Industry experts say the wave of MLS consolidation is expected to continue, with competition intensifying as the two major MLSs expand across regions.
The massive nationwide expansion of multiple listing services in recent days could signal an acceleration of MLS consolidation, leading to increased competition between entities that have previously operated in relative silos, industry experts said.
Late last month, MRED, the MLS serving Chicagoland, announced it was expanding its private listing network nationwide. And last week, Nashville-based Realtrax followed suit, announcing a partnership with Compass and United Real Estate to provide access to agents far beyond the local area.
Participate in the INMAN Intel Index Survey
This signal comes amid intense MLS consolidation, with companies of all sizes merging and shrinking the number of MLSs across the United States. That trend is likely to accelerate as major MLSs expand beyond their core.
Eric Stegemann | Solid Earth CEO
“The big companies are going to get even bigger. Smaller companies are probably going to have to decide what to do next,” Solid Earth CEO Eric Stegeman told Inman. “That could mean merging or folding into a larger organization.”
According to data from T3 Sixty, since 2015, nearly half of MLS in Japan have disappeared. And executives at major brokerages and MLSs are calling for even more fundamental consolidation.
They seem to be gradually getting what they want. Case in point: In mid-April, BeachesMLS and MIAMI MLS announced a merger. Once the merger is complete, it will create one of the largest multiple listing services in the country.
However, the industry may not yet reach a point where a few large MLSs can strongly consolidate smaller MLSs and completely merge or break up.
“It seems like a stretch at this point for a major MLS to say, ‘We’re going to get listings from Compass and other big players, so we’re going to go national,’ and that would eliminate the need for local MLSs to have the necessary listed inventory,” said industry veteran Russ Cofano.
“Can we go there? Of course we can,” Cofano added. “But to do that, we’re going to have to pivot to the point where we don’t need membership in not only Compass and United and some other big names, but also the traditional local MLS.”
There’s also a heated debate about where, when, and how to sell listings.
Las Cofano
Compass International Holdings led the charge against strict MLS rules governing premarket listings. Major brokerages are pushing to allow agents to follow a three-step marketing strategy that involves initiating a listing as a Compass Private Exclusive product before granting Coming Soon status. The final step is to send your listing to the broader market through the MLS.
Compass previously battled Zillow when the portal instituted and began enforcing a policy that blocked pre-marketing listings by intermediaries without being widely distributed through the MLS, Zillow and other portals.
Mapped: See Inman’s interactive map of the remaining MLS.
Compass CEO Robert Refkin floated the idea in February that a single MLS should be shared equally among all brokerages. The idea was in response to what Levkin said were MLS rules that limited agents’ ability to perform their jobs. Compass also supports the national expansion of MRED and Realtracks and partners with both companies in that effort.
Joe Rath, Rocket’s director of industry relations, said the national expansion shows competition among MLSs is rapidly increasing, which is good for agents and their customers.
Joe Russ | Rocket
“It’s still early days, but this is a structural change,” Russ wrote in a recent LinkedIn post. “Competition among MLSs has the potential to reshape how properties are shared, marketed, and discovered. More broadly, it raises questions that the industry has not had to seriously consider before: What will the home buying and selling infrastructure look like when old boundaries no longer hold?”
Mike Conway is Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Systems Engineering, Inc., the provider of the Navica MLS platform. The company specializes in serving about 100 small and medium-sized MLSs, down from about 150 more than a decade ago.
Conway acknowledged that MLS consolidation has happened and will continue to occur. But he said small markets are defensive and different from large markets. He emphasized that Georgia’s MLS, Savannah’s refusal to merge with First MLS or Georgia MLS, is evidence that some smaller MLSs want to remain independent from larger MLSs.
Still, the wave of consolidation will continue, Conway said.
Mike Conway | Navica
“There’s a lot of big, huge MLSs out there. That’s what happened, and it eliminated some of the smaller MLSs as well,” Conway said. “At the end of the day, this is probably unavoidable. The best thing they can do is probably … maybe cut the MLS down to 50 people. One per state.”
Email Taylor Anderson
