As Inman reported, Google’s home search experiment is back. At least three MLSs offer listings to pilots through HouseCanary: CRMLS, San Diego MLS, and My State MLS. EXp Realty is piloting NextHome with all of its properties through HouseCanary’s ComeHome platform.
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HouseCanary is a data company that has become a licensed broker in all 50 states, and can now pull MLS data through IDX feeds, much like Zillow needed to be a licensed broker to do business.
The listings are fed into HouseCanary, which then feeds them into Google Search. Google itself is not licensed anywhere as a broker. To accomplish this, Google didn’t have to ask anyone or negotiate with the National Association of Realtors. They went to partners who were already working on becoming brokers on paper and connected to their feeds.
HouseCanary, Zillow, Compass, Redfin: all licensed brokers
State brokerage licenses are designed to regulate transactional conduct, not data access.
But MLS has made all other routes to that data incredibly difficult.
Paper broker IDX exists because operators could not obtain listing data any other way. MLS itself forced a workaround. Brokerage licenses became national data access qualifications because MLS left no alternative.
A clear definition of who counts as a broker could have prevented this situation.
NAR’s participation rules state that brokers must make an “active effort” to gain access to the MLS. In 25 years, NAR has never defined what it means to be “actively engaged.” There is no minimum transaction amount. There is no minimum number of agents. There are no major business tests. There are no revenue standards. This phrase exists in the rulebook as a standard placeholder that no one has ever written.
The window for writing it was open from 2008 to 2020.
Although a 2008 Justice Department consent decree had just been finalized that established the terms of how MLSs would treat online brokers, big tech companies had not yet figured out the pattern of intermediation as a data path.
The real definition, written in those years, would have given MLS real power to use licenses as a wedge to distinguish between sales brokers and technology companies. NAR doesn’t write anything.
The Justice Department may have pushed back. We’ll never know because no one at NAR has tested it.
In September 2020, Zillow became a licensed broker in all 50 states. By January 2021, Zillow switched its entire listing pipeline to IDX feeds. The Department of Justice made this clear in its 2024 Statement of Interest in REX Litigation. Zillow needed to become a licensed intermediary to access IDX.
At that point, the pattern was set. Any attempt to tighten standards now would look exactly like the exclusionary practices that defeated NAR in the 2008 lawsuit. The Department of Justice will also find out the same week. NAR knows this. In June 2025, rather than defend it in court, they rescinded the no-adulteration rule under pressure from the Justice Department.
The gate remains open. Anyone who has paid the license fee and signed the MLS membership agreement can go through the walkthrough.
Google going through that gate is a different category of event than Zillow going through that gate. Google Search and Gemini are not the same product, but one product integration.
Compass, Zillow, Redfin, and CoStar all use AI in their products, while Google is building AI.
AI briefs are already cannibalizing click-through traffic in publishing and e-commerce. Next is real estate. Consumers who previously clicked through Zillow or Realtor.com to get answers will instead get answers within Google from the $2 trillion company that runs about 90% of searches in the United States.
The industry wasn’t just following the rules and sleeping. I was dormant in providing value to consumers.
That’s the beginning of what Rocket, Compass, Zillow, CoStar, News Corp and Google are doing now. Resources they bring:
Rocket companies: 2025 adjusted revenue of $6.9 billion. Owns Redfin (50 million monthly visitors, 2,200 agents) and Cooper’s service portfolio Compass: $7 billion in revenue in 2025. @properties-Christie’s ($444 million) to close in early 2025. Anywhere Real Estate ($1.6 billion) 2026 Zillow: $2.6 billion in revenue in 2025, first full-year profit in company history CoStar/Homes.com: $850 million loss at Homes.com in 2025; Plans for another $550 million in losses in 2026 News Corp/Move/Realtor.com: $552 million in revenue in 2025, backed by News Corp’s $10 billion parent Google: $2 trillion market cap. Approximately 90% of US searches. Gemini NAR Construction: 2024 revenue of $360.8 million, 84% of which comes from member dues
The agency, which created the rules for residential real estate, operates on a budget roughly that of a midsize hospital, against an opponent whose annual losses dwarf its annual income.
NAR’s 2026 Strategic Response is a consumer advertising campaign based on the premise that consumers think of real estate agents as “just opening the door,” a perception created by MLS rules that haven’t been enforced in 25 years.
At launch, NAR called the Realtor brand “the most trusted real estate brand among consumers.” Four decades of Gallup polling on the integrity and ethics of real estate agents tells a different story. The ranking of real estate agents in the latest poll was statistically close to a 40-year low.
In independent consumer research, Realtor brands don’t come out on top.
But the fundamental problem here is not just that NAR treats structural issues as cognitive issues. That means you’re dealing with a “problem” that doesn’t exist.
Consumers aren’t waiting for it to become clear whether real estate agents are doing more than opening doors.
The real battle is not with consumers. It’s about who controls the listing data and who creates the rules for how transactions occur.
A 30 second spot won’t solve anything.
This is what a stewardship failure looks like on an industry scale. I picked the wrong fight in 2003 and lost in 2008. Participation rules remained undefined and unenforced for 25 years.
It charged members hundreds of dollars a year for certification and made it available to any technology company willing to pay state licensing fees. Today, we talk about the “gold standard” for real estate agents, but the actual standard is created by Compass, Rocket, Zillow, CoStar, News Corp, and Google.
There is a valid argument that the economics of the securities trading business (dispersion, low profits, local control) make it impossibly difficult for any trade association to develop national rules. It has its benefits.
Nor does it excuse the fact that certain NAR decisions over the past 25 years have closed doors that didn’t need to be closed.
Either way, the seat will be empty and the rules will be written by whoever shows up with capital, distribution, and a product roadmap.
For those not on that list, the important thing to remember is that NAR is not going to solve your problem. That’s not possible with NAR.
Brokers, MLSs, state associations, and individual operators have options. We can either participate in the creation of the next set of rules, or we can wait for a national body that will not return.
Waiting is also a choice. It’s not just about winning
However, what is happening in the real estate industry is not limited to real estate.
The Atlantic recently published an article about how what once existed for the public good has fallen into the hands of corporate greed. excerpt:
“In America, very little remains of what was once called the public commons, a vital part of life organized for mutual benefit rather than profiteering. But that is no longer the case. Education from kindergarten to university is being colonized by commercial owners. Even utilities such as electricity and water, which were once treated as public goods, are being taken over by profit-obsessed investment companies.
Residential real estate is also currently on that list.
MLS was the closest thing the industry had to a commons, a shared infrastructure that made the market work for everyone participating in it. It will be absorbed into a handful of publicly traded companies and one $2 trillion AI company, and what comes out will be optimized for shareholder returns, not for people buying and selling homes.
The people writing the rules now don’t need anyone’s permission. They keep writing. The only thing that will change the outcome is whether other companies in the industry also decide to write something.
