CMA: the listing has to be in the database, on time, with its history. Everything else is a fight about billboards.

Reffkin wants it known that Compass has more inventory than anyone. Paragraph 76 is six MLSs pointing out that his agents’ listing presentations are built on everyone else’s.

(Disclosure: I’m currently consulting with Lone Wolf on Cloud CMA, the product I co-founded. I have a dog in this fight and he’s a very good boy.)

Sponsored By Lone Wolf Technologies