Or will it be Trulia? Or another, yet unnamed player? I don’t know. What I do know is that the local MLS providers here in Colorado leave a lot to be desired. Our company, realasave.com, deals with 4 different MLS providers currently and we’re planning on expanding to include another 4 or 5 very soon. Most small brokers don’t have to deal with multiple different MLS providers because they concentrate in just one area. So a broker dealing mainly in Denver real estate would have to deal with Metrolist (the Denver MLS provider), while a small broker dealing mainly with Boulder real estate would likely just deal with IRES (Northern Colorado’s MLS provider). So small brokerages don’t get the perspective that we have in dealing with all of them.

It’s hysterical, really, to look at the rules that these companies have. The MLS provider in Colorado Springs, for example, forbids brokers from giving out address information unless you force a person to sign in to your site. Seriously, they absolutely forbid it. They even forbid you to show pins on a map. Pins on a map! But go ahead and Google “Colorado Springs real estate” and see what you find. You see various companies that are in flagrant violation of these MLS rules. So not only are the rules silly, and in many cases senseless, but many companies simply don’t follow the rules at all.

In Grand Junction you are actually not allowed to speak to the MLS provider. I’m not kidding. You MUST go through the local board of Realtors. I spoke with a very nice lady at the local board of Realtors who was aghast when I asked her for the phone number for the local MLS provider, “Oh no! You can’t TALK to them. You can’t EVER talk to them! If you talk to them then they’ll call me and yell at me and say ‘Keep your people in order’!” I’m not kidding. This conversation actually took place.

Some of the MLS providers are a pleasure to deal with. IRES has a staff that is always helpful. The same cannot be said for some other local companies.

There are over 900 MLS providers in America. And they all operate in a vacuum. They all have their own rules, and each thinks that their rules are the right rules. They don’t communicate with each other…they often don’t even know that the other exists. Again, I’m being serious. Do a little experiment: try to find out how many MLS providers there are in the state of Colorado. Does the National Association of Realtors have this information? You’d think so, but they don’t. Does the Colorado Associate of Realtors have a list? You’d think so, but they don’t. Well, maybe you know a few of the local providers so you call them and ask for a list of their colleagues. They don’t have it. It’s a mystery. Total UFO time. Close Encounters of the MLS Kind. It’s freaking hysterical.

I hope that Trulia and/or Zillow either a) forces a national consolodation of MLS providers into one, giant national MLS, or b) replaces all of the current MLS providers.

You can’t even imagine the expense of dealing with 6-10 MLS providers. We’re talking around $10,000 in monthly fees, local board fees, and upgrades. I’d much rather deal with one provider who doesn’t want to screw me over by selling MY information BACK to me at an exorbitant rate. Yes, they actually sell me back information that I technically own. Let’s leave that for another day. And next time I’ll get on my soap box about what an evil, vile, monster Realtor.com is. Trust me. They are.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 14th, 2007 at 12:15 pm and is filed under Colorado Real Estate, Our Company, Denver, CO, Boulder, CO. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.