NAR Launches a New Blog

Welcome to “YPN Lounge“.

“YPN” is the acronym for “Young Professionals Network” and the YPN Lounge is touted as the “online meeting place for Realtor Magazine’s Young Professional Network”.  What is the “YPN”? From the “about” page:

YPN was created by REALTOR® Magazine as a forum for young, rising real estate professionals to network and stay up-to-date on the latest business tools and strategies. As home buyers get younger and the real estate industry constantly evolves, YPN sets out to ensure young professionals’ voices and ideas are heard within the industry.

Seems to mesh in with Realtor Magazine’s annual “30 under 30″ campaign. Any youngsters that want to contribute to the YPN Lounge Blog see this:

If you would like to be considered as a YPN blogger, or if you have any questions about this blog, please contact the blog administrator:

Melissa Dittmann Tracey
Young Professionals Network
REALTOR® Magazine Online
430 N. Michigan Ave.
Chicago, IL 60611-4087
mtracey@realtors.org

Hey folks at the NAR (and according to the IP addresses of visitors, I know some at NAR are reading here) — how about a “OPN”  (Old Professionals Network) and a “40 over 40″ thing?  After all,  us old folks are people too. Don’t we deserve to have our voices and ideas heard within the industry?

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Free the MLS! Another Board Forbids the Use of the Term “MLS”

The Realtors Association of Northwestern Wisconsin has joined some other associations in forbidding its members to use terms related to “MLS”. Paying members can’t use terms like “MLS”, “Search the MLS” etc. in domains names, or on their web sites. (see their rules and regs, Section 16)

Granted, if I have an IDX search on my web site, a visitor is not searching the MLS. But to the average non-Realtor person out there, the term “MLS” means “home search”. Try putting “Search via IDX” on your site and see how many people stop by.

A “disclaimer” that the user isn’t actually searching the MLS I can live with. But where do the NAR and Realtor associations get off telling me what words and terms I can or can’t put on my website? I can’t use “realtor” in a domain name. Fine, your trademark, your rules. But MLS? Give me a break.

There are few areas of interest here to me:

1) The term “MLS” is not trademarked by the NAR or any association. Want to know who owns the trademark on the term “MLS”? Try Major League Soccer, M. Licht & Son, Midcontinent Livestock Supplements and Multi-Lingual Software, Inc.to name a few. But it’s not trademarked by the NAR or any association I could find in a trademark search (go here and click “submit query”. You want to look at registered and “live” marks).

2) If you do NOT belong to the association, you are free to use the MLS related terms all you’d like.

How does restricting the use of “MLS” help the NAR and association members? You know, the ones that pay to belong.

Sigh.

Thanks to Inman Blog, I found this nifty little site — Free The MLS.

Why are they here? To quote them:

Our primary order of business is to provide insight and education on a recent addition to Article 12 of the National Association of REALTORS® code of ethics.

Our goal is to have this addition modified to clarify and strengthen our position as REALTORS® in the rapidly changing world of online real estate.

It is our opinion that this recent change to Article 12 of the REALTOR® code of ethics does a disservice to member brokers, agents and consumers as a whole by denying access to a term that has long been understood as a primary marketing tool for customers to buy and sell properties throughout the United States and Canada.

We seek to protect this most valuable asset by having the new code of ethics revision allow REALTORS® to continue to use the term MLS in all marketing materials. We firmly believe that the use of the term MLS does in fact provide consumers with a “true picture” of the MLS.

The consequences of disallowing the use of the term MLS are such that it permit other non-member entities and businesses to usurp the term thereby diluting the ”true” meaning of the term MLS.

In an effort to help to protect consumers, the NAR has set on a path of unintended consequences which will be more detrimental to the consumer than the intent of the initial change.

I’ve got to agree with these guys. The term MLS is basically in the “public domain”. Taking away the Realtor’s ability to use those terms on a web page is clearly not in the best interest of Realtors, in my opinion.

So stop by FreeTheMLS.com and sign the petition. If you are so inclined.

I’d love to hear an explanation of why it’s good to prevent Realtors from using the terms related to “MLS” on their site. Seriously. Help me understand.

OTHERS OPINE:
Cry-Baby Board of Realtor Associations and MLS’s Continue Desperate Rule-Making