Realtor.com launches MLS-led collaborative search experience

Realtor.com is starting the year with the launch of Realtor.com+, a collaborative home search experience for buyer’s agents and their clients.

The platform, available only through multiple listing services as a member benefit, enables agents to search listings with MLS filters, view real-time insights into buyers’ search activity, read local market intelligence reports, communicate with clients and auto-plan tour routes without leaving the Realtor.com+ platform.

Consumers will be able to access the platform via a personalized link from their agent, which directs them to a Realtor.com search experience where all branding and communication leads to their agent.

Realtor.com CEO Damian Eales said Realtor.com+ aligns with the portal’s commitment to maintaining an open marketplace — a concept at the center of a heated industry debate over private listing networks and listing data access, as well as a lawsuit between Zillow and Compass.

Damian Eales | Credit: Realtor.com

“Realtor.com was born from the partnership between the National Association of Realtors and MLSs, and for three decades we’ve championed an open marketplace that delivers transparency and meaningful value to consumers and professionals,” Eales said in a written statement. “Realtor.com+ modernizes that legacy by putting more powerful tools into more agents’ hands than any product in our history, keeping professionals at the center of the transaction, and giving MLSs the valuable AI-driven capabilities and member tools they need to lead the industry forward.”

“But this isn’t just another tool – it’s a step forward in strengthening the marketplace, empowering MLSs and agents, and enhancing the search experience for consumers,” he added.

In a conversation with Inman, Anna Marie Castiglioni, the head of Realtor.com Next, said Realtor.com+ is not a lead product. Instead, it’s an opportunity for agents and their clients to have a frictionless, data-driven home search experience that gets them to the final goal faster: finding their first — or next — dream home.

“Once a consumer is past early searching and they’re really ready to find their home, there’s so much value that the agent brings to that experience. And [Realtor.com+] is about how do we elevate the role of the professional where they’re the hero in those moments? That was really kind of the guiding principle,” she said. “How do we create a fair, open ecosystem in partnership with the industry, not around it? And from a consumer perspective, it’s really about how they can collaborate more effortlessly and seamlessly so they can move quickly and achieve better outcomes.”

Castiglioni said Realtor.com+ represents the “largest scale partnership” the portal has done with MLSs and underscores the importance of maintaining an open, robust marketplace.

Anna Marie Castiglioni

“The problem that [the platform] is solving is not a new problem. This idea of fragmentation, and where the data is happening, and how you ensure the agent remains central to the transaction? These are all problems that have been around for a long time,” she said. “[MLSs] wanted to be in the driver’s seat and in the car, if you will, with a partner that they trusted and shared a lot of the same values as them.”

“We think that we are fairly unique in the industry in terms of kind of our history and our role. We aren’t a broker. We kind of stand shoulder to shoulder with the industry on industry matters and issues that are important to the industry over and over again,” she added.

“And so that has created a lot of trust over many, many years. We understand we’re still a large portal, but when you look at the things that we value, it aligns very closely to a lot of the things that the MLSs are trying to deliver and protect for their subscribers: that openness to data, the fairness, the transparency, the choice.”

Canopy MLS and Canopy Realtor Association CEO Anne Marie DeCatsye echoed Castiglioni’s insights, saying the platform is “arriving at exactly the right moment” as many industry players lean toward creating “closed ecosystems.”

“Realtor.com has taken a different path, one that champions openness, collaboration and professional empowerment,” DeCatsye said. “They’re the only portal that isn’t also a brokerage, and that matters.

“By integrating directly into the MLS and delivering tools designed for our subscribers – not in competition with them – Realtor.com+ strengthens our members, supports their clients and reinforces the value of the MLS. We’re proud to join forces with a company that truly shares our commitment to an open, transparent marketplace.”

Alongside strengthening Realtor.com’s reputation among MLSs, Castiglioni said Realtor.com+ also provides a competitive edge as the company navigates a rapidly evolving portal landscape.

“I think when you look at what’s happening more broadly across some of the other players in the industry, you’re seeing a trend towards these more closed, vertically integrated ecosystems where you’re required to use certain tools in order to participate or you’re only granted access or status to certain kind of perks and benefits of certain solutions that they may offer by checking certain boxes,” she said. “But this is not going to be limited to a select few. You do not have to be a lead-buying client of ours or use other products of ours to have access to it.”

“The MLSs who’ve chosen to enable this kind of product within their membership base, every single member of their MLS is able to use it for free,” she added. “And so that’s incredible when you think about the scale of it.”

Realtor.com+ is currently available to Charlotte-based Canopy MLS and will be rolled out to 15 more MLSs in the coming weeks, representing more than 122,000 agents across the U.S.

Email Marian McPherson