posted by Amanda Sternklar on April 2, 2018
EAST GREENBUSH, NY, April 2 - My State MLS, the first nationwide Multiple Listing Service, has kicked off a campaign to inform agents of the changes coming to the National Association of REALTORs MLS policy. Starting July 1st, 2018 no MLS can require all agents under a broker participant to join their system. A Facebook post put out by the company mid-March reached over 100,000 realtors and garnered over 4000 engagements and over 350 shares in a week.
The response has been overwhelmingly positive, said Dawn Pfaff, company president. We're hearing it again and again in the comments and in calls: real estate professionals want statewide and even nationwide access to listing data. Their clients are finding nationwide data on consumer sites; why shouldn't that be available to the real estate professional? They also don't want to be forced to join something that doesn't work for them
The majority of responders were excited for the new possibilities MLS of Choice could bring. They shared their hopes for how the new rule would affect the way they do business. Agents who live at the border of their MLS service area and needed to join several services just to co-broke on properties were particularly excited for a service that would allow them to co-broke with other professionals wherever they are licensed.
Others had questions about how My State MLS would treat their data. The company president is outspoken about their data practices compared to local MLSs. “You own your listings. We'll always allow you to download your listings back from our system in your preferred format. We won't hold your data hostage or refuse to send it to other sites.†Agents can choose per listing where they would like to syndicate. Options include Zillow, Trulia, Realtor.com, and Juwai among others, with new sites being added regularly. None are required.
The industry is taking notice. My State MLS was recently featured in a REALTOR Magazine article covering the “National MLS Buzz. With MLS of Choice coming into effect July 1st, My State MLS is gearing up to help many agents transition over to using the nationwide MLS.
Ready to join the nationwide MLS?