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I’ve always appreciated Gary Keller’s leadership in our industry. When many leaders are silent, he is outspoken, saying things like:
“NAR sold us out a long time ago. The thing that drives you absolutely crazy is a trade association is not supposed to be in your business.”
“As long as you have the right to your work product, you’re OK. The second that an MLS or NAR or anybody else decides that you can’t decide on your own if you want Realtor.com to have it, or Trulia to have it, or Zillow, then you’ve lost control of the industry. As long as it’s your decision, we’re good.”
I didn’t fully appreciate the context of these quotes until the NAR settlement when our industry collectively paid $1 billion for “mandatory” NAR and MLS rules. After such a public failure, I had thousands of agents ask the following questions, questions that don’t have good answers:
- Why did NAR/MLSs give our listings away to the portals? Why won’t the MLS let me write in the listing description that I’m the listing agent, which would create more transparency for buyers when they are searching the portals?
- Why won’t the MLS let agents watermark their own photos, but then the MLS watermarks them?
- To have access to the MLS, why am I forced to join and pay three different associations (NAR, state and local associations)? Are the numerous lawsuits against NAR’s “three-way agreement” justified?
- How could “maximum exposure equals maximum price” be true or the MLS study claiming homes sell for 17.5 percent more on the MLS be true, when the most sophisticated and profit-driven sellers of real estate — developers and home builders — sold over 300,000 homes off the MLS last year?
- Why do real estate developers and homebuilders not have to follow Clear Cooperation while individual homeowners have to follow it?
- How many homeowners are aware that Clear Cooperation forces them to give the MLS their listing after one day of any form of public marketing?
- Cooperation through the MLS was designed decades ago for agents to share their listings with agents at other brokerages. Why are agents now forced to “cooperate” with portals — companies without agents, listings, or clients — whose business model is to sell leads, not homes? Why are buyer inquiries sold to the highest bidder instead of going to me, the agent who knows the home the best?
- Why is the Department of Justice (DOJ) investigating NAR’s Clear Cooperation Policy? Why did the judge in the lawsuit between DOJ v. NAR (April 2024) say that the “DOJ believes that the Clear Cooperation Policy restricts homeseller choices and precludes competition from new listing services?” I saw that the DOJ asked NAR to change Clear Cooperation to allow homeowners 60 days (not one day) to publicly list off the MLS — why is NAR not doing what the DOJ asked?
- My client asked not to have price drop history and days on market on their listing. Why won’t my MLS allow me to do what my client has asked?
- In response to questions like these, why does the MLS say “If you don’t like our rules, then you don’t have to be a member of the MLS,” when they know agents can’t do their job without MLS access and that rules like Clear Cooperation have prevented competition from any alternative listing systems that could provide me with more than one single choice, my local MLS.
There are too many questions like these that don’t have good answers. NAR and MLSs should remove “mandatory” rules like Clear Cooperation that lead to these concerns. Forcing agents and their clients to do things they don’t want to do is not a winning strategy.
Robert Reffkin is the founder and CEO of Compass.
