2022 RISMedia CEO & Leadership

Exchange: MLS Forums

Executive Summary | Sept. 6 - 8, 2022

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2022 RISMedia CEO & Leadership Exchange MLS Forums
Purpose
To bring a diverse group of MLS stakeholders together with a broader real estate leadership audi-
ence to discuss, explain and debate the most pressing issues in the rapidly evolving spaces of MLS
and real estate data.

Focus
To spark lively discussions and explore often neglected topics surrounding the MLS landscape—
from consolidation and tech, to regulation and emerging monetization opportunities. Panelists repre-
senting a broad range of regional and industry perspectives engaged in free-flowing conversations
that wrapped high-level questions of data ownership and demographics with practical, day-to-day
guidance for MLS-broker relationship building.

In Attendance
More than 450 real estate professionals and C-level executives representing top brokerage firms, “disruptor” mod-
els, leading agent teams, tech innovators, and powerful MLSs and associations.

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Key Takeaways
Changes around MLSs—their role, responsibilities and opportunities—are inevitable and imminent.
That was the consensus from MLS leaders, who agreed broadly on a push to encourage opera-
tional efficiencies and collaboration, as well as consolidate data with more access and transparen-
cy—though participants often differed on specific approaches. With dozens of perspectives across
a wide array of technical, interconnected issues, here are the most important takeaways from three
days of dialogue:

Data Industry Relations

• A need for the real estate industry to better control—
and profit from—highly valuable aggregated real
estate data, which many pointed out is already being
leveraged by outside entities. The question of owner-
ship of that data (brokers, sellers or MLS) and how it
would be controlled divided participants, with some
also worrying that not offering access to consumers
could allow others to fill that niche.
• Standardization of listing data is something every-
one wants, but how to get there does not have an
easy answer. Despite progress made by RESO, the
intersection of government records and very different
practices utilized by fractured, localized real estate
markets will require intense cooperation and time to
create universal consistency.
• Transparency between MLSs and agents/brokers
should be better. “Oversharing” with consumers or
brokerages has the potential to cause problems and
needs to balance the interest of listing agents, con-
sumers and the broader real estate community.
• Speed and efficiency of access increases the value of
data tremendously—both in terms of dollars and in
how it can benefit real estate practitioners.
• A national IDX feed is a wildly popular idea with
brokers.
• MLSs need to do more to educate agents and con-
sumers about who they are and the services they
provide. Agents need to understand their responsibil-
ities and liabilities around MLS use, and broad out-
reach—possibly in collaboration with brokers—should
be utilized to help consumers understand the role of
the MLS in providing accurate, transparent real estate
data.
• Brokers and agents can do more to directly contribute
to their local MLS, either by serving on boards, partic-
ipating in focus groups or reaching out to leadership.
Collaboration between MLSs and brokerages can
help keep the industry in lock-step on important real
estate issues against outside influences.
• Protectionist, entrenched local associations and MLSs
are causing harm to the industry as a whole. Being
open to cooperation is the only way that MLSs can
remain relevant and serve the ultimate needs of a con-
sumer and real estate professional.
• Working with outside tech companies will remain
necessary, but MLSs should be careful about who they
work with to find companies that are not just trying to
profit off of real estate data, but instead can provide
value to the industry.

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Cooperation and Growth
• Consolidation is no longer a bad word, and serving
both real estate practitioners and consumers will
require more mergers or cooperation to avoid overlap
and inefficiencies, especially for very small MLSs or
regions where redundancies abound.
• The exact role of an evolving MLS was disputed, even
as participants agreed that MLSs must change to meet
a “brave new world.” Using tech and data to be able
to predict market conditions, monetizing that data for
brokers or working to provide more broad services to
real estate practitioners were all discussed.
• With the threat of compensation leaving the MLS,
there was broad agreement the brokers had to lead
the conversation about a consistent transparency and
cooperation policy—everything from showing data
delivered to listing agents to disclosures shared with
consumers.
• While some were happy with the way tech current-
ly enters the MLS marketplace, others urged more
investment to encourage and steamline that process.
Paying based on adoption was one option proposed,
as was sharing tech usage data between MLSs and
brokerages.

Conclusion
MLS leaders are clearly seeing fundamental change. But there was also a strong sense of the chal-
lenges involved in guiding the industry onward. Monetizing valuable real estate data sparked both
urgency and excitement, while there was also a newfound openness to collaboration, and rethink-
ing how consumers and brokers view MLSs. Most, if not all participants recognized that consumer
demands, technology and regulation are inevitably forcing changes to the MLS landscape, and a
transformative, proactive transition is the only way forward.

Please click here to receive the lowest price available for the 2023 CEO & Leadership
Exchange, taking place Sept. 5 - 7, 2023 at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C.
REGISTER TODAY!

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