From lawsuits to mergers and acquisitions at a scale never seen before in real estate and everything in between, 2025 was full of twists, turns and surprises for the housing industry. HousingWire is rewinding and breaking down the biggest storylines in the real estate industry from this past year.
For MLSs, 2024 saw the removal of offers of cooperative compensation from their platforms thanks to NAR’s commission lawsuit settlement agreement, and in 2025 they were forced to face what this means.
“We are coming out of a world where the pillars of the MLS were compensation and cooperation, and one of those pillars is gone and never coming back,” Ed Zorn, the general counsel and vice president of California Regional MLS (CRMLS), said during a session at the Council of MLSs’ (CMLS) Open House conference in September. “Now we have to decide if we are able to build the MLS on what is now, just a foundation of cooperation.”
Due to this, many MLSs spent the year evaluating their value proposition, with some such as Bright MLS, venturing into technology services. However, for many MLSs their value proposition is tied to a state or local Realtor association. This naturally led to a discussion about the possibility of Realtor association-owned MLSs separating from their associations.
“For me, chocolate covered raisins are the perfect analogy,” Jerry Legrand, the chief technology officer at Greater Louisville Association of Realtors/APEX MLS, said during another session at Open House. “You have chocolate, which is the MLS and everyone loves it, and then you have raisins, which are the associations, which some people like and see value in and others don’t. But then you combine them into an unholy abomination. The sum of the parts, the MLS and the association, is less to me than the parts by themselves.”
As an initial step toward separation, many Realtor-owned MLSs began opening MLS access to non-Realtor members in 2025, with NAR announcing in mid-November that it would be shifting control and rule making on many issues including disciplinary actions and MLS access to local MLSs and associations.
With this increased rule making capacity, it is clear that 2025 will not mark the end of many MLSs’ journey of self discovery in a post-settlement world.
This is part five of a seven-part series.
