From teaming up with brokerages to expand private listing networks nationwide, to opening up membership to real estate professionals outside of their traditional service area, to launching joint ventures supplying listing input and distribution technology, MLSs are employing a variety of diverse strategies as they look to compete with one another. 

For Saul Klein, a real estate industry veteran and the CEO of San Diego MLS (SDMLS), these different strategies and partnerships, on top of the changes experienced by the industry via the National Association of Realtors (NAR) commission lawsuit settlement agreement, have led the industry to split into four camps: 

  • Brokerage-controlled listing networks that want more power over their own inventory.
  • Portal-driven consumer platforms that want comprehensive public visibility on every home.
  • MLSs trying to preserve the cooperative marketplace while adapting to new competitive realities.
  • Regulators and lawmakers stepping into a space that used to govern itself.

According to Klein, these camps are the different ways industry players are trying to answer the question of who controls a listing and while some may feel this debate may lead to the death of the MLS, Klein believes it will only lead to the demise of those MLSs that refuse to grow and change with the industry. 

“With NAR derisking and leaving more to local decision-making, it is very logical that this is leading to different models and creating, in some cases, a lack of continuity where we once had more continuity,” Klein said.

Despite all of the changes, Klein feels the core function of the MLS as the “apparatus to maintain and enforce standards, creating a clean and accurate” source of true listing information is essential, and issues may arise if MLSs start pulling away from this core function. 

“Because of this competition, we are seeing different MLSs around the country looking at these beliefs that were once universal that are now being challenged or having alternatives being offered,” he said. “On top of this you have legislators stepping into things with laws surrounding public marketing and industry consolidation, so the question becomes: how do MLSs continue to provide this resource to everyone without tearing it apart?” 

For Klein, there are five competing forces currently influencing the MLS industry: litigation, regulation, legislation, consolidation and innovation. And while he feels we are starting to see these forces make their presence known, he believes it is still unclear where things are headed, leading different MLSs to create different visions of the future. 

A source of truth

According to the Council of MLSs (CMLS), however, these disparate visions and strategies should not be a detriment to the industry. 

“Diversification should strengthen, not fragment, the marketplace. MLSs can innovate and differentiate while preserving the shared data infrastructure that makes the market more transparent, more competitive and more useful for consumers and professionals,” A CMLS spokesperson told HousingWire. “No two MLSs operate in exactly the same environment, and CMLS does not dictate how an MLS should structure local rules, services, or strategic priorities.”

Like Klein, CMLS also rejects the idea that the MLS is becoming irrelevant. 

“MLSs are and always have been the source of truth for local market information,” the spokesperson said. “The MLS keeps the housing market open, transparent, fair, accurate, and competitive. It gives buyers a more complete view of available homes, gives sellers broad exposure to the market, and gives brokerages of all sizes access to the same factual information. That shared access allows brokers to compete on service, expertise and client outcomes rather than on control over information.”

For CMLS, the MLS will remain relevant as long as it continues to solve the industry’s need for someone or something to gather, verify and distribute listing information in a way that helps consumers and professionals make informed decisions.

In Klein’s view, this is why the view of the future that will ultimately succeed and benefit everyone is the one with the MLS at the core.

“All of these different models are in need of a source of truth, otherwise they are not going to be able to serve whatever constituencies they think they are serving — they all need the same thing,” Klein said. “So, I think the model that reinforces clean data, up-to-date data, accuracy of status and benefits practitioners, appraisers, consumers, the lenders and housing finance industry that make all of this possible, and the secondary money market, that is who is going to succeed. There might be different models for a while, but it is going to come back to having access to timely, accurate, clean and transparent data.”

Strengthening the agent-client relationship

CMLS echoes this, noting that the “MLS is essential transaction infrastructure that strengthens the agent-client relationship.”

“When listings don’t flow through the MLS, buyers see an incomplete market and sellers may lose exposure,” the CMLS spokesperson said. “Agents caught in the middle are left trying to advise clients without the full picture. The agent-client relationship depends on complete information. The MLS is how that information gets delivered in a fair and efficient way.”

Although this may be the eventual future the industry arrives at, in the meantime, there is a real concern about listing fragmentation as brokerages, portals and MLSs explore private listing networks and coming soon or pre-market listing statuses.

Tech could make the debate irrelevant

According to Marx Sterbcow, an industry expert and the managing attorney at Sterbcow Law Group, technology should make this should less of a concern, regardless of what happens in this new phase of MLS competition. 

“The thing that no one is really talking about is the ability of these LLM AI agents to go in and scrape the data off of sites with private listing networks and aggregate that with the stuff that is publicly available through IDX and VOW data feeds,” Sterbcow said. “This makes so much of this debate obsolete.”

While this may be a period full of growing pains for the MLS industry, CMLS is confident that the MLS will be here to stay even as the housing industry continues to evolve. 

“MLS growth will come from leaning into what makes it uniquely valuable and genuinely difficult to replicate: shared information, broad participation, reliable data, and open market access,” the CMLS spokesperson said. “This is not the first evolution of the MLS. From printed books to the internet to AI, MLSs have always adapted.” 

However, the spokesperson warned that any evolution the MLS undergoes as MLSs compete more with one another “should not come at the expense of transparency and reliability.”

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