MLS clamps down on realtor blogs

The Seattle PI’s John Cook reports the Northwest Multiple Listing Service has fined Seattle’s Redfin $50,000 and forced the company to stop publishing a popular blog posting reviews of Seattle and San Francisco area homes.

Redfin.com offers a searchable database of real estate listings in the Los Angeles, Orange County, San Diego, San Francisco, Boston and Seattle areas. Redfin’s Sweet Digs blog was a nice blog sharing a lot more about a home, it’s neighborhood, and features than the typical MLS or realtor website. I ran into it more than once in my RSS feeds tracking my home town of Bainbridge Island.

Days after Redfin Chief Executive Glenn Kelman appeared on last Sunday night’s CBS’s ’60 Minutes,’ and declared that real estate is the ‘most screwed up industry in America,’ realtors starting complaining. Realtors whined Redfin was violating a MLS rule that prohibits brokers from advertising another member’s listing without permission.

The MLS said it needed to take action to make sure all information about homes was accurate. That’s bull.

The action was taken to protect realtors lacking a little innovation. If the MLS had the interest of home buyers and sellers in mind they’d be looking for the broadest dissemination of listing and related information possible.

Most realty companies advertise other realtors’ listings on their websites. The other realtors want their listings sold, in which case there’s a split of the 6 or 7% commission.

But Redfin was getting traction, reaching consumers on the net via blogs in a way that realtors were not. The unimaginative good old boys needed to protect their gravy train to the detriment of consumers.

Sounds a lot like the NY Courts and old school lawyers trying to clamp down on lawyer blogs in New York. With the help of the FTC and an army of lawyer bloggers voicing opposition, the good old boys didn’t prevail there.

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