Am I the only one, while watching Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet in the titanic blockbuster movie Titanic, who thought “All these people are about to drown and they don’t know it yet?”
That’s kind of what it felt like during the MLS Issues and Policies Committee meeting this past Saturday in San Francisco. Assembled before the standing room only audience was an august panel of industry thought leaders discussing the crumbling relationships between the brokers of The Realty Alliance (and other large firms) and their Realtor Association MLSs. After about a half hour of listening to repeated platitudes heard ad nauseam in the past I was eagerly anticipating the announcement of Peace in Our Time! Would there be a breakthrough in the shuttle diplomacy that must surely have been going on in the back rooms? Would NAR CEO Dale Stinton tip his hand and let us know that mother NAR was riding to the rescue with a new MLS model of inclusion in governance and a noncompetitive product/service policy?
Alas, it wasn’t to be. Instead we heard, ‘Yes, we talk to large brokerages regularly, but they haven’t told us what they’re planning,’ and ‘No, it isn’t NAR’s place to get involved in the local issues between brokers and their MLS(s).’ (Both of those are paraphrases as I heard them, not direct quotes.)
<Sigh!!!>
I could almost hear the arctic waves washing over the feet of the band members accompanying the frenzied hustle of the ship’s mates as they rearranged the deck chairs on the doomed ocean liner.
Everyone in the room either heard firsthand or read accounts of the presentation by Realty Alliance CEO Craig Cheatham at the CMLS meeting in October. Everyone knew the deadline (imaginary as it turned out to be) ten days later when TRA was to meet and decide what to do next and with whom. Everyone in this room expected something to happen or to be discussed at this meeting. Nothing happened.
The general forum ended and the official committee meeting began. Surely now the sparks would fly. Someone from the major broker contingent must have prepared the motion to rescind the policy adopted in May that allowed MLSs to decide whether to treat their public facing website as a basic service, paid for by general funds rather than individually based on usage. In what may have been the fastest and shortest meeting in recorded NAR history, the matter was dealt with in a matter of seconds, referring the question back to a task force for more study, with nary a comment from the floor for or against before a rather lopsided voice vote.
<Double Sigh!!!>
Admittedly NAR is between a rock and a hard place in this drama. They have the most to lose if either of the two most popular guesses about TRA’s ultimate detection proves to be true. If (a) TRA brokers opt out of IDX and syndication by mounting their own web portal, thereby undermining one of the most productive tools for both listing and selling brokers, or (b) go all the way and withdraw from MLS altogether, the cornerstone of NAR’s local associations, the singular most attractive value proposition that associations have – access to and participation by all in MLS services – goes away, and with it any reason to belong to a Realtor board.
Without MLS, and all the benefits attendant to it, NAR stands to lose a significant portion of its membership and with that goes a similar portion of dues dollars and political clout. By my rough count, the five largest brokerage firms account for nearly half of NAR’s million members. Without the big brokers, NAR becomes a second tier lobbyist with small, disorganized members who are focused more on day to day survival than on the long term prosperity of the industry as a whole. I cannot imagine that they are deferring responsibility to their local MLSs with just advice to “Talk to your brokers and see what they want.”
Yet, NAR walks a thin line in the aftermath of the DOJ settlement, being constantly careful not to be seen as trying to dictate business practices that might be anti-competitive or guiding the MLSs to do so. Still, I have to believe some conversations with some of the major players are happening somewhere, sometime, leading hopefully to something.
If not, then we might indeed have witnessed the rearrangement of the deck chairs on a sinking ship. I, for one, certainly hope not, because I know how that movie ends.
For this post
Cause – Invisible iceberg!
Effect – Glub, glub, glub.
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