The MLS public side should face the agents, not buyers and sellers.

Why should agents be competing with MLS sites? Case in point would be the Sarasota Association of Realtors taking of Marc Rasmussens domain name. They didn’t just want the domain name he chose with the help of REALTOR Magazines “Mr. Internet” retired, they wanted the domain name pointed to their site to benefit from all of Marc’s inbound links and PR that was built with thousands of dollars and thousands of hours of sweat equity. Wanting to display properties to the public is simply not the function I perceive that the MLS should have. In my opinion its function is to faciltate the cooping of listings by brokers, not to market the brokers properties to the public.

My opinion is that the MLS’s should not display properties to the public from their websites at all, only agent rosters with links to their sites. The same should be true with REALTOR dot com (as the name suggests visitors should be coming there to find REALTORS, not real property).

Your opinions?

I do appreciate HAR’s idea to create a network of local MLS websites that might be able to compete with the likes of Trulia and Zillow. Since the MLS has every local listing, a network of MLS sites would be a powerful competitor to these real estate advertisers. I’m all for it as long as my MLS doesn’t try to sell the leads back to me. As a paying member, it would be nice to have them give back something in return for my membership dues. Leads on my own listings would be a start.