How best to list homes: Is one-stop shopping the answer?

As real estate associations see their member numbers dwindle during the recession, the Connecticut Association of Realtors has renewed its push to consolidate an online property listing service covering much of Fairfield County with CAR”™s own statewide service.

Multiple listing services are joint ventures of real estate brokers that combine members’ home listings in a single electronic database that is made available to all member brokers. The database serves as a clearinghouse for members to search for listed properties on behalf of buyers, and communicate timely information such as properties that have offers on the table, allowing interested buyers to get in the door with a counteroffer.

Membership in the Connecticut Multiple Listing Service (CMLS) dropped by nearly 700 subscriptions last year, a 5 percent decline to just over 12,000 members in all, according to CAR.

CAR said the Greater Fairfield County MLS Inc. has 7,500 members. In addition to the statewide and Fairfield MLS services, local agents can pay membership fees to access separate MLS data bases covering Darien, Greenwich and New Canaan.

Having previously sought to create a single, statewide MLS service, CAR upped the ante in March by establishing a reciprocal access agreement with the Westchester-Putnam MLS in New York. CAR said the deal makes it the only MLS to offer Fairfield County agents access to the two largest markets ”“ New Haven and Westchester counties respectively ”“ from which people relocate to Fairfield County.
The use of a single MLS system would offer several advantages, CAR maintains. In addition to eliminating the cost of buildings and overlapping administrative and technical staff, agencies would save by not having to double-enter listings in the statewide MLS database in addition to the local MLS systems they use. The differing systems also require additional training, another cost CAR says could be eliminated. CAR estimates it costs $270 per member annually to maintain the statewide MLS service.

But at what cost for local agents? By maintaining a separate system in lucrative Fairfield County, agents focusing on the local markets have ready access to up-to-the-moment changes to area listings, which bring far larger commissions on average than most other markets in Connecticut.

As such, MLS databases are typically jealously guarded. For instance, in mid-May the Norwalk-based Greater Fairfield County CMLS upgraded its security software to better pinpoint accountholders who are sharing their passwords with others without written authorization from CMLS. The software analyzes keystroke patterns to detect multiple individuals using a single account; of more than 5,400 accounts analyzed by the company to date, nearly 700 were determined to be shared accounts.

In a 2007 report, the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission said that while agents defend MLS systems as a critical tool to provide cooperation between agents, others term MLS organizations “clubs” that limit access to companies that conduct business in a particular manner, and so limit consumer choice.

In recent years, federal prosecutors have filed lawsuits against multiple MLS organizations nationally, alleging they violated antitrust laws by excluding some brokers from joining the organization, impacting competition. In early May, the U.S. Dept. of Justice settled one such complaint with a South Carolina MLS organization.

Separately, DOJ reached a settlement with the National Association of Realtors, in which NAR agreed to require its affiliated MLS organizations to share listing information with Web site operators that list properties online, termed virtual office Web site brokers in the industry jargon.