California StateWide MLS?
NationWide MLS?
This past week at a Broker Caravan here in San Diego I heard an interesting discussion on the possibility of a California statewide MLS. The general feeling was that we’re at least 5 years away from any meaningful progress as there are many different technology platforms and deciding which one is the easiest to use will be difficult at best and probably impossible because of politics.
To be honest, I’d never thought how strange it was that the state of California has multiple MLS systems in place. Agents aren’t given a real estate license specific to San Diego, Los Angeles or the Bay Area…..they get a license for the state of California but do not have access to MLS date in the entire state, effectively making their license invalid in those parts of the state that their broker is not licensed. Agents that live on deviding lines for MLS groups are paying double or triple in fees simply to earn a living.
Isn’t that a huge problem?
Does it make sense to anyone that California alone has 70 MLS groups?
Look, I understand there are going to be substancial problems getting a working statewide MLS and then at some point a nationwide one, but isn’t sharing more information generally a better idea then sharing less?
If I were on a Realtor board, which I am not, I would be very concerned that the technology to scrape the web being used by Google could give them a huge advantage in creating their own nationwide MLS. A statewide of nationwide MLS not sponsored or approved by the California Association or Realtors or the National Association of Realtors has to be the worst case scenario right?
