In inventory-strained Chicagoland, buyer agents looking for homes for their clients have leaned heavily on Facebook groups, private networks and conversations with other agents to find properties that may not yet be for sale. But Mainstreet Realtors is moving to bring those conversations under one roof and into a member environment where buyer demand can be shared in a more structured way.
Based in Chicago’s western suburbs, the 18,000-member association is partnering with proptech firm Gitcha to make the company’s Buyer Listing Service available to its members across northeastern Illinois. The platform gives buyer agents a way to publish what their clients are looking for and connect with agents who may know of matching properties.
The partnership also gives Mainstreet another potential tool for prying loose inventory in a market where sellers still hold considerable leverage. Gitcha CEO Dan Cooper sees a broader opportunity too, framing the service as a buyer-side counterpoint to an industry conversation that has increasingly revolved around the theme of “seller choice” and phased marketing strategies.
John Gormley
The Chicago market has remained consistently in demand in the post-pandemic years. Just 24.8 percent of Chicago listings received price cuts in early August, according to Parcl Labs data, putting the city among a small group of major markets where sellers continued to hold substantial leverage as conditions elsewhere shifted more in buyers’ favor.
Mainstreet CEO John Gormley told Inman that the association has seen the difficulty firsthand among members who work primarily with buyers.
“In looking at the data, the production data of our membership, there’s a significant cohort there that appears to be working on the buyer side only,” Gormley said. “And we know it’s tough. It’s got to be tough to win for your consumer in this environment.”
Formalizing buyer demand from Facebook groups
The Buyer Listing Service turns a buyer’s search into what Gitcha calls a “want-listing,” with details including the type of property a buyer wants, location, price, timing, financing and other terms. Other agents can see that demand and potentially identify a match, whether it is an existing listing or a homeowner who has been considering putting a property on the market.
Gormley said agents are already doing versions of that on their own.
“I’m sure you’re aware there’s Facebook groups out there around this whole question of, ‘Hey, I’ve got a buyer that wants this. Does anybody know of a listing that might fit my buyer’s wants and needs?’” he said.
Instead of leaving those conversations scattered across social media and other private channels, Gormley said Mainstreet saw an opportunity to pull them into an environment its members already use.
“Why not bring it into our digital environment and have it there upon login?” he said.
The Buyer Listing Service will be integrated into Mainstreet’s existing member dashboard, which is powered by Membio. Cooper told Inman that he believes that visibility could also give agents something concrete to show homeowners who have considered selling but have yet to put their properties on the market.
“We expand inventory by showing selling agents who have potential sellers on the sidelines, and then they have something to take to them to get them to market,” Cooper said.
He said the goal is not simply to produce more listings, but to connect buyers and sellers who may have otherwise missed one another in the current ecosystem.
“This is really providing that intelligence to selling agents to bring the right inventory to market,” Cooper said, “not just more inventory, but the right inventory at the right price.”
Gormley sees the same possibility from Mainstreet’s side — and at the very least, he said, the service gives Mainstreet members another tool for working with buyers in a difficult market.
“We hope that it could unearth some more inventory,” he said. “That would be great if that is a byproduct of this partnership and this offering.”
Reframing ‘seller choice’ around buyers
Gitcha began developing its platform before the Sitzer | Burnett verdict, Cooper said, initially envisioning it as a product sold directly to agents and brokerages.
Inquiries from several large brokerages eventually helped convince the company to take another approach. Cooper said Gitcha wanted the service to reach agents across competing firms rather than live inside individual brokerages, leading it to build the product for MLS and association environments. The Buyer Listing Service was formally unveiled in early 2025.
The Mainstreet rollout comes after a year in which much of the fight over listing distribution has revolved around “seller choice,” with some major brokerages pushing phased marketing and private listing strategies that give sellers more control over when and where their homes appear.
Cooper thinks the industry has spent far less time considering what choice looks like for buyers.
“Everything is about sellers’ choice. Well, what happened to buyer’s choice?” Cooper posited.
Gitcha’s answer is to give buyer agents a listing supply of their own, rather than limiting their search to homes that have already come to market.
“When people ask us what are the problems we’re solving by empowering the buy side, well, it’s obvious we’re giving value proposition to buyer agency,” Cooper said.
Those listings can also serve as signals to agents working with would-be sellers.
“Sellers have these signals that they can go meet with sellers to bring their house to market,” Cooper said.
The service could create a match before a property reaches the public market. But Gitcha is pitching the model differently from the brokerage-specific private listing networks that have become a flashpoint in the industry. Cooper said the value lies in making buyer demand visible across a network of cooperating agents.
“The first thing that MLSs and associations — their biggest advantage — is the network,” Cooper said.
He said that network has become more important as activity has splintered across brokerage channels and other private networks. Gitcha sees the Buyer Listing Service as one way to reconnect agents across firms around buyer demand.
Mainstreet looks for a bigger role
For Mainstreet, the Gitcha partnership is part of a broader examination of what a local Realtor association should look like after several years of industry upheaval around the commissions settlement and major policy changes.
Gormley said Mainstreet’s board and senior staff spent roughly seven months in 2025 studying changes in the real estate industry and reconsidering where the association could provide the most value to members. But he said that members still largely see value in the association.
“We concluded that we still strongly believe in the value of the Realtor brand and what it stands for and everything that’s kind of wrapped into that,” Gormley said.
But the review also pushed Mainstreet to look beyond some of the services traditionally associated with a local Realtor group.
“We don’t have to be like the sea of sameness,” Gormley said. “Another thing that our seven months of study showed is that there is a sea of sameness out there. We don’t necessarily see ourselves that way.”
Mainstreet learned about Gitcha through Membio and began exploring a partnership as part of a broader push to offer members tools they may not receive through other associations.
“We’re just trying to partner with innovative companies and to bring unique tools to our members to give them every advantage possible for them to continue to succeed in real estate,” Gormley said.
Mainstreet is the largest local Realtor association in Illinois and the largest association within the Midwest Real Estate Data footprint. The Buyer Listing Service, however, is being deployed through Mainstreet rather than MRED.
Gormley said Mainstreet has had high-level strategic discussions with MRED about the association expanding its member offerings, though not about the Gitcha partnership specifically.
Mainstreet asked whether moving further into member technology and services might conflict with MRED’s plans. “The answer was no,” Gormley said.
The association has also spoken repeatedly with managing brokers about moving into areas that may once have seemed outside the traditional role of a local Realtor association. Gormley said the response has been supportive.
“We’re not afraid to be out there on the leading edge,” he said.
