Watch the conversation as T3 Sixty’s Clint Skutchan explains the “beauty” of the MLS system and offers survival tips for organizations under pressure.
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From the consolidation trend to the debate over private listings, there is an increasing need for MLSs to remind subscribers that transparency, fairness and exposure are what make North America’s real estate system unique, according to T3 Sixty SVP of Organized Real Estate Clint Skutchan.
“There needs to be a story told about the beauty” of that system, Skutchan said during a recent episode of Ask T3. Fracturing the marketplace “makes it more difficult to retain that beauty,” he added.
Not all change is bad — but as the industry changes, clear and consistent communication will be key. “The MLSs — and by extension the associations — need to do a really good job of explaining the comprehensive marketplace and advocating for it,” Skutchan said.
Where MLSs need to ‘double down’: In the post-Sitzer/Burnett era, Skutchan said it’s “really important that we move away from what has been largely compulsion models — like, ‘You have to do this, and this is the only way that it works’ — to, now we really have to incentivize and even inspire this continued cooperation.”
Many industry leaders agree that “we’ve got to double down on the cooperation aspect,” he added.
A dangerous game: “Having a really efficient, transparent, fluid real estate system allows for so many activities to occur around them that drive economies, that impact communities,” Skutchan said — and there are risks involved with fracturing that system, he said when asked about exclusive listings.
“I think that it’s really a bit of a game of roulette to start messing around with something that we know for a fact has significant value at a social scale,” he said.
But in some cases, an exclusive listing option can be beneficial. “It’s just a matter of, at what point does that become general practice versus specific practice?” Skutchan said, adding that he prefers an adaptive approach to a prescriptive one, “because there is importance to having brokers be able to innovate.”
The haves and the have-nots: Brokerage consolidation “drives a lot of pressure on the MLSs to further consolidate” as more marketplace overlap occurs. “We have haves and have-nots in the MLS environment right now,” Skutchan said, noting that the bottom 250 MLSs of the 500 or so in the U.S. account for only 3% of the total revenue. Meanwhile, the top half can afford better staffing and resources.
“For the MLS, this is going to further exacerbate a lot…
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