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Overview
Rob and Greg are back from the NAR annual convention in New Orleans. They talk about lower attendance, whether NAR committee meetings should be open to members and the press, and Compass’s new policy barring its W-2 employees from NAR volunteer leadership roles. Greg shares what he heard in 14 meetings with MLS executives about OpenRE, and the hosts disagree over whether OpenRE is a national data repository, a listing input tool, or mostly a lobbying effort. They close with their favorite conversations from the convention.
Key Takeaways
- NAR attendance fell from over 30,000 in past years to about 10,000 this year.
- Greg blames a perfect storm: the lingering effects of COVID, a down market, and infighting within the industry.
- Rob suggests NAR could focus only on business (votes and committee meetings) and open those meetings to members and the press.
- Greg points out that companies commonly keep the press out of strategy meetings.
- Compass now bars its W-2 employees from NAR volunteer leadership positions.
- Rob sees the policy as a way to reduce antitrust risk, not as retaliation against NAR.
- Greg thinks announcing it during the NAR convention was gamesmanship.
- The policy could affect NAR First Vice President Jennifer Branchini’s path to the presidency.
- MLS execs placed OpenRE somewhere between “nothing burger” and “distraction.”
- MLS execs say they understand brokers’ frustrations and are open to working with them.
- Greg believes the real broker pain point is double entry across multiple MLSs, which is a problem BLX could solve.
- Greg wonders when Cotality might acquire Ocusell.
- A broker consortium might reach about 30% of a market’s data, while the MLS has all of it.
- Portals want complete, checked, ad-quality listings, and they doubt OpenRE can deliver that.
- Rob argues OpenRE either adds little value or would end up replacing the MLS.
- Greg gives OpenRE about a 10% chance of success and warns against reading too much into so few details.
- Q1 will show whether OpenRE is a real company or just a press release.
- One MLS has over 30 active status types, an example of how complex listing data is.
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Production and Editing Services by Sunbound Studios
Many thanks to ICE for sponsoring Vendor Alley this month.
