Thoughts on MLS, Its Governance, and Listing Syndication

I have not had the privilege of ever taking part in MLS governance. However, I DO own one share of the building in which the MLS is located. I attend the annual MLS luncheon, during which I’m provided with MLS statistics (ex. number of members, production volume, lawsuit updates, etc.). I’m afforded the opportunity to ask questions.

Twenty-two years ago, my wife and I started an independent real estate brokerage from scratch. In Pittsburgh, the MLS is neither owned, nor affiliated with the local REALTOR® association. The same individuals have governed the Pittsburgh MLS for decades. In some instances, our MLS governance is multi-generational.

Many among the MLS governance own and/or operate brokerages that have six- or seven-figure budgets dedicated to studying market trends and consumer behavior. They consider themselves to be leaders in my industry. They attend conferences and conventions and hire consultants and subscribe to expensive newsletters to better understand the changing nature of our industry.

With the advent of the internet, those individuals had the advantage of real-time intelligence about consumer behavior. Perhaps more importantly, they understood how real estate brokers and MLS’s throughout the nation were harnessing the power of the internet.

Listing syndication is not new. In the early days of listing syndication, large firms spent vast sums on search engine optimization. Even though small firms like mine had IDX, it didn’t matter, because we couldn’t afford to appear on Google’s first page. Since the large local firms were winning the SEO race, they were content with listing syndication.

Then, outside actors, who were not real estate brokers, availed themselves of technology to disrupt the system. By competing with the large firms for Google page rank, they stole web traffic from the large firms. The first big firm in Pittsburgh to respond was Northwood Realty – in 2014. Temporarily, they refused to share their listings with Zillow.

No other big firm stood up to Zillow. Instead, they made business deals with Zillow. I remember when Zillow allowed large firms to put their logo next to their own listings. This opportunity was not made available to my firm, because of our comparatively small volume of listings. Those that governed the MLS made deals with Zillow and other third parties that benefited their own firms and not deals that benefited the entire MLS membership.

Since 2014, the MLS became a lead generation platform. It created a marketplace that intermediates the relationship between the listing broker and the buying public. And it became a monetized product. For the last twelve years, those who governed the Pittsburgh MLS (and others like them throughout the nation) have enabled this to occur.

Fast forward to 2026 and the large firms throughout the country are investing heavily on portals – the ultimate way to create “walled gardens” for home-seeking consumers. If the consumer has a reason to stay in the portal, why would they search for homes anywhere else? The reason is: delayed marketing.

When it succeeds (at least from the listing broker’s perspective), delayed marketing eliminates the need for the MLS by avoiding the MLS altogether. When it fails, the unsold listings finally migrate to the MLS.

I have spent my career in this industry wondering whether a firm who is vastly larger than mine would take anti-competitive action that would dramatically alter the playing field. The time has come.

What I am watching happen in my local market concerns me deeply: adoption of the delayed marketing strategy is not only anti-competitive (listing brokers hiding their listings from other firms), but it is also bad for sellers (denying the listing the benefit of competition from the entire marketplace of potential buyers).

The MLS should operate as a cooperative without profit motive. It was created by brokers, for brokers, to facilitate the voluntary sharing of listing data between agents who have sellers and agents who have buyers. That is the purpose.

A seller sits down with an agent at the kitchen table, signs a listing agreement, and consents to share that property with the brokerage community so that a buyer can be found as efficiently as possible. The MLS exists to support and protect that cooperative spirit.

The listings that flow into the MLS were won through the skill, relationships, and hard work of listing agents. Those agents and brokers made a cooperative agreement to share inventory with other brokers who have buyers. They did not agree to hand that inventory to third parties to build entirely different businesses on top of it. That distinction matters enormously, and those who govern the MLS have allowed it to blur for too long.

Again, MLS and its governance had access to all the knowledge, intelligence, data, strategies, website designers, marketing and public relations professionals, mba’s, consultants and everything else you can imagine that money can buy. MLS governance made a highly informed decision to share the listing inventory with “third parties” so the third parties could monetize it. They let the proverbial genie out of the bottle.

Think about what happens when a listing agent wins a listing. That agent has prospected, built a relationship, delivered a compelling presentation, negotiated the terms, and earned the seller's trust. That is where the real value is created. Some of the decisions made around listing distribution and internet display in the early days of the internet should be reconsidered given the market dynamics we see today.

The MLS should not be a product. It is infrastructure. There is a meaningful difference. Infrastructure exists to serve the participants who built it and depend on it. A product exists to generate revenue for whoever controls it. When the MLS starts functioning more like a product, someone is capturing value that belongs to the brokers and sellers who created it. That someone is rarely the broker. It is rarely the agent. And it is certainly not the seller sitting at the kitchen table. Instead, sellers expect to share their home immediately, with the entire brokerage community, with the internet at large – and not just the agents from their listing broker’s firm.

That brings us to the MLS governance. When a MLS writes rules with specific business models in mind, it is no longer functioning as neutral cooperative infrastructure. When policy decisions are made based on which firms they advantage or disadvantage, trust in the system starts to erode.

And the MLS only works when everyone trusts it. Those who remove that trust create a weaker MLS. When the firms with the most resources build proprietary alternatives, then you have a fragmented market where data lives in silos, you have portals, you have delayed marketing, and consumers lose transparency. The firms with the most resources become the only ones positioned to benefit. That puts every member at risk, including the firms that think they are benefiting in the short term.

For 22 years, I have run a long-established brokerage operating in Pittsburgh, PA. Achieve Realty has the agility to navigate industry change in ways many firms cannot. I am not writing this to boast. I am writing this because the broker community, large and small, independent and franchise, traditional and alternative model, has a shared interest in keeping the MLS what it was designed to be. The moment we allow it to become something else, the moment we undertake delayed marketing tactics, we abandon the infrastructure that makes cooperative competition possible in the first place.

At the same time, brokers are trying to respond to changing consumer expectations. Consumers demand transparency. But controlled distribution strategies and delayed marketing strategies are designed to hide information. They are disguised as attempts to modernize marketing strategy while still participating (only as a last resort) within the cooperative framework. In the case of delayed marketing, fragmentation is disguised as modernization.

I also want to say something directly to my fellow broker leaders who are engaging in MLS governance: Your self-interest, institutional inertia, and policy decisions have led us to this moment. If you have the nerve to complain about the system you created, then you are blind to your own failure.

Part of the consolidation conversation consuming the industry right now is a symptom of this governance. The MLSs serving their members best are not necessarily governed by the largest brokers and owners. They are the ones led by boards willing to ask hard questions, govern in the interest of all brokers, and remain disciplined about what the MLS is and is not supposed to do. Size is not the variable. Leadership and purpose are. Now is the time for change.

What the MLS needs to become, and what the best MLSs already are, is a neutral data services cooperative serving horizontal competitors without deference to business model and without an appetite for monetizing the inventory brokers created. That means equal standing for every participant. The MLS does not pick winners. It provides the infrastructure within which the market picks winners. And it means the listings won at kitchen tables across America remain connected to the brokers and agents who earned them. The role of the MLS is to make sure listings are shared cooperatively with other brokers. It is not to dictate every aspect of public distribution strategy beyond the cooperative itself.

I believe in the MLS as much today as the co-brokers did when they helped organize it in the first place. I believe in what it makes possible for brokers, agents, and the consumers we serve. They built a broker cooperative worth protecting. But protecting it requires neutrality, trust, modernization, and a clear understanding of the role the MLS was originally created to serve.

Finally, I believe that sharing MLS listing data via IDX agreements (the modern version of the old MLS books of yore) embody the spirit of trust and cooperation of the MLS founders. Opting out of such agreements would be the greatest betrayal of their legacy.

-Lawton Stokes, Attorney At Law, Associate Broker, Owner

Achieve Realty, Inc.

Wexford, PA

June 2026

a real estate brokerage designed to put our

client relationships & their success

at the center of everything we do