If you’re a proptech company trying to sell into the MLS channel, you already know the basics: it’s complex, it’s slow, and nobody picks up the phone.
What you might not know is exactly how complex, how slow, and why nobody picks up the phone. That’s the part that takes years to figure out. We know, because we spent decades figuring it out ourselves.
Today we’re announcing something we’ve been working on for a while: The MLS Channel Field Guide.
I spend a lot of time speaking to new vendors and other vendors who may have been selling directly to brokers or agents who were curious about partnering with the MLS channel as a way for distributing their product. I’ve distilled all those conversations in to a presentation which I think does a great job of informing anyone new to the space. If you interested please go read the full blog post on the Giant Steps Advisors website and Let’s Talk.
“Last year, I shared my plan to step down as CEO of CMLS. After 11.5 years in this role, I am writing to share that my final day will be May 31.
It is hard to fully capture what this organization and this community have meant to me. This adventure has been filled with growth, challenge, and opportunity, but more than anything, it has been defined by the people. Working alongside individuals who are willing to collaborate, challenge one another, and continue pushing forward has been the greatest privilege. “
This news came out on Friday, May 1st, via email. I haven’t seen it posted anywhere else. A few people I talked to this week still hadn’t heard the news.
Denee’s tenure has covered some of the biggest challenges our industry has faced: a worldwide pandemic, the NAR settlement, consolidation, the destruction of compensation and erosion of part of the MLS value proposition, and now a fight to erode cooperation as well.
CMLS today is unrecognizable from its Northwest Council of MLS roots, with conferences routinely surpassing 1,000 attendees. CMLS has continued to grow and evolve under Denee, and that is a strong testament to her leadership. I’m sure it hasn’t been easy, and I’m 100% certain she has a lot of battle scars to prove it.
More from the email:
“That is why finding the right next CEO is so important. CMLS has begun the search and expects to identify a leader this summer who will carry this work forward and guide the organization into its next chapter, building on a strong foundation already in place.
As we move through this transition, it is important that we continue to show up for you in the same way you expect from CMLS. To support that, I’m excited to share that the CMLS Board has engaged Amy Gorce to serve as Interim CEO.”
I joked with Amy that I’m going to have to call her “Elon” due to the number of companies she is running now. But, I think we all know Amy is the perfect choice to lead the organization in the interim so Denee can move on and pursue her new goals.
For me, and a lot of other people in the industry, CMLS is very special. We are at a very critical time in our industry. If I had one trait I would put at the top of my list for the new CEO to have, it would be Courage.
Thank you Denee for your dedication, optimism, and sense of humor to let a smart ass like me poke fun at an industry we both love.
“MRED is announcing nationwide expansion of its MLS service, including the Private Listing Network (PLN), to any licensed agent.”
“Compass International Holdings is also committed to subsidizing some of the cost of MRED access to the first 100,000 Compass International Holdings agents to join MRED as full members.”
Holy shit! A regional MLS in Lisle, Illinois just announced it’s going national. And the largest brokerage in the country is picking up the tab.
Let me back up.
A few weeks ago I wrote about Reffkin’s proposal for a brokerage-owned national MLS. At the time, sources told me he’d pitched the idea on stage of Brian Donnellan CEO, of Bright MLS leading the charge. Apparently that didn’t go anywhere. So Robert went shopping and found a willing partner in Rebecca Jensen, who has been running MRED for years and has never been shy about doing things differently.
I once compared Rebecca to Daenerys Targaryen from Game of Thrones on Industry Relations. She’s been building dragons for a decade with the Private Listing Network, quietly, while the rest of the MLS world debated whether private listings should even exist. Now she’s burning the map.
This is MLS consolidation, but not the kind we’ve been tracking. Not two neighboring MLSs merging to save on overhead. This is a single MLS going national overnight, powered by Compass’s inventory and Compass’s checkbook. MRED goes from 250,000 listings annually to… what exactly? Compass alone does over a million transactions a year post-Anywhere. That’s not expansion. That’s a whole new animal.
Now let’s talk about what they’re actually offering. MRED says agents can “manage price history, days on market, and automated valuation models.” That sounds an awful lot like suppressing information that buyers would find useful. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I’m not a fan of less information in real estate. Full stop. But here’s my real question: is MRED still capturing actual DOM and price changes on the backend, just not displaying them publicly? Because if the data exists internally but gets hidden from consumers, that’s one conversation. If it’s not being tracked at all, that’s a much scarier one. And will other MRED brokers like their MLS getting so cozy with Compass?
Then there’s this line: “MRED also commits to protect and safeguard agents who participate in its PLN from being banned or penalized by third party portals and IDX feed recipients.”
Bold. Really bold. But how? Zillow has already shown it will punish listings that get marketed outside their ecosystem before hitting the MLS. What exactly is MRED going to do when Zillow bans a Compass agent’s listings? Send a strongly worded letter? File a lawsuit? Kick them out of the MLS? I’d genuinely love to know, because that promise is either the most important sentence in this press release or the emptiest.
Look, I see what’s happening here. Reffkin has been playing chess all year. The Redfin syndication deal. The war on Clear Cooperation. The national MLS pitch. And now he’s found an MLS CEO willing to go full Dracarys with him. Rebecca gets to go from running a midwestern MLS to running a national platform. Robert gets an MLS partner who won’t fine his agents for pocket listings and will actually fight the portals on his behalf. It’s a hell of a deal for both of them.
Whether it’s a good deal for everyone else… that’s the part I’m still working out.
“This partnership reflects our philosophy of giving world-class services to our subscribers with valuable tools to build better and faster, while gaining new data insights and security features made possible by real-time data consumption through Repliers.”
— Rene Galvan, President and CEO, Houston Association of REALTORS®
HAR just made Repliers the exclusive platform for real-time MLS data distribution to its subscribers and vendors. One shared infrastructure layer. No more lag, no more brittle pipelines, no more every-vendor-builds-their-own-data-stack.
But the interesting part isn’t the MLS data. Everybody’s got MLS data. It’s that HAR is throwing in three proprietary datasets at no cost: member pageviews and leads from HAR.com, real-time showing activity from ShowingSmart, and verified agent performance ratings. Buyer demand signals, market momentum, consumer behavior. That’s the good stuff.
Shared infrastructure instead of redundant data plumbing. That’s where the industry needs to go, and HAR continues to be one of the most forward-thinking MLSs in the country.
“Two of the strongest MLS and Realtor organizations in the U.S. are now one, building on South Florida’s momentum as a global real estate powerhouse and shaping the industry’s next frontier.” — Alfredo Pujol, Chairman of the Board, MIAMI REALTORS®
93,000 members. Read that number again.
MIAMI REALTORS® (56,000 members, the largest local association in the U.S.) and RWorld (37,000, the third largest) are merging into a single organization, Miami and South Florida REALTORS®, effective May 11. MSFR MLS? That’s larger than 47 state associations. More than double the next biggest local association. And when they combine the MLSs, it’ll be the third-largest MLS in the country behind Bright and CRMLS.
This isn’t two small boards merging because they can’t afford their tech stack anymore. This is the #1 and #3 local associations in the country looking at each other across the Broward County line and saying, “This is ridiculous — it’s time.”
Knowing a little bit about the data licensing has worked in the past this is going to be a HUGE win for brokers and agents.
A few things that jumped out:
Teresa King Kinney and Dionna Hall will serve as Co-CEOs, continuing what the press release correctly notes is 60+ years of women’s leadership across both organizations. Kinney retires at the end of 2026 after 33 years running MIAMI, with Hall taking over as sole CEO in 2027. That’s how you do a leadership transition — you don’t just announce it, you build a bridge.
Jonathan Dolphus becomes the first African American Chairman of the Board in the history of either organization. Super cool.
The MLS piece is interesting. Both systems — Flexmls and Matrix — will keep running initially, with a combined MLS coming later (cage match?). Members get access to both platforms. And the combined MLS will have data exchanges with 11 of the largest MLSs in the U.S. and Canada, plus they’re joining the Global Data Exchange. For an association that already has 437 international agreements, South Florida just became even more of a magnet for global real estate.
Division boards for both MIAMI and RWorld will stick around to preserve each organization’s culture. Smart. The mergers that blow up are the ones where one side feels like they got absorbed. This looks more like a marriage than an acquisition.
$69 billion in total real estate volume in 2025. 93,000 members. Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, St. Lucie, and parts of Martin counties — basically the entire southeast coast of Florida under one roof.
NAR called it the “largest, fastest, and most seamless merger” in its history. We’ll see about the seamless part — that’s always easier to say on day one. But the ambition here is real, and the structure looks like they actually thought it through.
My hat’s off to Pujol, Dolphus, Kinney, and Dionna. This is what it looks like when two organizations merge from a position of strength instead of desperation.
“The uncomfortable reality is that our industry treats listing data as if they have a right to use it however they want. Brokers and agents earn listings and invest in them. The data that follows should not be treated as a commodity. It’s their work product and a business asset.”
Back in February, Realtracs restructured into three entities — a holding company, a product company, and an investment arm — with a new 7-member board stacked with independent directors. Stuart White said the governance model needed to evolve because over 30% of new Realtracs users were coming from outside Middle Tennessee. It was a smart, quiet move that most people outside Nashville probably missed.
Now we know what the restructuring was for.
Realtracs just killed their Participation Agreement — the standard MLS contract that every broker signs — and replaced it with something called a Brokerage Services Agreement. And the difference isn’t cosmetic. The new agreement explicitly states that the listing broker owns their listing content and the data that comes with it. Not the MLS. Not the association. The broker.
That’s a big deal. And here’s why.
For decades, the industry has operated in this hazy middle ground where nobody really defined who owned the data. MLSs collected it, distributed it, licensed it, monetized it — all under the catch-all phrase “for MLS purposes.” Brokers created the listings but had very little say in where the data went or what was done with it once it entered the system.
Realtracs is saying: that’s over. Under the new agreement, listing data can only move in ways that serve the brokerage’s economic interest or operational efficiency. If it doesn’t serve the broker, it doesn’t happen.
Read that again. If it doesn’t serve the broker, it doesn’t happen.
Now — will every MLS follow suit? No. Some MLSs have built entire business models around the idea that listing data is their asset. Data licensing, third-party feeds, analytics products — all of that gets a lot more complicated when the broker has explicit ownership rights and a legal foundation to enforce them.
But someone had to go first. And the fact that it’s Realtracs — an MLS that just restructured specifically to move faster and align more closely with brokers — tells you this isn’t a press release. It’s a strategy.
I just worry about 2nd and 3rd order consequences here. But I’ll wait to comment on those later since I’m told Realtracs will have more news to share soon.
ICE Is Bringing Paragon MLSs Together This May — And You’re Invited
If your MLS runs on Paragon, clear your calendar for May 4–5.
ICE is hosting the ICE MLS Customer Conference at the Sawgrass Marriott in Ponte Vedra Beach, FL — an invite-only gathering built exclusively for Paragon MLS professionals. No fluff, no filler. Just two days of real conversations, hands-on training, and the kind of peer networking that actually moves the needle.
The speaker lineup alone is worth the trip:
James Dwiggins, CEO of NextHome, sits down with Lucie Fortier for a candid fireside chat
Greg Robertson What If We’re Wrong? Five Assumptions that Could Break the MLS
Amy Gorce of REDistribute breaks down the complexities of data licensing and distribution
Add in live product demos, evening social events at one of Florida’s most iconic resorts, and a room full of your MLS peers — and this one’s a no-brainer.
This event is exclusive to MLSs on the Paragon platform, so spots are limited to your community.
“We are standing up for the principle that every family has the right to see every home for sale, because housing data belongs in the sunlight, not in a private vault.” — Justin Haag, NWMLS CEO
Well, that didn’t take long.
Two weeks after Judge Jamal Whitehead denied NWMLS’s motion to dismiss — ruling that Compass had plausibly alleged antitrust violations under both the Sherman Act and Washington’s Consumer Protection Act — NWMLS has done exactly what it telegraphed back in December: filed counterclaims against Compass in federal court.
And they didn’t come in with some polite procedural filing. They came in throwing haymakers.
The counterclaims allege that Compass’s “3-Phase Marketing Program” violates Washington’s Consumer Protection Act — calling it a deceptive scheme designed to manipulate and hide critical data from the public. NWMLS is essentially arguing that pocket listings aren’t innovation, they’re consumer fraud. The specific allegations are pointed: artificially resetting days-on-market and price history to deceive buyers, suppressing the natural auction effect that gets sellers the best price, and actively encouraging Compass agents to violate their professional agreements.
That last one, contractual interference, is a big deal. NWMLS is saying Compass didn’t just build a competing system, it incentivized its own brokers to break their commitments to the MLS. That’s not a policy disagreement.
Here’s the part that really changes the game: NWMLS points out that Washington’s Senate Bill 6091, which takes effect this June, codifies the exact transparency standard NWMLS has enforced for decades — brokers must market properties broadly to the public and all other brokers. In other words, the state legislature looked at this fight and picked a side. And it wasn’t Compass’s side.
For those keeping score at home: Compass sued NWMLS in April 2025, alleging the MLS was a monopolist wielding its listing rules to crush Compass’s private listing strategy. NWMLS tried to get the case thrown out. The judge said no. And now NWMLS is swinging back — not just with “we did nothing wrong” but with “what you’re doing is illegal, deceptive, and bad for consumers.”
This is the first time an MLS has gone on offense against Compass in court. For years, the industry debate around private listings and Clear Cooperation has been fought through rule changes, press releases, and conference panel shade. Now it’s depositions and counterclaims.
The trial is set for October 2026, and with SB 6091 going live in June, Compass is about to be fighting a legal battle and a new state law at the same time. In the same state.
“We are creating a modern governance model that supports future growth and lowers risk while staying true to our market and the needs of those who everyday make the market work for consumers.” — Matt Consalvo, CEO”
Big move. ARMLS just approved a shift to a fully independent board of directors. No brokers. No agents. No one licensed to do real estate in Arizona gets a board seat. Instead, they’re building a smaller board of outside professionals — finance, legal, strategy types — and standing up a separate advisory council so brokers and agents still have a voice on product and service decisions.
Let me say that differently: the people running ARMLS will no longer be the same people competing in the market ARMLS serves.
That’s a huge deal, and honestly, it’s overdue. Most MLS boards are still packed with local brokers who have their own businesses to protect. Finding members that can take off their broker hat is extremely difficult. That’s not a bad thing, it’s just human nature. But it makes it really hard to make tough calls on data policy, tech investment, or anything that might help the market but hurt your brokerage. ARMLS is essentially saying: we need a boardroom where nobody’s worried about their own listings. Think about that for a bit.
Board applications open in April, with a target transition of August 2026.
The advisory council is the part to watch. If it has real teeth, actual influence on product direction, and market-level decisions, this could become the governance model other MLSs start copying. If it’s a rubber-stamp listening tour… well, I’ve seen that movie before.
My hat’s off to Consalvo and the ARMLS board for having the courage to vote themselves out of the room. That doesn’t happen often.
“Our newly established partnership with FBS will provide our members with an MLS platform that preserves many of the features and familiarity of their current native system while offering access to updated technology. This decision eliminates the need for duplicative add-ons, consolidates data into a single source, and provides our members with the opportunity for greater cost savings,” said Rhonda Reap-Curiel, ROAM MLS President”
