Weekly Real Estate News
Summary
Compass has asked MLS organizations to exclude its listing and agent data from feeds used by third-party recruiting technology vendors, raising new questions about brokerage control over secondary uses of MLS data.
Compass is asking multiple listing services to stop distributing its listing and agent information to third-party technology vendors when the data is used to help competing brokerages recruit agents, opening another front in the industry’s debate over who controls MLS data and how it can be commercialized.
The brokerage’s request was confirmed by Compass after Inman reported on a letter sent to MLS organizations. RISMedia separately reported that a Compass spokesperson confirmed the letter had been sent.
The outreach names technology vendors including Courted, BrokerMetrics and Brokerkit and asks MLS organizations to identify data feeds that provide Compass listing, transaction, production or roster information to companies whose products can be used for agent recruiting.
Compass wants an opt-out
According to the reported letter, Compass is asking MLSs to exclude data tied to Compass International Holdings brands from feeds used by recruiting software, while allowing affiliated franchise brokerage owners to opt in. The brokerage is also asking whether MLS participants have the right to opt out of vendor distribution outside traditional IDX and virtual-office-website uses.
The request is narrower than a demand to stop MLS cooperation. Compass says it supports sharing data needed to facilitate real estate transactions. Its objection is to downstream licensing or distribution that turns information submitted for cooperative brokerage purposes into recruiting intelligence sold to competitors.
It was not immediately clear how many MLS organizations received the request or how many provide the data at issue to the named vendors.
A broader MLS-data fight
The dispute matters beyond Compass because brokerage recruiting platforms increasingly combine listing histories, transaction production and agent-roster information to identify potential recruits and measure agent performance. Much of that information originates in or passes through MLS systems.
Compass’ position raises a governance question for MLS organizations: whether data contributed for listing cooperation can also be licensed for ancillary commercial products, and what control participating brokerages retain over those uses.
The move also arrives amid a much broader fight involving Compass and MLS policy. WRE News has previously reported on MRED’s national private-listing initiative with Compass, Zillow’s lawsuit involving Compass and MRED, and the later court ruling sending the Zillow-MRED dispute to arbitration.
This latest issue is distinct from those private-listing disputes. It concerns secondary uses of brokerage data by technology vendors rather than whether listings must be broadly distributed to consumer portals.
How MLS organizations respond could have consequences for recruiting-software companies as well as large brokerages that increasingly treat their agent and transaction data as strategically sensitive information.
