The Federal Trade Commission, in a step aimed at promoting competition on broker-driven networks that list homes for sale, has reached a deal with a Loveland real estate listing service to share more information with popular real estate websites.
Behind the FTC settlement with Loveland-based Information and Real Estate Services LLC is an ongoing conflict over whether home listings on networks used by Realtors should be widely available to the public.
For years, real estate brokers have offered homes for sale on the so-called Multiple Listing Service, to which only they have direct access. A number of real estate firms make information from the service available on their websites.
Some sellers are seeking to list their homes on the MLS without hiring traditional, big-commission brokers. Instead, they pay discount brokers relatively modest fees to have their homes listed.
Companies such as Information and Real Estate Services, which has 6,000 subscribers serving northern Colorado, have been blocking these fee-driven listings from widely available websites. Therefore, those homes are not visible to buyers who visit the sites.
But under settlements with the FTC, the Loveland listing company and four others elsewhere in the country will make the information available on the sites.
The FTC also charged two Detroit-area listing services with breaking antitrust law by barring sellers who hire discount brokers from advertising their homes on real estate websites.
“In each of these cases, the real estate groups have stated that home sellers cannot use the service unless they contract with an agent,” said Jeffrey Schmidt, head of the FTC’s Bureau of Competition.
With nearly 80 percent of homebuyers using the Internet to search for homes without the help of a real estate agent, it’s critical to ensure complete information is available on real estate websites, Schmidt said.
“Our aim is to provide consumers with as many choices as the marketplace can provide,” he said.
The FTC is investigating several other MLS services in an effort to protect consumers’ rights to use “nontraditional” or discount brokers.
While the Realtors group is willing to work with the FTC, it contends that the MLS never was intended for consumers.
“The core purpose of the MLS is to exchange information among brokers for purposes of selling real estate,” said Ralph Holmen, the group’s associate general counsel. “If it’s truly a for-sale-by-owner, it wouldn’t go in the MLS at all. It takes advantage of an opportunity the MLS makes available but doesn’t use the MLS for the reasons the MLS is intended.”
The impact of making the listings widely available is minimal, said Lauren Emery, chief executive of Loveland’s Information and Real Estate Services.
Listings affected by the settlement “are less than 1 percent of all active listings on our system,” she said.
The Denver-area Multiple Listing Service, called Metrolist, allows fee-driven home listings to appear on websites and is not affected by the FTC action.
Staff writer Margaret Jackson can be reached at 303-954-1473 or mjackson@denverpost.com.
