We received an email today with a question that may be on many of your minds. We thought we’d share the answer:
Q: I have read a few articles about Boards of REALTORS® looking at going to a statewide MLS service instead of individual MLS services. What is the Kansas REALTORS® input into that discussion?
The Kansas Association of REALTORS® has an annual strategic planning session that includes members from across the state. The topic of a statewide MLS has come up the past three years.
I have researched how KAR could work with local boards/MLS’s towards this objective. Although there are many pros, the politics of minimizing the responsibilities and income of a local MLS is one of the largest barriers to overcome.
In this age of technology, it’s not a question of whether or not the technology exists to create a broad spectrum MLS as it most certainly does. Perhaps even more pressing of a question might be how we collectively prepare ourselves for something on a national scale. Third party aggregators would love to move into this space as would other providers.
We see real estate news every day that Brokers and MLS’s across the country are pulling their listings from listing syndicators, then again many MLS’s are using services like ListHub to distribute all the MLS listings to third-party websites. In fact, some brokers are even pulling out of their MLS’s and are syndicating their listings directly to these websites.
Since a statewide MLS isn’t in our near future, I am working hard to meet with all the MLS’s across the state to discuss data-sharing. This seems to be the most requested feature that a statewide data sharing plan would bring, the ability to see listings between neighboring MLS’s. This is a free service that would not only give you access to more listings, but would also help you create better market evaluations with more complete sold data at your fingertips.
At this time, 4 of the 23 MLS’s in Kansas have verbally agreed to participate, and we hope to have the majority of our Kansas MLS’s participating by the end of 2014.
John Ringgold would be happy to visit with your MLS leadership to share the pros and cons that go along with this MLS data-sharing idea. Simply email him to schedule a visit at your next leadership meeting.
