* What is the Multiple Listing Service?
* Does the National Association permit public access to listings?
* What category of listings are available to the public?
* Can consumers access SOLD listings?
* Is Realtor.com the only access to listings nationwide?
* Do San Francisco and Marin publish their listings online?
* Do San Francisco and Marin publish an MLS map?
* What are VOW sites?
* Are For-Sale-by-Owner properties on MLS?
What is the Multiple Listing Service?
The National Association of Realtors was founded on May 12, 1908 at the YMCA Auditorium in Chicago, as a trade association. Eventually each State established a chapter or affiliate, and Counties/Cities then developed their own chapters.
The centerpiece of this system is the Multiple Listing Service [MLS]. At the local level all participating brokerages pool their listings in a shared database. Each brokerage offers to compensate any other brokerage for bringing a buyer to the table. The commission split is set by the brokerages, not by law and not by the local association.
For years this meant that the brokerage bringing a buyer to the table was really an agent, called a sub-agent, of the seller. So the buyer had no representation. Subsequently, in California and most other States, through legislation, buyers are entitled to retain their own agent, their own fiduciary. However, the commission structure was so ingrained that it remains, not affecting the agency relationship of buyers and their licensees.
return
Does the National Association permit public access to listings?
Remember the old days when insiders with a friend in real estate got to borrow THE BOOK, the MLS book that is, overnight? It was great. Pictures and descriptions of every home in town. And THE BOOK was published every week. Cut down lots of trees in those days. Then THE BOOK went electronic on us.
And then came the Internet, the information age. What was the industry to do? Would making listings available on the internet signal the demise of Realtors? On the other hand, would keeping listings semi-private, as before, open the door to e-entrepreneurs taking over the industry?
Happily the industry went online with listings, creating Realtor.com, a national database that exists today.
return
What category of listings are available to the public?
Active and Pending statuses.
return
Can consumers access SOLD listings?
No. This data is considered proprietary by NAR and its affiliates.
return
Is Realtor.com the only access to listings nationwide?
In 1996 NAR launched Realtor.com, the first monster site to list 1,000,000 homes on the web. The site now claims to hold over 2 million listings, nationwide. But competition for your hearts and/or souls has been fierce and there are other monster sites - like MSN's HouseandHome.com and HomeSeekers.com which aggregate listings from local Realtor Associations and/or from large regional brokerages throughout the Country.
Therefore, Realtor.com and HouseAndHome and Homeseekers are publishing listings produced at the local level, through contractual arrangements with local chapters and large regional brokerages. Since the local chapters are THE source of local listings one would not expect to benefit from searching the national aggregators.
return
Do San Francisco and Marin publish their listings online?
The Marin Association publishes its listings both at BAREIS.com and GreatHomes.org.
The San Francisco Association publishes its listings at SFARMLS.com. It divides The City into ten Districts, each with numerous subdistricts. Reference the MLS map for exact neighborhood designations.
A drawback of these online systems is that individual brokerages are permitted to opt out of it. One can only guess why they would do so. The result is that (1) the local online MLS database is incomplete; and (2) if the local database is incomplete, so too are those of the monster aggregators like Realtor.com.
The online publication of local MLS listings was followed by a policy, fostered by NAR, permitting brokers to publish those listings on their own site, even though, obviously, most of the listings were not theirs. So at a minimum every Realtor site that you visit should provide a link to the local MLS database.
return
Do San Francisco and Marin publish an MLS map?
San Francisco publishes both a hard copy map as well as an online map. Both are excellent.
Marin does not have an online map. And its map is not user-friendly.
return
What are VOW sites?
VOWs are Virtual Office Websites.
In the tug of war between respect for privacy and the right of brokers to opt out of online publication, and the dissemination of information, technology has brought us to VOWs. This technology permits YOU, the consumer, to access the entire MLS Active Listing database, as long as your agent registers you with the VOW site, as a client. If you agree to this agency relationship you are registered and assigned a password. Hence, access is, technically, "private", not public. VOW technology may be offered directly by brokerages, or through third party providers.
Having access to a VOW site permits you to search the MLS database as with the aforementioned public sites, with three valuable additions: 100% of the inventory; Pending Listings are generally included; and, updated faster than the national sites.
Obviously, if you have established a relationship with your agent a VOW is a valuable tool and should be made available to you. But what if you do not have such a relationship, and don't care to have such a relationship? Will there be folks out there offering free access to MLS: "Just sign here that we are your agent, and let us know when you find something." Will some consumers sign on because an "agency relationship" is no big deal?
return
Are For-Sale-by-Owner properties on MLS?
Yes and no. It's a matter of semantics.
The pure FSBOs are sellers who choose to sell their homes on their own. No Realtors, at all. There are Internet sites where sellers can list their homes independent of the MLS system. All but one are small. There is no Association to wrap the seller's knuckles if the seller fails to remove the listing once an offer has been accepted. So, expect stale listings. Owners.com may be the largest national FSBO site. There are others: 4SalebyOwner.com, Fizbo Depot, By Owner Online, and SanFranFSBO. Some of these sites aggregate all San Francisco Bay Area listings into a single database, because there are so few listings.
Other FSBOs forego a listing agent but will cooperate with the buyers' broker - meaning that they will agree to pay his/her commission.
And the third type of FSBO will list with discount brokers who charge a set fee to place the home on the Multiple Listing System, and very little more. Some of these brokers operate state-wide, through the internet, and will not visit the home. Since the listing is entered into the MLS system these sellers do expect to pay the commission of the buyer's broker.
If you decide to deal with a FSBO without a broker, then at least have a real estate attorney review the transaction. Don't expect the seller to take the lowly Realtor out of the equation and make YOU the beneficiary of his/her largesse by "sharing" with you the commission saving. YOU may be the next "victim".
return
Copyright ©1996 through current year, BlackStone, All Rights Reserved.
