Jeff Bosch Named Next CEO of ARMLS
“The ARMLS Board of Directors has named Jeff Bosch as the organization’s next Chief Executive Officer. Bosch will assume the role in November, as Matt Consalvo will retire after 14 years as CEO.”
Congratulations Jeff!
The “Enshittification” of Home Buying
Brian Boero wrote a good one about how home search keeps getting worse and how nobody’s coming to save the buyer. He’s right that the buyer won’t save themselves. I just think he’s looking at the wrong rescuers.
“The Consumer is an abstraction; the empowered real estate consumer is largely a fiction.”
True. No consumer uprising is coming. People will put up with a worse home search the same way they put up with worse airlines and smaller candy bars.
Boero says “in time, the regulators may do something about it.” They already are. Washington passed a law that says listings have to be marketed to everybody. Connecticut and New York wrote the warning into the paperwork sellers sign. More states are lined up for January.
But regulators are the slow lane. The fast lane is the lawyers.
Last week the president of the NAACP, Derrick Johnson, wrote in Time that private listing networks are “more than an industry dispute. This is a civil rights issue.” His piece comes with numbers: sellers in majority-minority zip codes lose more when a home stays off the MLS, and MLS listings sell for around 17.5% more than off-MLS ones.
Read that again as a plaintiff’s attorney. You’ve got a protected class, a measurable harm, and a price gap you can put in front of a jury. And you don’t have to prove anybody meant to discriminate. A Texas broker laid the theory out back in March: under the Fair Housing Act, “You don’t have to prove anyone intended to discriminate.” Disparate impact does the work.
If that sounds familiar, it should. That’s Sitzer/Burnett. A theory, a damages number, and a sympathetic class. The commission lawsuits started as a fringe argument too, right up until they cost the industry billions and rewrote the rulebook.
So no, the consumer won’t fix online search. But three other parties are lining up to take a swing at it. The statehouses. A U.S. senator (Elizabeth Warren just sent Compass and MRED 23 questions about fair housing risk). And the trial bar, which just got its opening argument handed to it by the NAACP.
Boero says all this is “only good for lawyers and reporters.” Speaking as one of the “reporters”, I’d keep an eye on the lawyers.
Derrick Johnson, president of the NAACP, penned an article for Times
The Next Fight for Fair Housing Is Online
“When homes move into closed or semi-closed channels, that basic fairness can break down. Buyers who are not connected with the “right” agent, broker, or social network may never have the chance to find their dream home. Sellers may lose out on a better deal because fewer buyers know their home is available. Smaller brokerages and agents lose access to critical information that is no longer shared equally.
That should concern anyone who cares about fair housing.”
Yup.
Canopy MLS bets on separation, names Steve Byrd its first standalone CEO
“Byrd is taking the helm from longtime Canopy Realtors and MLS CEO Anne Marie DeCatsye, but instead of leading both the MLS and the Realtor association, Decatsye’s existing role will be filled by two separate people marking the beginning of a true separation in leadership between the association and the MLS. This move by the greater Canopy organization has been in the works for some time now, after organization leaders felt that more separation was needed despite the MLS and association having separate boards of directors since 2003. “
I just wanted to post this story because I love this picture of Steve so much. Congrats!
The Industry Relations Podcast is now available on your favorite podcast player!
Overview
Greg launches the second edition of The Art of the CMA, along with new survey data showing agents believe CMAs are more relevant than ever, even as AI adoption grows. That leads into the episode’s main debate: could AI tools like ChatGPT or Claude get direct MLS access and replace agents’ role in producing CMAs and running transactions? Rob and Greg dig into MLS “participant” rules, a LinkedIn post from Craig Cheatham (Realty Alliance) pushing to redefine who qualifies as a real broker vs. a paper/AI brokerage, and a broader disagreement over whether AI is fundamentally different from past disruptors like Zillow, iBuyers, and discount brokerages.
Key Takeaways
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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.
Google Went National. Now Who Negotiates for the MLS?
For a year now the whole story has been the same. Compass, MRED, Howard Hanna, everybody racing to pull listings off the MLS and into a private network of their own. Build the wall, control the door, charge for the key.
Then the single biggest distribution player on the planet walked in and did the opposite. Per Darryl Davis at HousingWire, Google now shows MLS listings inside mobile search across all 50 states through Local Services Ads, with the data flowing in through HouseCanary’s ComeHome under MLS agreements. Davis reports three MLSs are live so far, CRMLS, San Diego MLS, and My State MLS, with the rollout going market by market through the summer.
Here’s the line that stuck with me, from Davis’s companion piece over at Inman:
“Google looked at every private network, every pre-market feed and every walled garden, and built its national home search on MLS data.”
Sit with that. Google had its pick. Every coming-soon feed, every pocket-listing club, every velvet rope in the business was available to it. And the company that knows more about how people actually search than anyone alive looked at all of it and bet on the open MLS. As Davis puts it, “the search bar chose the MLS.”
I’ve said where I stand on private listings more than once. I’m not a fan of hiding the ball, and the exposure data has never been a close call. So the question Google’s move quietly asks is the one nobody in the walled-garden camp wants on the table. If the biggest search engine on earth runs on MLS data and the data says full exposure is worth real money, what exactly is a Compass Private Exclusive worth when Google can’t see it?
Now, this is the same playbook we’ve watched before. And honestly I delayed writing about this because HouseCanary’s reputation in regard to listing data has been, how you say, sus. But HouseCanary holds brokerage status, which is how it gets the feed, the same move Zillow pulled to get at IDX years back. New player, old door (barn door?). And Davis notes that even this open pipe already has a private back channel, reporting that eXp sends its Coming Soon inventory straight to ComeHome, brokerage to platform, no MLS required. So nobody’s hands are clean here.
But here’s the part to keep an eye on. LSA is a paid product. Davis flags the obvious trap, that MLSs and brokers could end up paying Google to surface their own listings. We’ve seen that movie. It’s the portal era all over again, and the ending is you buying back your own demand.
Davis has high expectations for CMLS. CMLS Open House convenes at the end of September. His argument is that CMLS ought to be the one table where this gets negotiated, before 484 MLSs cut deals one at a time and get picked off individually. But what he and others don’t understand is that this isn’t a thing CMLS can do.
Still, his point is valid. The biggest distributor on earth just told you what your MLS data is worth. Don’t sell it back to them a county at a time.
“The use and misuse by machine based learning platforms is something MLSs have no exposure to.” — Art Carter, CEO of REcore”
For two years the listing data fight has been about distribution. Who gets the feed, who gets cut off, whose listings show up on Zillow. All of it about where the data goes.
Project NexusRE is about what happens after it gets there. Your data leaves the building, disappears into a dozen LLMs, and the MLS has zero visibility into which ones, under what terms, or for whose benefit. NexusRE is pitched as the layer in between. Permissions, usage metering, compliance screening, applied once and enforced everywhere. A toll booth and a security camera for MLS data in the AI era.
I know, “in active development”, is code for “there is still a lot of work to be done”. But I’ve seen some of the tech and excited to see how testing goes this summer.
But here’s the part I’m here for. NorthstarMLS holds the patent. REcore, the company commercializing it, and where I serve as a board member, “can only be owned by brokers and MLS investment.” In a year when Stone Point owns the brokerage, the MLS software, and the transaction stack all at once, that’s not a small detail. This piece can’t get flipped to private equity later.
Everybody else is arguing about who owns the listing. NorthstarMLS and REcore are the first to ask who’s watching what the machines do with it.
About time.
Cameron Paine calls bullshit…
Don’t believe the hype: There is no ‘national MLS’
“If we accept that the role of the MLS is to facilitate a collaborative marketplace of timely, accurate, comprehensive and transparent listing data, how can an MLS legitimately claim to be “national” if it lacks both accuracy (i.e., significant gaps in listing coverage) and comprehensiveness, (i.e., no national listing coverage)?
Maintaining a high level of data quality and interconnectivity plays a critical role in both data compliance and the contextual placement of listings within the marketplace. The ability of the MLS to understand local market trends and generate accurate market insights, CMAs and statistical data is what makes it far more valuable than a simple ad on a marketing platform. “
Louder, so the people in the back can hear!
Council of Multiple Listing Services Names Jessica Edgerton as Chief Executive Officer
In her work with LeadingRE, Edgerton supported a global network of more than 500 brokerages across 70 countries, many of which operate in markets without an MLS system. That perspective gives her a firsthand understanding of the value MLSs create through complete, accurate, and trusted real estate information.
“Through my work with brokerages around the world, I have seen what real estate markets look like when professionals and consumers do not have access to the complete, trusted information an MLS provides,” said Edgerton. “It gives me an even deeper appreciation for the MLS as essential market infrastructure and for the leaders who make that system work every day.”
Interesting choice, and I think ultimately a good one. Her time at NAR and her legal background are certainly a plus. Having worked in the LeadingRE could also help CMLS break through in getting its message across to brokers.
CMLS deserves a leader who will stick up for the hundreds of people who work at MLS organizations across the country. Best wishes to Jessica — the thing I’m most impressed with is that she’s taking on this role in such a crazy environment. We could use a lot more of that chutzpah! God speed!
