MLS Data, Real Estate Standards, and MLS / Brokerage Relations With CRMLS CEO Art Carter

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TRANSCRIPT:

Hi, everybody. Welcome to brokerage insider the podcast where we interviewed the leaders in real estate and technology. I’m your host, Eric Stegemann. I’m the CEO of TRIBUS, one of the largest independent prop tech companies in the real estate space and provider of custom brokerage technology to medium and large brokerages in the United States, Canada, and even around the world.

Now, in addition, I’m also the managing partner, TRIBUS capital, a private equity fund, focused on the prop tech. On today’s episode, we have art Carter. Now art is the CEO of CRMLS. It’s one of the largest MLSs in the country, and I’m really excited to dig in with him on a slew of topics today. Art, thanks for joining.

Thank you for having me, Eric. Now I ask all my guests, you know, tell us a little bit about how you got to where you’re at now. First of all, how did you get into real estate to begin with? So I’ve been working a couple of private and publicly held companies really on, you know, the technology and, and accounting actually fronts and had done some consultants.

Especially on the technology side for a smaller mid-sized companies. And it was really looking for a, a new challenge and found a, a position with a local association in 1997, I believe it was. And from there kind of transitioned to where I’m at right now which is CRMLS which was at the time that I started in 2005 was MLSMLS. And we have grown from an organization servicing about 20,000 brokers, agents, appraisers to about 110,000 today. So a lot of growth, a lot of expansion, a lot of changes. And my job today is vastly different than it was when I first started. And I’m the type of person who loves a challenge. So it is kind of right up my right up my alley and.

Well, so obviously being, being in charge of a, a, of an MLS has all sorts of of great pieces, but also probably some, some frustrating things that you deal with on a daily basis. So what’s the, what’s the the big kind of things are the things you’re seeing right now, or that the MLS is dealing with that are maybe challenges that you’re working.

Well, in all honesty, the, the legal environment that we’re facing some of the the legal environment and the, the restrictions that some of the things that are going on legally are, are placing on us as, as multiple listing services. That is a challenge. I think that, you know, we’re really trying to.

To accomplish moving in, in real time with the marketplace and providing brokers and agents with real value. And it’s always difficult, especially when it comes to a policy standpoint and a rule standpoint, I think a lot of times, not so much necessarily at the brokerage level, but at the agent level, there is not a lot of education that is being done as to what the multiple listing service.

What it does, what some of its requirements are, why those requirements are there. So that’s always a difficulty that we face is that educational piece and throw COVID into that and our inability to get in front of people, you know, as effectively. Zoom’s great. But. I’m a firm believer. Real estate is about relationships and most of those relationships are built face-to-face and, you know, sometimes one-on-one even, and COVID really, really put a Kirk in our ability to do some of the things that I really think that we needed to do to keep, you know, our brokerages and our agents kind of in the same ballpark as what it is that that is going on in the industry.

Our difficulty always lies in the fact that there’s such a high turnover amongst our members. And when I go out and speak, it’s not all that surprising when I ask people, how, how many of you have been are newer into the business and have been in the business for less than seven years to have 50% of the crowds crowd raised their hands?

75% of our agents probably don’t even remember life before Zillow. And so there’s always that difficulty in educating people in early, putting that value proposition forward for the MLS. Well, let’s talk about that for a second because you know, I’ve been in this industry for 22 years now. And even from my 22 years ago when I jumped into it, the concept of ward and MLS is, has changed significantly.

And even I was kind of right on that precipice of where. The concept of an online MLS existed. Cause they, my office, when I first started selling real estate real estate, we still have the cards and the the CD ROMs that were available for, for folks. Right. And so the concept of an MLS definitely seems to have changed.

From, you know, the original idea being more or less, just an offer of compensation amongst participating brokers to something a lot more than that. So how, you know, how did we get from point a to point B and where do you think we go from here? Yeah. I don’t know that I would, I would agree that it has changed that much.

I’ve been, I’ve been preaching for, you know, 17 years now that I run a broker cooperative and it’s more than just, you know, it’s more than just compensation. It’s about the cooperative. This marketplace, that is the multiple listing service is so important to the brokerage community. So important to the appraisal community.

So important to that, to the baking industry that provides loan products and, you know, valuation services out to, out to the, to the consumers, this ecosystem, you know, Even though the technology has changed, even though, you know, we’ve gone from books to tear sheets, to, to online systems whether, you know, resident on somebody’s desktop or delivered, you know, via the internet, you know, the, the basic underpinnings of the multiple listing service.

Really should have been the same across the board. And that’s this cooperative that, you know, these offers of compensation, you know, have flowed in between members and the, the, the benefits of that. So the ecosystem within the real estate industry are so, so important. And, you know, I think even more so as we’ve moved into this electronic you know, this electronic age, I feel like I’m dating myself by saying that, but, you know, I agree with you.

I was around before, you know, there were really these, these large databases, but that all being said, You know, there’s such value to that cooperation. It’s not the compensation that necessarily runs the whole entire value proposition of, of an MLS. It’s it’s really that cooperation and the action. Too close to a, a full marketplace, as you can get as far as information, that’s really what the value is that we bring in, you know, what we try to preach here.

You know, we, we, it’s your MLS, you know, kind of transitioned in 2008. Talking more about taking on more data and providing more data to our brokers and our agents. And that is so Keely important for people going forward. Consumers don’t have consumers, don’t have borders in. And this this new world, they have access in all honesty to a greater breadth of information than most real estate professionals have in their own MLS.

And it’s been a key part of what it is that we’re trying to do. And that whole cooperative cooperative piece is, is, you know, I, I hope long-term that, you know, it doesn’t get that the baby doesn’t get thrown out with the bath water and that the brokerage community does understand that. So, you know, yes, I agree with everything.

You said that at the core, it’s all about cooperation, but, but obviously the level of services that a, an MLS provides these days definitely seems different from where I was in back in 20 21, 22 years ago, where. It was you logged in, you could see what properties were for sale and what the commission rate was, which that’s, that’s a whole other topic of, of knowing what the commission rates are.

Right. But but you know, that’s, that’s pretty much what you could do and, and they wouldn’t have dreamed. And in fact, my MLS. You know, more or less, poo-pooed the idea of offering other technology. But now it seems like every MLS, you know, you’ve got tax systems like realists and, and all of these other systems like that, that are out there.

You’ve got MLS says that offer CRM tools, even beyond just the regular. Save search alerts and things like that, that traditional MLS is have, you’ve got email marketing tools. You’ve got mobile apps that they offer. It seems like pretty much everything under the sun when it comes to technology, you know, at least some MLS out there has done a deal to license many tools for, for their members usage.

And, and obviously that’s shifted where. Tried to, I think, kind of compete in that world. And now it seems like a lot of MLS are stepping in and I know our clients are always concerned about MLS is stepping into that tech space and offering tools beyond. You know, the, the normal, the original concept of broker competence working together, brokers working together.

So, you know, obviously a CMS is as a organization that does offer a lot of tools. What would you say to the brokers that are out there that think, you know, like, Hey, I’m, I’m a broker I’m trying to compete on tech and here’s this MLS, that’s trying to do the exact same thing and, and pulling people away from my value proposition.

Yeah. You know, I don’t know that that’s ever the intent of any MLS, but one of the things you’ve got to recognize Eric, is that you and I both been around long enough to know that there’s been ups and downs in this industry. Yeah. We have 24,000 people licensed brokers within our system. And I always kind of chuckle when somebody talks about this is what the brokerage community wants because those 24,000 people it’s your most probably have 36,000 opinions about what they want and, and how to provide it.

And that’s the difficulty at a, at an MLS level is really. You know, do we only service the large brokerages then, because that, you know, has a completely different value proposition than serving the mid-size brokerages than serving, you know, the small mom and pops and the vast majority of the brokers within the CRMLS system fall into that small mom and pop arena.

So it is a very difficult road. One of the things that. Know, I know that you will see some of the larger MLSs start to do and really our first foray into this was kind of the. This API for showing systems. And, you know, the, the goal is to really kind of cement that cooperation from amongst the brokerage community.

The MLS is in a unique position, probably the only one in the industry to provide this platform for brokers, to cooperate with each other. And you’re going to see, especially at CMLs a level that we’re moving more and more and more away from these all-inclusive site license tool sets. And the more of an arena where we’re providing this connectivity and between, you know, whether it’s offer systems or showing systems or lockboxes, you know, there really needs to be, you know, some of that broker choice.

And I, I, that’s where I would agree with, with the brokers and that, you know, we have stepped up because there’s been. You know, some reasons and I’ve gone through market terms in all honesty where. You know, between 2005 and 2008, the broker’s opinion of what technology offerings that we pushed out there, you know, vary pretty drastically because you know, the market turned at that point.

So, you know, but at this point, you know, we’ve, we’ve grown, we’ve reached the spot. And with the capabilities of, of being a little bit more technology agnostic and providing those connectivity tools where brokers have that level of choice, they have that ability to differentiate themselves. But what we want out of the brokerage community is to cooperate with each other and share information across showing systems, to share information across, you know, offer platforms, to share information, you know, those areas in which it makes.

To have one tool in the tool set, and we should have one tool in the tool set. But where it doesn’t then, then we should offer, you know, multiple offerings and, and price it. And I mean so much to dig in there. So obviously as a, as a vendor who, who only works with, you know, usually medium and large sized brokerages, for the most part our, our brokers customers are always concerned, but what you just said is, is what I think all of them dream their MLS.

It is, it’s a, you know, essentially a data middleware layer. That’s very good at what it does that helps brokers work better, brokerages work better together. And that’s what they want. Easy access to the data. So for all of you, MLS is out there. I would encourage you to definitely talk to your brokerage members because I think what art’s saying here, right?

I think you’ll pretty ubiquitously here. That’s what they’re looking for. Even the smaller members. They just want the ability to choose the tools that are, that are best for them. So let’s dig in on the showings piece here for a minute. Cause here at TRIBUS, you know, we’ve been for over a year now really kind of pushing this concept of the idea that showing should be open that there should be a way of getting that showing date.

Between the brokerages, the showing broker and the listing broker, they should be able to get access to that data. And, you know, obviously this year with all sorts of changes in the showing industry, for example Zillow buying, showing time obviously there has been more attention to that space, and I know you guys have been right there with us kind of pushing this concept and you guys held this hackathon about pushing the showing data.

So where do you think. Showings we’ll be in let’s say a year from now. Yeah. I, I, I would hope. And, and there’s a lot of things that, that your has had, you know, cooking for a long period of time that for various reasons, the vendor community hasn’t really fully embraced. And, you know, I, I would hope that, you know, we could partner with the brokerage community to put pressure, you know, on some of these vendors face.

To be more participant to, especially on the showing information page. You know, this is the, just the new world we live in. You know, I’ve talked to enough of the venture capitalists out there and it astounds me of the amount of money that is being poured into the PropTech tech space. And we’re increasingly going to be faced with situations where.

You know, brokers may have very vastly differing opinions of their comfortability with ownership, structures of the technology that they use. And as such as I said, the MLS is. Uniquely placed to, to be able to ensure that cooperation amongst our brokerages and to share that information. I think the worst thing that could happen for the consumer is this fracturing of the technology.

And I think that’s one of the arguments that MLS has, will give you is that that fracturing of the technology does harm the consumer. But fracturing of that cooperation, I’m on brokerages in order to deliver that data, you know, is cumi important. And we need a partnership with the MLS is across the country, need a partnership with the brokerage community to make this occur.

Because you know, there is no brokerage, that’s an island. There is no MLS, that’s an island and we’re all dependent upon each other. And this next level of cooperation is really where we need to go. Technology dictates it, it demands. And it would be a very sad day that we had 10 dominant showing platforms out in the country with none of them talking to each other because that’s not what the consumer wants.

And at the end of the day you know, we’ve got to deliver at the MLS level you know, Through our brokerages, you know, that, that consumer experience to where showings are ubiquitous and, and even on the offer side, things are ubiquitous. And even, you know, the things that we’ve got brewing with some of our brokerages, allowing our own brokerages to do their own front ends, if they so choose is, is a direction that we all need to go through.

And the MLS really shouldn’t. Concerned about, you know, cooperative data sharing and making sure that the data that is shared is as accurate as possible to a common rule. So it, you know, it’s funny, you’re talking about all these things, because some of it is blog posts from seven, eight years ago that that we wrote.

And some of it is things that we’ve been talking about for awhile. In fact, TRIBUS actually rolled out a product called Flow three years ago. And the whole idea was it was an add edit tool for adding listings or managing listings. We, we actually worked with a brokerage and what they recognize is that it took.

Almost 10 hours of employee time because they managed all of the entry and, and ongoing management at the listing 10 hours employee time just to manage it in the MLS is cause they had to put it in more than one MLS to properly market the listing based upon where they were at. And so they managing the same data going into the same, you know, the same system.

And they’re spending all this time managing it, plus they couldn’t kick off appropriately workflows. So for example, if the agent signs the listing and gets everything set up, you don’t want to necessarily put it in the MLS and have it live until you have photos until you have, you know, all the things to appropriately market a listing and, and cheers to MLS.

For sure for requiring our most MLS has now require photos to have it go public because, you know, I’m sure you remember back in the day, you’d go online and you’d see all these listings. And none of them had photos on them. And, and so who knows what it was like, but giving brokers the ability to add and edit their listings in a tool that is part of their daily workflow, I think makes so much sense.

Just. Having a tool that manages showings. But if you think about it, I mean, look at showings. As an example, we, we are we’re in an environment where there was essentially a monopolistic player in that space. And even they had acquired many of their competitors and even the ones, the other competitors that were out there were kind of also rans, you know, single digit percentage of the markets are smaller.

And they kind of had access to all of that data. More importantly, I happen to know from experience, if you have a broker customer that wanted to go get access to that data, they would have to have huge increases in charges of what they were paying that vendor. To go get access to their own data.

And this brings up a whole other conversation about MITx that we could talk for an hour about too, but being able to get access to that on their own data you know, just for their own listings was one thing and that didn’t even account all of their buyers or their, their buyer’s agents data.

And, and it seems like to me, and you know, something we’re keenly focused on at TRIBUS is on the data side of things, of helping. Brokers better compete using their own data. And without access to that without a good middleware layer, like a MLS is you really can’t do much because you have all of these data silos and vendors telling you, you can’t get things in and you can’t get things out.

Yeah. And, you know, to those, to those ends you know, we at the serum a less level. And as much as we’re always going to have a UI that we have to provide because there’s, there’s always going to be that, that group of our membership that is not going to want to provide their own user interface experience or are not going to have the capabilities of doing it.

But their, their data and their inclusion into the database is just as important as anybody else’s. For those that are capable of doing that, you know, and we’ve, we’ve coined the term, the thin lamb listing input module. We’re more about the business rules at this point. We’re working with our brokerage committee.

And told Zillow’s transition. We were hoping to, to have a press release a couple of weeks ago about, you know, the first successful implementation off of this, then lemon, you know, MLS has need to be more about the business rules and the, the operational rules, the rules and regulations going forward.

You know, a lot of other things, and we do need to, to control the technology that enhances cooperation, but allow the brokerage community to choose those partners, that best express things at the consumer level and, and kind of let them go at it that competitive advantage on their. Well, I obviously totally agree here.

So you know, how do you, or how would you say that your brokerage members, your brokers how can they better engage with you and be part of the voice of these decision makers and decisions that are made? Obviously, you know, MLS has have governance and they have boards of directors, but I feel like a lot of times, if you’re not.

If you’re not the biggest brokerage in the market, or even if you, if you are a, it’s sometimes hard to get your ideas pushed out in an environment that has governance like MLS has have. So, you know, how do you, how would you say, or if you, if you were directly speaking to one of your brokerage members, I, for example, we have Corcoran global living that’s in your market, right?

If you were talking to the owner of Corcoran, global living, what would you say? To them, if they had ideas or if they wanted to make suggestions to how can they best go about that process? ArtCarter@CRMLS.com (626) 755-7467. That’s my cell phone number. We are open, you know, I, I, that the thing that’s, that’s always, you know, always kind of difficult is that, you know, brokerages are, or even though it’s a pain point for them they don’t understand that there is this open process within what it is that we’re doing.

And we’re always open for suggestions. We’re always open for know. For people to provide, provide us the feedback that they need. Amy is my director of broker resources and is constantly making cold calls to our brokerage community, both large and small to get some of that feedback.

And. You know, we’re doing everything we possibly can to streamline, streamline that process of getting direct feedback from our broker broker owners and developing tool sets for them. So we have an open process and I want to hear what the brokerage community has to say. And we do want to respond to it are our board of directors is made up of primarily broker owners.

Three of the top 10 largest within the ceremony’s footprint are part of our board of directors and they’re very actively a part of it. So they, they probably have a better attendance record at our board meetings than anybody else. So I do want that feedback and I do want to, you know, And it’s not just something that I say that I run a broker cooperatives.

We definitely want to listen to the concerns and, you know, as we, as we develop some of these things moving forward, we want to, to develop to their painful. So, you know, that’s great to hear because I don’t think that’s necessarily every MLS out there. You know, I don’t think they’re necessarily hoping for, or wanting to get feedback.

And so it’s great to hear that. Isn’t that crazy. I mean, we’re, we’re a broker, you know, or a broker cooperative and I would just chastise any MLS exac out there that if you’re not actively listening to your brokerage community, you probably need to find something else better. It’s true because, Hey, you’re the way I look at it at TRIBUS, my paycheck, my employees, paychecks come from realtors, doing their job every day and our clients, and we have to provide them more value than what they’re paying us for.

And I look at that a lot of times at MLS is the exact same thing. When, when we get negative commentary or, Hey, I don’t care about that. Commentary back when we make suggestions to molasses from our broker members You know that they just don’t want to hear that it’s Hey, your, your paycheck comes from those members being out there and selling real estate.

And if, if all of them stopped selling real estate, you, you wouldn’t have a job anymore. So you don’t have to necessarily implement everything they say, but at least listen. Exactly and, you know, it’s, it’s interesting because, you know, we’ve, we’ve successfully entered into somebody’s different markets and unsuccessfully have been unable to enter into certain markets, but you know, those brokers in the markets that we’ve unsuccessfully entered into, you know, OMI some thanks because we have forced some chains.

Across the board and MLS and in marketplaces that would not have occurred if, if there wasn’t pressure. And I, I truly, as the part about the industry that I don’t get is this, this resistance to change and, you know, None of us knows everything. And, you know, especially for our brokerage community, that the pressures in the market and technology is changing so quickly.

And we’ve just, we’ve got to be a lot more open and, and willing to, to listen to those people and, and, and make the changes necessary. Yep. Absolutely. So, I mean, I have to ask this the second part of that question, which, and you’re probably going to give the same answer, but I guess I’m looking for at least a specific item or two, which is how can vendors like try this or like any other vendor that’s out there.

How can we better engage with you? Not necessarily in just providing feedback, but what are the things. You know, not necessarily that you’re looking for a product to buy or, or some gap to fill, but what are the ways that we can bring things to you or maybe provide suggestions or say, how do we, you know, how can we better do this or better do that?

Because I feel like the vendors are part of that community too. They may not be the members like your brokerage members are, but I feel like vendors are all part of it. And, and, you know, you said, no, nobody’s an island. Nearly all brokerages have some sort of vendor. In fact, I think we did research a couple of years ago and found that only 2% of all brokerage brokerages nationwide had had home built their own kind of brokerage platform tool.

So how can a vendor better work with you or what are some things that, that you’re looking for feedback on that maybe, maybe somebody could provide to you? The interesting thing is Eric is. We, we, we have the usual players in the industry and you know who they are and, and they’re the ones that are most actively, you know, working with us.

I love garage companies. That is one of my enjoyments in this job is actively going out and talking with real small startups and companies along those lines because they gave me a different perspective. They’re looking to fill in me. That obviously existence exists in the industry. And it helps me better understand, you know, where, you know, new technology geniuses are walking in the door and their pain points.

You know, I, I can tell you that the, probably the primary, you know, Focus as if you’re not involved in RESO become involved in RESO. I that’s one of the things, especially with some, even the larger companies that they don’t actively utilize that resource to, to kind of not just connect with each other, but connect with the MLS is, you know, from a technology standpoint, you know, within the CRMLS system.

And I think we have a pretty good feedback. One of the things that we’ve talked about is getting together a vendor round table to a certain extent. To kind of deal with those, those issues. You know, the benefit to me, of, of attending, you know, at the MLS level, you know, to my fellow in Sachs, the benefit to me from from attending these RESO meetings is I constantly have random people coming up to me saying, Hey, I can’t get this done within your API.

Hey, I can’t get this done within your life. Licensing department and it helps me, you know, kind of manage the process as well. Don’t be afraid to speak up. Don’t be afraid to respectfully, you know, go to the exact that you see from the MLS side and provide your, your input and recommendations. The worst thing they can tell you is buzz off.

The best thing they can tell you is, Hey, I’m going to go home and fix your. And from, from my own experience, we have 240 or 250 MLS in the country that we work with. And for my own experiences, a lot of MLS is just generally speaking the vendors out there or, and really brokers for that matter. They just generally don’t know the pain point.

I think there’s always this assumption like, oh, they made this difficult for a reason. And I found certainly. And that’s not the case and sometimes you just have to bring it to the attention of the right people. Have the pain point, a perfect example. I was at RESO a couple of weeks ago, out in South Carolina.

And with one of the, the the consortium of MLS is that’s out there for, for the data purposes. We had had a problem and I just assumed that they knew and, and just, there was no. No way of getting around it. I met the CEO and I said, Hey, look, you know, I, I highly recommend you take a look at changing this policy and sure enough, he went back and I think they’re going to go ahead and change that.

And I think all vendors will, will benefit and thus the brokers will benefit too. So definitely get involved with RESO for anybody that’s listening. And I highly, I’ve been kind of on the. The process of trying to get more brokerage members to participate in research too, because it is a round table that you can bring those pain points to it.

So for all the brokerages listening, you know, definitely recommend you to join Riso. It’s not very expensive at all. And, and it gives you a seat at the table to try to help make these. So, okay. So, you know, I want to talk a little bit about CMOs and, and something that came up and, and work that you guys did.

You guys, you were mentioning earlier about how you work in other markets and you expanded out of just Southern California and, and working in other markets, or at least help with data shares and other. But obviously at a, a massive change from that, or a massive geographic change from your region was you recently did a deal to power his startup MLS in Louisiana, right?

And, and so great. Southern MOS is a startup MLS in in Louisiana. That was really started by brokers that were getting frustrated with their MLSs. So what made CMR say, Hey, look, we, we want to help with this project. Yeah. I went out and met with the brokerage community in Louisiana and, you know, I think there was just a.

You know, kind of a common sympathy with what they were facing and greater Southern multiple listing service would not exist if those brokerages felt like their concerns were being actively, actively addressed. And in many cases they were being told to buzz off. And I think those were two words that would never come off my lips to my brokerage community.

Most likely I would explain, you know, why certain policies were in place or, you know, work with that brokerage community. And these are some of the largest brokers in Louisiana and they’ve gained a pretty strong footprint. Greater Southern would not exist. And they would tell you that it would not exist if their concerns had been answered and would be answered.

So, you know, that’s really kind of the Genesis of things at the CRMLS level have always believed that the brokerages voice, you know, should dictate, you know, longterm, how things happen. There are a number of different reasons why that can occur. It can occur in the timeframe that that people are asking for.

But. And our, our summation, you know, what, the brokers that are actively pushing greater Southern forward, what they were asking for was so simple. And I know I’m, I’m being a little bit controversial in regards to entering into a new market and powering the technology to push a startup forward. But we do believe in it.

And we do believe in, you know, the premise of, of having that. Statewide database and you know, the brokerage community, you know, And I face this in California all the time. You know, the, the difficulty that, that we face I alluded to earlier as the consumer is much, much better in position to see a greater breadth of information and.

You know, especially when you have a brokerage that is spanning multiple markets, if not the entire state of California or the entire state of Louisiana, the difficulty they face in different rule sets the different differences that they face and datasets, the differences they face and policies it costs them money.

And you know, we at the MLS, we at the association level should never be in a position that. That we’re not listening to those concerns and trying to ease the process for them. And we face it in California. And I think we just found a very sympathetic group in Louisiana that philosophically we meshed with very, very well.

And we felt like we had the technology to bring forward to help them, you know, along the road and what they want to do. So, you know, and people can look more into that and how that all came together. But you said a buzzword there. I’m not even sure if you notice that you said it, but a statewide database.

So I have to go to one of my other questions here and jump, jump forward, which is. Do you think the MOS of the future is 50 MLS is, you know, and one in each state or is there a hot, you know, hybrid where some states need more than one? Or, or what is the future of MOS? How many MLS is, do you think there will be in 2025?

I don’t really think it matters how many nodes there are and to each database. And that can be a local level decision but there really needs to be one database for every state. And, you know, I’m, I’m a firm believer in that and it’s controversial. How do we get there? We have 570, some odd MLS in the country.

There’s a lot of moving pieces to, to accomplish that. But, you know, as a real estate professional, And I’m a firm believer that the brokerage community should determine where their agents are doing business, not the local MLS with the local association. So I’m a firm believer in an aggregated database.

You can have multiple nodes, you know, let the markets determine how many in California, let the markets determine how many MLS there are, but we can all be on the same database, all sharing information with these. So, you know, obviously California being, being as big as it is, that’s certainly a challenge that you’re tackling there, but there’s a lot of other things that go with it more than just the data side of it too, because you know, a lot of times MLS is, or local associations are also in charge of choosing the lockbox vendor and everything else that goes along with that.

So do you see that all simplifying itself to where, you know, if, if your central lock or if you’re super. That you’ll have 50 contracts instead of, you know, 500 contracts or more that you probably have right now. Does, does it get that simple? Yeah, it should. In all honesty, it should. Even less than 50, you know, there’s, there’s states that really.

You know, from, from a licensing standpoint, there may be some differentials, but you know, it makes sense for them to, to band together. And hopefully we see that going forward. I’ve always said that it was going to take an extinction level event at the MLS level to see that level of consolidation and who knows we’re facing, you know, uncertain times with governmental pressure and with these lawsuits that.

Could potentially affect that and bring that, that ele. Yeah. I mean, it’s, it’s it’s, it’s definitely something to consider, but th th I think part of where we got to where we’re at is back in the day when there wasn’t computer systems, it made sense to have more localized than molasses, because, you know, you wanted to have the local MLS where your index cards or the books were at.

Right. And to get out the data to folks faster. But the problem is it created almost the flywheel effect. And it seems like in a lot of associations and a lot of them blesses that flywheel effect is an absolute full force. And there’s very little stopping that flywheel meaning you know, people have come up through the ranks, their expectation is that they’re going to get the CEO job at some point.

Or they’re going to go from one location to the next, growing to try to earn that CEO. Type of a position that comes along with, you know, the big salary and everything that they were hoping for before. And it seems very difficult to convince MLSs. I convinced the people involved in the MLS is to disband the MLS or merge the MLS in, in the way that you’re talking about.

So what’s the way. You know, CMOs has done it too, to bring people on board or what what’s the way that other MLS has, can do that. To try to convince more of these MLS is to give up maybe even their own jobs to try to bring, bring simplicity to this market. Yeah. I coined to phase early on and in our, our process of transferring into a growth based organization and that, that phrase is charismatic.

Agree. And charismatically, you know, make yourself the best organization you possibly possibly can and aggressively go out and talk with people. You’re probably not going to get as much pushback from the underlying brokerage community and you’re probably going to get more pushback from. People who are in leadership have, as you talked about some of the vested interest in, and the status quo remaining in place, either from a employment standpoint or from, you know, a leadership standpoint within those organizations, I will tell you that.

There are organizations that it took me 12 years of working on them to get them to join. And I’ve had some organizations where I’ve turned them around and four months it’s not a one size fit, all fits all, but you know, it’s, it’s it’s so stupid, but it’s the field of dreams approach, you know, build it and they will.

Well and it seems like it’s working, it seems like your flywheel, as far as growth is, is doing well. It seems like, you know, you’re always making deals and putting things together. It’s just, you know, I think if you’re in Missouri where I’m originally from, how do you convince the MLS that has, you know, 180 members to, to go do that where the person has been doing it for 30 years is, is it part of me thinks, you know, okay, well maybe it’s based on retirement, that person goes through, you know, is getting ready to retire and you convince them, Hey, shut down the MLS or merge it with ours.

And, and you’re gonna save all your members money like that. It, it seems like it’s a very long. Long game in terms of getting, getting folks to merge. So that’s, that’s why I asked the question, you know, in 2025, I don’t think there’s going to be 50 MLS as in 20, 25 personally, but maybe do but where do you think we will be at in terms of the number of MLSs that we’ll have in 2025?

And it will probably be in the three to 400 range. I think there’s enough positive movement. And, you know, I think. There are some people across the country that have kind of seen what CRMLS has done and what bright has done and what stellar has done. And, you know, there’s some, there’s some blueprints out there for success and, and bringing people together.

And like I said, I’m not as concerned with how many nodes there are out there, but there really does need to be a push towards, you know, consolidated databases across. Greater areas of the country, then there are now, and I would hope that in 2025, that we’d accomplished some of that, you know, I’m part of some efforts at the NAR level that are talking about that.

And you know, one of the reasons why, you know, I have been so active at the RESA level is I’d really love to see, you know, some of that aggregation you. And Reesa has come leaps and bounds over the last five years. And I think that we see it. We see it from a from, from a standpoint at the MLS level, that data shares are increasingly less cumbersome to, to put together.

The ability to share data in other ways is, is increasingly easier to do so. Not being. Naive to say that it’s a, it’s a simple process, Phil, but you know, we’ve come, we’ve come light years. And hopefully in the next two to three years, we can make some of those, those quantum leaps to where we could have, you know, 50 databases shared across, you know, the country amongst whatever you know, number of nodes that makes sense within a local state or market.

So you keep using the word node. So I have to ask this question, which is, do you see blockchain, a value of blockchain, not, you know, not necessarily everywhere in real estate, but specific to the MLS industry. Do you see, do you see an MLS needing to, or wanting to, or seeing a benefit of integrating blockchain technology into, into the MOS?

You know, this is not really on our roadmap. And Toronto there they’re actively going down that, that path. I’m not on a roadmap right now, because I think there’s some, probably some better aggregation areas around there. The, you know, for blockchain really to work in the United States there are some key stakeholders that are not even involved in the process right now, and especially on the public records side.

So you know, we can only control what we can control. And, you know, that’s what we’re kind of focusing on here at this. That’s it, it’s something I’ve been saying. You know, I know there’s lots of folks at resale, very, very smart people that are working on blockchain in in, in real estate. And they’re trying to do things with MLSs or with somehow with, you know, selling the NFTs for your property.

All sorts of things like that. And I, I keep saying it all comes back to the recorder of deeds office and just like the. And the flywheel I was talking about earlier the problem is you’ve got to essentially convince all of the recorder of deeds offices all around the country, or at least in a state or, or even a single county to begin with, to essentially move to a blockchain method of, of getting the data on the blockchain.

And once, once you get that, once you get a some of the recorder of deeds offices or convince counties, Hey, save a bunch of money. Save your, your consumers, save the taxpayers in your county, some money. By moving to a blockchain where you don’t have to pay recording fees and you can reduce title charges and everything like that, then there might be some traction there, but it seems like the blockchain’s value in real estate is, is slightly overblown at where it sits today.

But not to say that it won’t be valuable in, you know, five years from now is as that most. Yeah, totally, totally agree with you. I, you know, I’ve, I’ve had an assessor come at me with a Pitchfork because I was in a meeting and derided his use of technology. And he was kind of concerned that I was, I was discounting the fact that he had a fax machine and you’ve got to recognize that, you know, for all of our, you know, urban counties, there’s, there’s not an even playing field across even the state of health.

Definitely. So you know, you, one of the things that you mentioned was things that you guys are thinking about at CRMLS and you know, blockchain is not on that roadmap right now. What are the things you were thinking about? I know you talked about data standards and showings, and it sounded like you even have transactional documents and contracts.

What are some other things that you guys are working on or, or that are on your roadmap, maybe for the next three? Most definitely we will be property centric by that time. I think that, you know, the time has come for us at the MLS level to, to embrace that and becoming a lot more modular than we are now a greater use of API APIs, greater use of You know, as I said, you know, to truly give brokers, you know, the choices that they need, we have to develop that modularity and allowing brokers to plug in things and, and to the whole MLS ecosphere onto the database in ways that they based on choose and working with our vendor community to accomplish that.

So that’s really, those are some real heavy lists for us over the next 18 months that we’re focusing. So, you know, thanks so much for the time here are it’s been a great conversation and I, I really hope to have you back on maybe in like six months from now and see where we’re at, you know, with some of these things.

Cause I feel like we are on the precipice of a whole lot of change that’s happening. But we are at a time. I do ask all my guests one question that I end on and I always love hearing all their answers and feel free to take a minute if you need it. But you know, if you could change. One thing about the real estate industry as it sits today.

What would that one thing be? You know, I really wish that’s an easy one for me. I really wish that. You know, across the country, we would have a much better open dialogue with the brokerage community. I think there’s an us versus them mentality sometimes and sometimes rightfully so, but if I could change anything in the industry, You know, put MLSs and brokerages on the same page.

Cause I believe, I believe we have more in common, more to commonly, you know, fight for than we do in our differences. And you know, I think that if we could accomplish that, you know, there’d be some, some huge, huge differences that could be made across the board. Sounds great. And, and again, feel free to reach out to art.

He gave you his his contact information and take advantage of that. 📍 Well, thanks everybody for listening again, you were listening to art Carter arts, the CEO of CRLs one of the largest MLSs in the country, and this is brokerage insider, the podcast where we interview the leaders in real estate and technology, make sure to subscribe to our podcasts so that you.

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