Where Real Estate Gets Its Dirt

CRMLS ain’t playing

Mandatory Cooperation: Strengthening Real Estate Transparency and Collaboration

“At its most basic, the CCP upholds the integrity of the MLS, which, considering the MLS serves as a broker cooperative, is necessary to foster collaboration and ensure that all parties have access to a transparent and fair marketplace—all critical for maintaining trust in the real estate community.”

I’m a little late in posting (been a bit busy lately) but I did want to comment. There are so many good quotes in this post by CRMLS, CEO’s Art Carter. If you haven’t read it, read it. If you have read it, read it a again.

So great to see such strong leadership about this issue. I hope this gives other MLS organizations the talking points and courage to not back down to any broker who wants to sacrifice the benefits of the MLS in service of their ever changing business models.

  1. It’s such an ivory-tower opinion though. All of the people who are standing up for the CCP aren’t on the street.

    Sure, everyone wants to be on the side of “integrity” but the cheaters are going to cheat. I think there is more going on now than ever due to the unwitting violators and there isn’t enough enforcement or education about the actual rules. When realtors see violations happening, they just think, “well, it’s back to the way it used to be” and they do it too.

    A for-sale sign goes up a few days early, a post on Facebook two weeks in advance, or a mailer that hits a few days before the first open house. “Hey, what’s it going to hurt? I gotta do my job!”

    All violate the CCP. But are their managers saying anything? Team leaders? Nope.

    Meanwhile, the realtor community is a sitting duck just waiting for the next round of lawsuits blaming the CCP for being unfair to sellers and/or the DOJ to tear our head off.

    Will Art and everyone else touting integrity of the MLS be the first to pay for the next round of lawsuits? They could put the MLS companies out of business and NAR/brokerages too.

    We are sitting ducks, just waiting…

  2. @Jim I respect your opinion but it’s always harder to try and do the right thing. In my opinion the travesty here is this protracted sellers market. Typically pocket listings would all go away when listings take longer to sell. When the market flips, and it will flip, lets hope we haven’t destroyed what has been touted the “envy of the world”, MLS.

  3. The MLS will be useless soon enough. We’ve already had five listings since August 17th where the buyer walked into open house and bought it through us. Not unrepresented, and not because they blew off their agent. They didn’t have an agent, so we represented them and the seller too. And we’re a small fry – only 11 listings total in that time frame (with three of those active and still possible to round-trip!) so five of eight possible.

    The buyer-agent is a walking deadman, and so is the MLS – all thanks to NAR thinking there was no way they could lose a court case to a bunch of hicks from Missouri.

    The real estate industrial complex will ride the CCP into the ground (with help from the DOJ) and force Compass to break away from MLS and go it alone. We are fine with that outcome, and we will still co-op with outside agents who find our listings on our website.

    Reffkin is such a nice guy that he is trying to be friendly and persuade the industry to see it our way. But instead, everyone wants to call him names and claim that we want buck the integrity/MLS tradition. But we just want to stop getting sued.

    I told Robert to break away right now, but it’s too early. Give it a few months.

  4. Making it harder for Buyers to choose an agent isn’t a good thing. “The death of the MLS” or “Are MLS Doomed?” have been a staple panel discussion at real estate conferences since I got in the business over 25 years ago. Fact is consumers don’t want to visit multiple websites for listings, and brokers need the MLS. To quote Col. Jessup, “deep down in places you don’t talk about parties, you want me on that wall — you need me on that wall.”

  5. Pingback: Batman loves CCP - Vendor Alley

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