Where Real Estate Gets Its Dirt

More WIFM

MetroTex to match NTREIS broker payments ‘dollar for dollar’

Last week I gave NTREIS style points for paying brokers for their listing content. The week since has been busy. MetroTex, which represents about 70% of NTREIS’s 53,000 subscribers, will match the checks dollar for dollar out of its own pocket. Here’s MetroTex CEO Justin Landon, via Andrea Brambila (good to have her back) at Real Estate News:

“The fees our marketplace generates come to us first, and we remit NTREIS their wholesale portion. So when we match these funds, it isn’t symbolic. It’s MetroTex putting our own retail dollars behind the same commitment NTREIS is making.”

A Realtor association spending its own retail margin to double an MLS’s broker checks. Yowza!

It gets more interesting in Louisiana. Word on the street is NWLAR’s board votes July 16 on its own match, but only for subscribers who are also Realtors. That’s an association writing checks to keep people Realtors. NAR should be taking notes, and possibly a collection.

I also said last week that NTREIS wasn’t the first broker revenue share program. Here’s the name I owed you: MARIS in St. Louis, back in December. Metered vendor feeds, every data-feed dollar passed through to brokers as an equal share per closed listing, revenue neutral in the budget, good year or bad. Office exclusives get nothing. The 23rd largest MLS in the country did it seven months earlier and got almost none of the ink.

One more thing buried in Brambila’s story. NTREIS takes over rule enforcement from its 16 shareholder associations at the end of 2026, and NWLAR’s CEO is “very excited” to hand it over, partly to “derisk” the association. Checks go out the front door, power consolidates through the back.

Cooperative compensation is dead. Long live cooperative compensation!

Aligned Showings Hits 6 Million Showing Milestone

Aligned Showings recently announced in a Summer Update that over 6,000,000 showing have been approved in Aligned Showings. The update also highlighted other news.

  • ARMLS launched the ShowingTime integration on June 10, joining RMLS and UtahRealEstate.com
  • Metro MLS scheduled to launch the ShowingTime integration mid-July
  • Backend performance improvements

New Features In Progress

  • Listing agent ability to edit and add to feedback survey
  • A separate broadcast message can be sent to past and future approved showings
  • More options to enable/disable types of notifications
  • Listing agent can add documents to be included with requested or approved showing requests
  • Routes: Request showings on a route one at a time and Change date of route
  • Add global settings option for showing team members – ability to create a member list for the showing side that will be added to all new showing requests
  • Improve interactivity of map display when searching for listings in Aligned Showings
  • Broker ability to run reports for entire office
  • Mobile performance improvement
  • Price Point Analysis and My Showings Activity reports added to mobile

Traci Anderson, product owner for Aligned Showings did a demo of Aligned Showing on the MLSListings YouTube, which is a great overview of the product. Schedule a Demo.

Fresh Listings, Fresh Trouble

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

Overview

Rob and Greg kick off with some World Cup talk before diving into the Zillow vs. Compass preliminary injunction hearing, covering media coverage (Real Estate News, Inman, Nick Alfenkamp’s Substack), key testimony from Errol Samuelson on listing freshness, and cross-examination details involving Robert Reffkin and MRED. They debate whether Zillow “rules the industry” or whether the MLS cooperative model still holds, unpack what legitimate competition looks like in real estate, and explore what Compass’s strategy should be going forward — doubling down on agents vs. positioning against AI and big tech. The episode closes with a wide-ranging, contentious debate on whether private/exclusive listings carry fair housing implications tied to America’s history of housing discrimination.

Key Takeaways

  • Coverage of the Zillow vs. Compass hearing came primarily from Real Estate News, Inman (AJ Trace), and Nick Alfenkamp’s Substack; Zillow reportedly covered Alfenkamp’s travel expenses to the trial.
  • Errol Samuelson testified that a new listing gets significantly more views on its first day than by day five, framing the core dispute as who gets to benefit from “fresh” listings — the listing broker/MLS cooperative or the largest portal (Zillow).
  • Reporting suggested Robert Reffkin encouraged Bright MLS to follow MRED’s example and reacted negatively when Bright chose to stay neutral; MRED had reportedly run private listing networks for a decade before Compass became a major player there.
  • Rob argues MLS rules were broken and Zillow is seeking a legal exemption; Greg counters that broker cooperatives generally avoid side deals with MLSs to preserve a level playing field.
  • A ruling from the judge is expected around the end of the month.
  • Rob and Greg discuss Compass strategy options: positioning as a tech company (rejected by Wall Street), inventory/listing differentiation (private listings), and scaling via agent count (the Anywhere deal). Greg suggests Compass should double down on agent quality/reputation and buyer-demand data rather than “cheat codes” like exclusive inventory.
  • They debate potential enemies for a Compass marketing strategy — NAR, Zillow, or AI/big tech broadly — with Rob arguing consumer trust in tech companies has shifted negatively in recent years.
  • Extended debate on whether competing on exclusive inventory is illegitimate specifically in real estate (vs. law, banking, etc.), including whether fair housing history and housing discrimination sensitivities explain the industry’s resistance to private listings.

Connect with Rob and Greg

Rob’s Website 

Greg’s Website 

Watch us on YouTube

Our Sponsors:

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Production and Editing Services by Sunbound Studios

Thrive Broker Summit [Sponsor]

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The conversations about what’s working, what’s changing, and what everyone is trying to figure out next.

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The sessions are important. So are the conversations before the first session, after the last session, and everywhere in between. That’s where ideas get challenged, relationships get built, and you often leave with something you didn’t expect.

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P.S. If you’d like to get a feel for what Thrive is all about, here’s a recap from last year’s event:

WIFM?

A new MLS value proposition from North Texas Real Estate Information Systems: Pay the brokers

Every MLS in the country is getting the same question this year: what do brokers get for their data? MRED answered with a Compass partnership. CRMLS answered with an off-Zillow switch. NTREIS just answered with a check. Seven figures, self-funded, no data deal attached, going out this month to brokers based on listings entered, data completeness, and deals that actually closed. Here’s CEO Chris Carrillo:

“Brokers are the purpose behind the MLS and its primary content provider. The listings they input fuel the marketplace, provide transparency for buyers and sellers, and drive fair housing. NTREIS Rewards puts that value back where it belongs.”

Brokers have been grumbling for decades that the MLS charges them for access to their own data, then sells it back to them. This is what it looks like when an MLS finally answers the grumble. And note the direction: the rewards tilt toward brokers who kept their data clean and opted into syndication. While half the industry is hanging velvet ropes and calling it a business model, NTREIS is paying for the opposite.

This isn’t the first, or last, broker revenue share program. But it gets a lot of style points from me.

Time Flies

My son Toby attended Apple Camp at an Apple Store as a kid. Now he works at an Apple Store and teaches Apple Camp himself.

Sunny Lake Hahn joins Luxury Presence as Head of Industry Relations

From LinkedIn

“A lot of people are treating the MLS as the thing standing in the way. I see it differently. Luxury Presence’s clients are your subscribers. The agent who logs into the MLS every morning is the same agent counting on our products to work in service of their customers. We serve the same people, and everyone loses when the data flow between us breaks.

So my job is to make sure that flow is always reliable. To work with MLSs, vendors, and industry organizations so that listing data moves cleanly and our shared clients never have to think about the plumbing underneath their business.”

Well said. Congrats Sunny and Luxury Presence.

250

What about Opendoor?

From Nick Aufunkamp’s Rouge Realtor Substack: Halftime in Chicago

“Zillow’s partnership with Opendoor was also brought up on multiple occasions. MRED and Compass sought to undermine Zillow’s claims of fighting for transparency and market visibility on the basis of their support of Opendoor buying off-market properties. In another apparent hypocrisy, Zillow supported sellers who chose to sell their home off-market to Opendoor. The attorneys argued that if Zillow cares so much about sellers getting maximum market exposure and buyers having the opportunity to see every available home, how can they simultaneously endorse a platform in which sellers obtain less than market value and no other buyer has any opportunity to see the home before Opendoor closes on it?”

I hadn’t thought of this angle. Not a strong argument for Compass, but interesting.

What a mess

Zillow’s antitrust hearing gets underway as consumer groups call for federal investigation of Compass and MLSs

A joint Compass-MRED press release from April, announcing MRED’s purported national expansion, promised that Compass would provide all of its nationwide listings to MRED and subsidize memberships for up to 100,000 agents. Neither commitment has come close to being fulfilled. Internal Compass emails show executives scrambling over subsidy logistics four days after the press release, with one noting that even a $10-per-agent subsidy “would cost us $1 million.” Broude forwarded that email to a colleague with three facepalm emojis. The colleague replied: “What. A. Mess.”

So even Compass‘ own executives thought subsidizing MLS memberships was a bad idea? “Mess” is the wrong word.

What a disaster.

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