The answer to a flawed organization is reform, not replacement, writes coach Darryl Davis, and NAR has both the authority and responsibility to lead that reform.
Over 40 years in this industry, coaching agents and sitting in my living room watching markets change and policies come and go, I’ve learned that the most important questions are rarely the ones that make the most noise. They are the ones that no one feels too comfortable asking out loud.
I would like to raise one of those questions today. I raise this issue out of genuine respect for those who hold a different view, and with the full awareness that reasonable people may disagree. But I bring this up because the agents I’ve spent my career serving deserve someone to say the silent parts loud and clear before the window to speak is closed.
There is a growing debate in our industry about whether MLSs should compete for agents, whether it’s a national MLS or an expanding network of regional MLSs, and whether local systems can better serve agents. I understand the appeal. While competition has produced better results in many industries, there are legitimate complaints about the way some MLSs operate.
But the more I sit with this idea, the more a quiet concern grows within me. And I feel obligated to share that, even if I’m in the minority.
It’s not competition in principle that I’m concerned about. My concern is what exactly MLS competition will produce and who will benefit most from it.
MLS is different from other businesses
When we talk about competition for better results, we’re usually talking about service businesses, where two companies offer similar products and the better company wins. This model works because the two competing products are inherently compatible. You can switch from one to the other and still get what you want.
MLS is different in fundamental ways. That value does not come from the quality of service. It comes from its inclusiveness.
The MLS is valuable because it contains all the listings. All agents submit there. All cooperating brokers can see everything. At the point when you have two MLSs in the same market, neither is done. And a bad MLS is not a better MLS. It has decreased.
I think this way. Imagine if a city decided it needed to make its roads competitive with each other. One road is free, maintained by the city, and takes you everywhere. The second road is a private road, which is better paved and provides quick access to the most desirable areas. A private road might be better. But the moment people start choosing roads, city roads lose funding, lack of maintenance, and ultimately lose the destination that made them so valuable. People who can’t afford to own a driveway will still have one.
That may sound unreasonable. But I think it’s worth thinking long and hard before deciding that competition is the answer.
Who benefits when MLS competes?
This is a question I keep thinking about. If MLSs had to compete for agents, which MLS would win?
I think the answer is what most agents are already committed to. In the competition for market share, the organization with the largest agent network has the most influence over what a winning MLS will look like. Those preferences form the rules. Those priorities shape policy. Tolerance, or intolerance, of certain restrictions determines which restrictions persist.
I’m not suggesting that it’s intentional. I’d suggest it’s a structural thing. Large organizations form dominant organizations because their size necessarily makes them so. After acquiring Anywhere Real Estate earlier this year, the nation’s largest residential real estate organization now has 340,000 agents. That’s not a criticism of the company in any way. This is simply a calculated fact of how MLS matches will play locally.
Competition between equals tends to produce better outcomes for consumers. Competition between unequals tends to yield results to the greatest. A question worth asking is: What are we actually describing?
Guardrails we take for granted
Local MLSs are managed by local broker boards, local associations, and people who know their specific markets intimately. Its governance is distributed across hundreds of organizations.
No single securities company, no matter how large, cannot control all securities companies at the same time. With 2,000 agents in Phoenix, the brokerage has significant influence at the local level. They don’t have the same influence over how MLS is run in Boston, Atlanta, or Seattle.
The governance allocation is not attractive. It’s not efficient. It creates contradictions and, in some cases, rules that do not serve the market well. I understand your frustration with that.
But I also believe that decentralized governance is one of the most important structural protections that actors and consumers currently have. And most people in our industry don’t realize that because we’ve never seen it threatened on this scale before.
As MLS competition tightens governance to the biggest players, those guardrails are quietly eroded market by market, rule by rule, ultimately erasing the cooperative system on which all independent agents have built their businesses. Not taken. We competed away.
What I want to hear instead
The frustrations driving this conversation are real. There are MLSs that are slow to serve their members, rules that seem arbitrary, and policies that are not delivering the results they promised. They deserve to be addressed.
But I think the answer to a flawed system is reform, not replacement. And I believe NAR has both the authority and the responsibility to lead that reform by enforcing the national standards that all MLSs must meet, requiring meaningful disclosure from sellers before a listing becomes private, and creating a governance structure that prevents the size of a single organization from leading to disproportionate policy influence.
These are tougher conversations than “Make MLS competitive.” They are demanding that the NAR make decisions that will frustrate those in power. But they maintain what this industry is worth building: a collaborative marketplace where agents with 10 listings and agents with 10,000 listings can both serve clients on equal footing.
Maybe I’m wrong about all this. Perhaps MLS competition will create a market for exactly the kind of consumer-friendly agent services its proponents describe. I hope someone smarter than me makes that argument, and I’ll read it carefully.
But in the meantime, I feel a responsibility to name what I see. Because the agents I’ve spent my career serving deserve someone who’s willing to ask uncomfortable questions before the answers stick.
