I have been an advocate for MLS websites that provide real estate listings information to the public since 1996. Such websites have always made sense as a hedge against industry outsiders that want to intercept the consumer on their way to the real estate professional, selling expensive advertising, charging referral fees and/or reducing the broker's capability to provide a one-stop-shop for services ancillary to the real estate transaction. MLSs have done much recently to reverse the misconception that a local public MLS site "competes" with brokers' online efforts and establish that these sites complement them – and thankfully, over the past few years, many MLSs have begun to strengthen their online presence, creating or improving on websites that include the listings. Some MLSs have built or licensed very compelling sites and made them the ‘go to' listing site for their geographic area, providing a steady stream of traffic and leads to their subscribers through cost-effective efforts, while others have not done as well in their endeavors. The purpose of this short paper is to review the landscape of the MLS public listings website, provide a baseline for discussion and hopefully spur continued improvement of MLS public listings websites.

I used the directory of sites maintained by Internet Crusade as a starting point for the investigation. When duplicate and non-working sites were removed from the list, there were 335 web sites to visit. 73% of the MLSs licensed their listings search (if not the whole web site) from their MLS system vendor while another 22% have built their own or worked with a local company to do so. The last 5% either licensed a solution from an IDX vendor, a national listings portal or, in a few cases, from their state REALTOR® association.

Interestingly, of the 73% provided by MLS vendors, 52% were provided by Systems Engineering, a provider with small MLS market share (by number of subscribers) but which provides service to many smaller MLS customers. Another 20% were provided by Rapattoni Corporation, followed by single digit representation by MarketLinx, Solid Earth, FBS, Fidelity, EZlist and Technology Concepts. A number of other MLS vendors each have less than 1% share of this segment.

Some Differentiating Features

Other than the raw listing information, these public sites need to be attractive and have an interface that facilitates searching for, browsing and comparing properties, making a list of listings and using that list to facilitate the visitors' property search. During this evaluation, I looked at many differentiating features including, but not limited to, the following:

Many of these features are available on current real estate portals like Trulia, Zillow, Cyberhomes, Realtor.com and so forth – so that's where there bar has been set for MLSs if they want to be competitive and enable the consumer to have a similar experience to the major portals.   Having a robust site increases the possibility of becoming the "favorite" real estate site for consumers in their market and a good site also creates pride within the membership which in turn increases consumer traffic through referrals.

There are many ways to implement the above-listed features – some good and some bad. For example, a map search can be as simple and poor as requiring the visitor start the search by clicking on a large and artificial geographic area on a map, and can be as robust as allowing for a polygon search along with other search criteria to find or narrow down search results – and the polygon search can be easy to use or difficult to use. Also, a site can technically have content such as mapping, neighborhood, point of interest and school information - but many of the sites reviewed were integrated very poorly with that content, making the user click over to other sites in pop-up windows or tabs for each property to view the additional content on a third party web site rather than integrating the information into the listing detail display. It's not just a matter of having a feature that's important, but making it easy to use for the consumer is crucial.

There are many other less common or unique features not listed above, as well as features that consumers won't see that are important for an MLS to implement to create an effective site, such as back-end reporting on web site use, listing views, leads sent, and so forth and while those features weren't included as a part of this review, they are important factors when an MLS is considering what technology to implement.

The Current Landscape

Let's look at some basics: the Privacy Policy, Terms of Use, and Anti-scraping. More and more, consumers are expecting that a complete privacy policy be posted online – but only 10% of the sites reviewed have a full privacy policy posted. A robust Terms of Use (along with anti-scraping techniques) is important to ensure that visitors only use the site and its content as expected – but only 9% have a robust Terms of Service and only 4% have any anti-scraping design or capability to speak of.

There are a lot of aspects of website marketing and search engine optimization, but for this study I examined the sites in terms of Google Pagerank. On a scale of zero to five where five is best, 71% of sites have a zero Google Pagerank while only 3% score a five.

In terms of HTML standards compliance, only 1.2% of sites have no HTML validation errors on their main search page. 15.6% of sites have 25 or fewer errors – leaving over 83% of sites with significant HTML validation issues. MLSs should care about this because invalid HTML can have an adverse affect on search engine optimization, mobile device usability, and web accessibility.

I performed a high-level review (only examining the main search page of each site) for compliance with web accessibility standards (see http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/accessibility.php) and found that all tested MLS public web sites have accessibility errors, and 83% have major accessibility errors.

It's important for an MLS listings site to have no channel conflict with brokers – specifically not having ads for services that may conflict with broker interests. Thankfully, we found that only 7% have advertisements that might concern their brokers.

Looking at the search capability itself, 31% have an Open House Search enabling the consumer to find listings of interest to visit, but only 7% have a Multi-Property Map allowing visitors to see a visualization of the location of prospective properties at a glance and allowing them to plan their open house visits more easily - and only a handful of sites offer driving directions integrated with that display. 16% have a Map Search – though as previously noted the quality of the map search varied greatly. Less than 1% of sites have a Foreclosure Search or Sold Status Listing Search – search types that consumers might find of interest.  However, during previous research, I found the percentage to be higher among larger MLSs. Exploring other criteria that relate to usability, less than 1% of sites have a Single Line Search (Google-like search beyond basic search criteria) and only 3% allow the user to Modify Criteria without Leaving Search Results.

Looking at the search results, while 78% of sites have a Property Map allowing the visitor to see the location of the home on a map and 62% included an Aerial or Birds-eye View of the property, many of these implementations were just link-outs to third party sites and potentially added many clicks to the consumer home search process. This is poor interface design. 2.4% include Point of Interest information, but even of this small number many sites require the user click through to another site to view the information, which is again poor interface. 84% of sites include Full Address Display, though most of those that don't display the address betray the address unintentionally via the links to mapping sites, which include the property address in the web address. In terms of other listing-related content, 94% display Multiple Photos, only 0.9% display Calculated House Values / AVM, 3.6% include Neighborhood / Demographic Information, and 5.4% display School Performance Data. Note that most sites displaying school information are just deep-linking to other sites rather than including the information directly in the listing detail report, which would provide a better consumer experience.

According to the 2000 US Census (http://factfinder.census.gov/), 17.9% of Americans speak a language other than English at home and 8.1% speak English less than "very well", and of course web site visitors may come from other countries where English is not the primary language. While the language barrier seems to be a growing trend, only 0.9% of studied websites provide a Multi-Language option.

In terms of activities the visitors can perform on the site, 4.5% include Showing Scheduling, 62% have a Mortgage Calculator, 55% allow the visitor to Email the Listing (to friend), and 2.1% allow the visitor to Compare Properties (side by side). 86% have a Print Friendly Property Report though what constitutes ‘print friendly' is a subjective thing. 12% of sites allow Registration/Login, 12% allow Saved Searches / Listings, and 9% allow the user to receive Email Updates for Search Matches. There are a few sites that do not require registration for the user to add listings as favorites, which while useful to the casual visitor, some visitors might accidentally close the browser without printing or noting their saved listings somewhere and may be frustrated by the loss of their search results.

Of the 28 criteria that I evaluated these sites on, the average site had 6.5 of the criteria, while the median was 7. Only 9 sites had 15 or more of the criteria. The following chart shows the clustering around those numbers and illustrates how few sites were exceptional.

Kudos

Following are some of the more robust and interesting MLS public listings websites:

Houston Association of REALTORS® - http://www.har.com
This site set the bar for MLS public web sites and HAR continues to innovate. The site provides lots of features for consumers to use, yet it balances that very well with ease of use. Allowing visitors to see the top 100 listings for a search with wide criteria and letting them adjust their criteria without leaving the search results screen if they want to narrow their selection is just wonderful. There are a few other sites that allow consumers to send themselves listing detail via text-message, but this was one of the first. As MLS executives have seen in Bob Hale's presentations around the country, the site also provides great reporting allowing the MLS to demonstrate great value to brokers.  HAR.com had over 1,000,000 unique visitors in March of 2009 and sends over 500,000 leads to its brokers every year at no charge. HAR.com is the first MLS public site I am aware of that has introduced an agent ranking system where the agent is ranked by the client. This is a controversial feature that I have been advising my clients is being offered by industry outsiders whether the agents like it or not, so we're excited to see HAR take control of the situation and offer it in a controlled environment.In the program's first month, over 1000 agents voluntarily enrolled in the "Client Experience Rating" system. HAR staff and volunteers spent time thinking through all the business rules to make this work. They encourage agents to opt into the program to receive the feedback, and allow the agent to decide whether they want their rankings displayed by their listings.  HAR sends the email survey to the consumer and has experienced a 38% response rate thus far. This is clearly a controversial feature on a MLS web site, and we congratulate HAR for innovating and finding a way to make this work well for its members!

MRIS - http://www.homesdatabase.com/
The combination of structured search (beds, baths, etc.) with natural language query for location and amenities is brilliantly done, providing tremendous power and ease of use. This site also displays listings no matter how many are found (nothing is more frustrating on other sites than searching and getting the message "You found 52 listings – go back and refine your search to have less than 50") and allows the user to refine their search without leaving the search results screen. It's so wonderful to see that MRIS looked at and learned from other industries, including a "People Who Viewed this Listing Also Viewed..." link. This site has all the informational resources a consumer might want, including comparable properties courtesy of Cyberhomes. Homesdatabase has been around for many years, but MRIS recently updated the entire site and started to promote it doing targeted online advertising. Their goal is to drive more traffic to the broker and agent sites. In the first 90 days since the re-launch of the new site, Homesdatabase has had 1.5 million visits, almost 20 million page views, and consumers are spending an average of 11:28 minutes on the site. They have also seen that many people are coming back to the site, and in a recent week in April, about 70% of the people were return visitors, and nearly 30% had been there more than 10 times! That's a good indicator that consumers like the site, and when they are ready, will be likely to contact an MRIS broker or agent directly. Like HAR.com, all leads are 100% free from the MLS public site.

The Connecticut Statewide Multiple Listing Service - http://ctreal.com/
This is another highly functionally robust site with a polygon map search and the ability to mark properties and compare the listings side by side. As with previously mentioned sites, this one displays listings no matter how many are found and allows the user to modify the search to limit the results further.

Bay East Association of Realtors® - https://www.bayeast.org/index.php?q=buysell_findahome.html
Providing an attractive interface and a powerful search across a wide array of criteria, this site has some interesting Web 2.0 features, such as allowing registered users to add notes on listings and set up an RSS feed for a listings search. It also allows the consumer to search foreclosures, which seems very responsive to people's interests right now.

Real Estate Board of New York (REBNY) - http://www.residentialnyc.com/
This site is "Powered by Trulia" but is not just a branded version of the original site. With the interface that makes Trulia so popular, keyword search, neighborhood information and statistics, and side-by-side property comparisons, this site is well constructed.

Multiple Listing Service of Hilton Head Island - http://www.hiltonheadmls.com/
This site may not have every feature on which I evaluated MLS websites but the design is quite nice and the interface has some very innovative elements.

FBS (for example: Northwest Montana Association of Realtors® - http://www.nmar.com/)
The dynamic and attractive "count on the fly" feature on the websites FBS provides makes it very easy for the consumer to see when they have narrowed a search too far or when there is an opportunity to narrow their search further using advanced criteria.

Next Steps for Your MLS

If an MLS is considering improving its current public listings web site, it's important to consider not only features, functions and interface – only some elements of which have been noted above – but also requirements such as standards compliance, search engine optimization (SEO), information security, performance and maintainability. I guide clients through this maze by:

• Presenting on the need for, and pre-positioning common objections to, robust MLS public listings websites
• Reviewing existing web applications, creation of or review of functional specifications, and working with developers on an improvement plan for improving functionality and usability
• Developing robust RFPs to solicit competitive proposals from technology providers for new sites or major updates
• Negotiating (or re-negotiating) technology contracts

Lately, it seems like everyone I know has moved to Facebook - especially real estate industry colleagues. I like Facebook very much - it's one of the better social networking sites on the 'net, with all the best parts of Twitter, LiveJournal, Blogger and other social networking sites built into it.

That said, all of the user-built applications that want to access my profile make me a bit nervous. I generally counsel friends not to accept these application requests and ask that they please not send them to me. I also suggest people read the following article:

10 Privacy Settings Every Facebook User Should Know

http://www.allfacebook.com/2009/02/facebook-privacy/

A new biometric system looks at the vein pattern inside a living finger. It's claimed to be more secure than retinas or fingerprints.

That's great, until it becomes popular and there's a single vulnerable implementation where your information is intercepted and can then be replayed electronically ad nauseum.

Biometrics are neat, but there's a great rule of thumb (no pun intended) in security - never use a key (cryptographic or physical) you can't change when it has been compromised.

Introduction

The purpose of this paper is to generate discussion on possible MLS system future features by providing a big picture view of the changing relationship of real estate professionals with each other and with consumers, the changing relationship of local and regional MLSs with each other, and to illustrate, at least at a high level, how these changes may be either enabled or reflected technically in the MLS system of the future.

This paper is not focused on detailed description of what features are popular already today, for example:

• Mapping bird's eye or street-level views
• Big pictures in slideshows and flyers
• Total MLS staff control over fields, reports and business rules
• Easy setup/management of RETS data feeds
• Single Sign-On (SSO)
• Public records data intermingled with MLS data in reports and improved statistics

This paper also does not focus on the usual incremental changes to current MLS features, but rather explores the future of MLS systems and their role further ahead.

Clareity always advises our clients during their MLS system selection process focus on the core features ('the steak') and not be overly sold on other features ('the sizzle'). Too often, a largely volunteer based Task Force can be swayed by a single 'sizzle' feature, and forget that most importantly the system must perform core functions such as listing input and search as efficiently and accurately as possible, and that the system must have high availability and fast performance. With some of the more popular MLS vendors currently having significant issues in these core areas, I want to make sure that this paper is not seen as a call to take your eyes off the system core. That said, the definition of core functionality has expanded somewhat in recent years and will continue to expand and change – and we can't ignore that either. 

By consulting for many MLS vendors over the last decade, Clareity has strongly contributed in the development of the product vision for today's modern MLS system.  Clareity was a strong proponent of features such as integrated contact management and CRM, functionality for assistants and teams, and coordinating all of the leading real estate software vendors on Single Sign-On (SSO) technology and information security improvements. Not every feature we've thought up or recommended has been adopted though. Some ideas, such as good uses for automated valuation models (AVMs), Clareity has advocated for many years, but it took Zillow and Zestimates® to serve the MLS and brokers a wake-up call.  AVM's are just now starting to be integrated properly, in just a few MLS systems, using high quality AVM tools from companies like First American and Cyberhomes.com.

What follows in this paper are some of the cool features from my MLS product development notebook. Hopefully some of these features will show up in your MLS system of the future.  If you like one or more of these features, ask your vendor for them (or build it yourself, home growers!).   

Mapping: Not Just About Showing Property Location

Mapping has currently been used in MLS systems to show the location of properties, and occasionally through data layers and other interactivity, to show information about the property and its surrounding areas. However, mapping has a lot more promise than it has been used for currently.

Mapping can be a great tool for communicating agent knowledge about neighborhoods and communities. In some systems there is currently a way to turn on specific categories of "points of interest" (POI), but does it really help a gourmet seeking a home in a high-end community to show them every McDonalds and Burger King in a two mile radius? Not at all – rather, if the agent shows the consumer that map, it demonstrates that the agent doesn't understand their client. It definitely doesn't show the client that the agent is the neighborhood expert and can help interpret the plethora of information available. So, one key feature for turning maps into a useful tool to build a bridge between agents and consumers is allowing the agent to customize the map, edit the content shown to the consumer, and add user generated mapping content.

Illustrated below, an agent is showing the listings desired by the consumer alongside some specific restaurant and shopping options. You can see that in the Bistro detail shown, customized text and additional information has been entered by the agent, showing the client that they know the neighborhood, and have been to this restaurant before.

For example, if the prospective buyer had a child that studied karate, the agent could have added the nearby dojo to the map, along with the commentary "I think Suzy will really like the karate instructor at this dojo." Or, if the buyers had children in elementary school, the agents could add rich, relevant and even personalized content about the local schools as well.

The key to successful user generated mapping content is for it to be very easy to add the content. It must be easy for agents to add new custom points of interest, pre-fill basic information from existing data sources, and create content libraries that they can leverage to create custom maps for consumers with a minimum of entry or re-entry.   Getting these workflows right is critical to feature adoption.

Another area of mapping that could be greatly enhanced is to use mapping layers to show demographics. In many surveys Clareity has performed, agents seem very skittish about this – especially when it comes to showing crime maps. Some agents have legitimate reasons for skittishness – fear of being accused of steering or other violation of fair housing laws are valid concerns – but it's up to real estate professionals to provide the consumer the information they want and need to make a buying decision. If consumers want it and the real estate practitioner won't provide it, they'll get it elsewhere and the value perception of the REALTOR® will continue to decrease. As former NAR president Billy Chee said to me back in 2002, "The consumer is the lion coming over the hill."

Mapping also has great power to display complex information in a way that's very easy for people to interpret. One of my favorite visualizations is the 'weather map' or 'heat map'. Consumers can readily obtain heat maps from Trulia, Zillow, CyberHomes, and others, but not from their agents. Why is this? While some MLS systems already have heat maps to show days on market or price per square foot, it's easy to imagine other heat maps with even more useful information.  The example below shows what areas are 'hot' or 'cold' for investors by showing appreciation over time. Such maps could also show vacancy and absorption or even percentage differences between initial asking price and final asking price or sale price, or even show shading representing the percentage of properties in foreclosure.

I've shown 'heat' two ways on the map above – with colored icons and with color shading. It's probably only necessary to use one method or the other. Icons will certainly be technically easier to implement than shading, though at a wider zoom level area shading may make more sense.

Bridging the Gap between Internet and Installed Software

Why make the consumer open up a web browser and go to a web site to see their latest prospect matches? Why even expect they would check their email? Why not 'push' the results right to their computer desktop and get the information right in front of them when they start up their PC?   This is both convenience to the consumer and value-add to the agent.

The illustration below shows two Widgets that I created back in 2005 – one designed for the consumer showing the results of a prospect search, the other for the real estate professional, showing listing activity in their market area, along with what emails, inquiries, and tasks would await them when they logged into the MLS.

Toolkits by companies such as Google and Yahoo!, as well as widget capabilities built into Windows and Mac OS, make widget creation fairly easy. Coldwell Banker added a very simple widget to their web site last year, but I'm imagining much more sophisticated widgets, especially for professionals. Recently, I've begun to see capabilities developed to allow even more bridging between the Internet and the desktop – where the widget can store some data locally and provide some functionality even if the user has gone offline. As this technology evolves, I expect that the opportunities opened up by its use will continue to grow.

Integration of Broker System Features

At some point I expect, or at least hope, that MLSs will have much deeper integration with broker back-office systems and/or build in more broker features. There would be significant broker data management and workflow advantages to building features into the MLS such as:

• Lead Generation / Management tools
• Marketing tools
• Competitive analysis for Recruit/Retention
• Content syndication tools (listing distribution to other web)
• Productivity / profitability measurement tool

To dig a bit deeper in one of these areas, an agent productivity / profitability measurement tool may include such elements as:

• Income and Expense Tracking
• List/sell/total production graph and chart
• Drilldown by month / week / day / date range
• Drilldown by enterprise / office / team / agent / listings
• Productivity modeler (Actual / What If)

The "what if" modeler may allow for adjustable components such as commission splits, selling office commissions, desk cost coverage %, closed to list ratio, average marketing time, transactions to list ratio, and more. The system would then be able to show total $, GCI, agent $, company $, market $, desk $, net $, and $ change (from previous and base scenarios).

These types of features have been in various different broker tools – but really depend on the MLS for the data to properly implement them. Again, either the key will be deeper integrations with existing products or building these types of tools right into the MLS.

Features to Better Support Agents

Most MLS features are focused on the agent, but there's still more that can be added to the MLS for them, including:

• Listing presentation or other marketing pieces as robust as the CMA w/ MLS sales statistics and showing data integrated
• Buyer's agent presentation
• Easy mail merge marketing pieces w/ tax data
• A chart/report showing housing value increase or decrease within specific search criteria - to detect price trends within a specific neighborhood - and the ability to set alerts if sale price conditions start to occur for a specific search.

As MLSs continue to regionalize and engage in data shares, creating a better system for agents to find each other and provide referrals will be increasingly important. I believe that more advanced roster search functionality will be important if an agent in one area needs to be able to find the agent in another area to best serve their client.  Being able to see who is the expert in the types of properties desired by the client and who is most experienced and 'best' at facilitating buying or selling those properties via statistical analysis is key. Potentially there would even be qualitative agent ratings, open to other real estate professionals or even the consumer. Like eBay ratings, there would be a way to address disputes. There are already a number of web sites providing mechanisms for agent ratings – why wouldn't "organized real estate" want this mechanism to be someplace where we could manage the rules around it and have it integrated with other agent information and statistics?  Consumers will have access to several agent rating services – this is inevitable – because everything is being ranked on the Internet.

Integration of Appraiser Data

Will appraisers ever be brought into the fold? Every few years this comes up and new appraiser platforms such as Zaio are developed – though usually they have not succeeded in the long term. Why separate appraisal systems from the MLS system - is there not synergy? Shouldn't data standards such as RETS be worked on together with appraisers? How will they be incented to participate in a common data platform, so that everyone benefits?

RETS Implementations

Continued improvements in the ease of setting up listing syndication and even accepting listing input from broker systems will be possible as RETS continues to evolve. I think these are core MLS functions, and will change the role of the MLS system as diagrammed below. A lot more detail on this subject is available in a separate paper, available from http://www.callclareity.com/MLSsyndication.cfm

MLSs will also need to work to address the security of listing data either being syndicated or even exported directly from the MLS. Because of that latter element of the problem, use of secondary products will always leave a significant issue unattended – unless the solution is 'baked into' the MLS. None of the MLS systems on the market today have established effective controls for solving this issue, though Clareity Consulting attempted to get the ball rolling by sharing plans for such as a system with all the major MLS vendors back in 2004, in a document titled, "Protecting Against Illegitimate Use of Data by Legitimate Users: Processes of Data Licensing, Delivery, and Use Monitoring".

The core of the system, diagrammed below, is to include a process for data use licensing, request and delivery, and verification – all built right into the administrative user's view of the MLS. MLSs could get a handle on where the data should be via the licensing process, data and images would be individually watermarked (yes, I know that data watermarking is a tall order), and methods of efficient compliance management put in place.

I've got to admit that I'm not sure the perceived cost/benefit model will ever make it likely that such a system would be built – but I'd like to see this issue addressed. Once weaknesses in MLS user authentication and protections against hackers are put in place, this area is the largest security challenge for any MLS.

Social Networking

Real estate is, by its nature, a social business - so another area where both standards and deeper integrations may come into play is in social networking. Various major social networking sites have explored development of a common programming interface (API) for social applications across multiple applications - for example the OpenSocial standard (http://code.google.com/apis/opensocial/).  If MLS functionality expands its capabilities toward social networking, it certainly would be interesting to see how the MLS could interact with other applications through such interfaces, opening up whole new possibilities of how real estate professionals interact with their colleagues and clients.

The Original NAR "Future of MLS PAG" Vision

Originally, the NAR "Future of MLS PAG" vision was to have a central back end data repository, allowing for front-end interface of choice, provided at the local brokerage, MLS or association, vendor, and franchise levels, along with a baseline front end available through the NAR. Diagrammed below, this wasn't a bad idea, though the MLS PAG has since evolved its vision toward something that has seemingly little to do with MLS.

I still think the original vision made a lot of sense, especially at the natural market region level, then being linked together into larger areas. Of course, most MLS systems are not currently architected to use separate back-end databases, but I expect this will change in the future.

Lastly, to facilitate the regional data share process, or even to make it possible for brokerages/agents to have their own custom data shares beyond a single region, MLSs will need to make it easier to automate creation of data mash-ups from different MLSs as much as possible. I imagine a data mapping expert system that facilitates inclusion of multiple data sources, automatically mapping data to a common set and "wizarding" corrections and additional mappings. Of course, the system would still need to reflect the data mapping into reports, statistics, and other parts of the system.

Conclusion

Clareity Consulting is constantly researching new ideas for MLSs.  Our expert consultants are regularly engaged in the product management and development process with leading MLS vendors and home grown systems. Through end-user surveys, interaction with MLS executives and staff (80+ of top 100 MLSs have been clients of Clareity), our annual Workshop and attendance at MLS system sales demos, Clareity is constantly taking the pulse of the industry, in terms of what features are desired in an MLS system. But Clareity goes beyond this research, and is always looking ahead.

One of my favorite product-development related quotes is from Henry Ford, great automotive pioneer, who said, "If I had asked people what they wanted they would have said faster horses." There's a lesson in that quote for MLSs that say, "We're member driven," and for MLS vendors too focused on the mantra, "We're customer driven." It's important to listen, but it's also important to innovate and lead.

Those who wish to keep the functionality of the MLS more limited may insist that the role of the MLS should be constrained to only those functions needed for the facilitation of cooperation and compensation between brokers. That is, of course, the core of the MLS, but it should also be recognized that the MLS is the core business platform for agents as well, and that the MLS may need to continue to expand to support their needs in a multitude of ways.

What has been described above may be of interest, perhaps may inspire, but it's up to you. We in this industry often passively ask ourselves and our peers, "What is the Future of MLS?"   I think we need to take a more active, thoughtful role. To reference a quote attributed to Allan Kay of Apple Computer, "The best way to predict the future is to invent it!" MLS vendors and regional MLS operators can create the future of MLS, both supporting and driving the way local and regional MLSs interact with each other and the rest of the industry, and enabling REALTORS® to interact with consumers in new ways, preserving and enhancing their value as well as the ongoing value of the MLS system itself.