The Sitzer v. NAR antitrust lawsuit has the potential to turn an industry-accepted compensation construct on its head. At stake in this case is whether four commission-sharing rules within the National Association of REALTORS® Handbook and Code of Ethics subscribed to by all REALTORS® amount…

FBS, the creators of the industry-leading Flexmls® System and Spark Platform, announced today the acquisition of Solid Earth’s Spring software platform along with the hiring of the Spring team. Combining the Spring® Portal, the Spark® API, and the Flexmls® System establishes a completely new, powerful platform that puts MLSs, brokers, and agents…

I read an article referencing a study on how For Sale by Owner (FSBO) sell for less. In my opinion, this is misleading because they are only looking at FSBOs that did NOT sell through the MLS. These days, most successful FSBO listings are on…

I’ve been seeing a lot of questions about the direction and makeup of the Broker Public Portal and its relationship with Homesnap. I have no direct influence or investment in either group, but plenty of interest. Let’s clear the table first—some of these questions come…

  For me the answer is yes! For others the answer is no, in certain situations. For example, when my MLS made a decision to give Zillow our listings, they did not do a poll to see if their members wanted this service, they just…

Project Upstream aims to become the defender and gatekeeper of brokers’ real estate listings nationwide.  The National Broker Public Portal intends to provide a nationwide display of data that puts brokers at the controls.  The former is not intended to exclusively fuel the latter (though it seems…

MLS® and REALTOR® Trademarks in Meta Tags Google is certainly all the buzz talk in the SEO world these days and us Real Estate Agents are not immune to the unfortunate penalties and updates our beloved Google has bestowed on us.  With all the Penguin…

It happened — Metrolist and Santa Barbara booted Diverse Solutions (now owned by Zillow) from their list of approved IDX vendors. The Metrolist decision was reported by Geek Wire, while Inman picked up on the fact (premium content) that Santa Barbara had also pulled the plug. Eric…

I’ve noticed an interesting trend developing; agents are adding MLS Widgets to their Facebook page. Some of the Apps being developed for Facebook are complete websites onto themselves that using clever scripting to shoehorn themselves into the Facebook Platform. Others offer sophisticated lead capture capabilities….

Realtors hold all the cards (MLS data), but are aggregators squeaking out the win? – photo credit Recently, a Hawaii MLS company (who asked to remain anonymous) audited Hawaii Life Real Estate Brokers and informed me of a few RETS rules and regulations we were violating. The…