The National Association of REALTORS®' Broker Reciprocity initiative is designed to help individual Realtors get what they have always wanted - the MLS listings database on their personal Web sites. There's just one catch - it is troublesome and expensive, as some agents have already found out. What other alternatives are there that will allow agents to have MLS listings inexpensively and easily? The answer? Framed listings.

Few agents have the programming skills of Sharon Marsh or the deep pockets of Tom Rhodes to pay a Webmaster to reformat listings to post on their personal Web sites that satisfy MLS Broker Reciprocity regulations. That leaves many agents whose Realtor and MLS organizations are embracing NAR's new Internet Data Display Policy with no choice but to pay a third-party organization to do the programming and posting for them - if they want MLS listings on their Web sites.

How would a third-party handle it? In order to be cost-effective for the agent, the service provider would have to "frame" the listings. Framed listings solve a multitude of problems for everyone. The service provider can use its own programs to download, clean, and repost the MLS listings and "frame" them on the agent's Web site at a much reduced cost compared to what the agent could afford on his/her own. Because the listings are framed in, the agent doesn't have to pay additional expensive hosting fees to their Internet Service Providers to post such a large database. The listings can even be customized to suit the agent for additional cost.

What company will be in the position to get this lucrative framing business? The NAR would hardly have opened up a problem for their members without a solution, and you can guess which partner they would pick if they had a choice.

What organization already has:

• A strong revenue partnership with the NAR;
• Consumer-ready MLS listings via MLS agreements;
• Experimented with an MLS listings revenue model;
• Would love to enhance its Web site revenues with framed listings;
• Would love to multiply its already significant consumer traffic with framed listings, and;
• Could corner the business-to-business market by framing its listings for competitors' agent Web sites?

You guessed it. Realtor.com to the rescue. The NAR Broker Reciprocity not only gives Realtors what they want, it sets Realtor.com free, too. By being able to sell framed listings to agents for their personal Web sites, or offering them as an upgrade to its own ILEAD pages, Realtor.com has a new revenue model that is ingenious in its simplicity and democratic in its nature. Everybody wins, including Realtor.com's competitors. Why? Because framed listings can do an end run on the Gold Alliance agreements, enabling Realtor.com and the MLSs to have their cake and eat it, too. How?

• Agents get the MLS listings on their personal Web sites, regardless of whether Realtor.com is their vendor;
• The NAR looks heroic to its members for breaking the MLS listings lock;
• The MLS organizations have a lucrative new revenue stream;
• The MLSs can offer database access to agents who have Web sites with other aggregators besides Realtor.com without jeopardizing their Gold Alliance agreements, as long as the agent doesn't allow the listings to be posted on the aggregator's national site;
• The NAR/Homestore has a new business-to-business revenue stream that just may go very favorably with investors.

Here's how it could potentially work. Agents get the listings for an access subscription fee sold through the MLS or from Realtor.com directly. If the latter, Realtor.com pays the MLS a partnership fee for the rights to resell the database or it pays a toll to the MLS for every agent it sells. If Realtor.com's Broker Gateway was any kind of precursor, the agent's and broker's listings could be formatted to be featured first before the other listings. Like HomeSeekers' CityNet feature, the listing broker and agent's information could be minimized and put at the end of every listing. Like Lending Tree's "Chameleon" program for agents, in which the lender is framed on the agent's Web site, the listings could be framed to appear in the same colors and general look of the agent's Web site. The advertisers and features such as School Reports could be stripped off for an additional fee or co-branded for the participating agent. All of these features could be sold as an upgrade to the agent's Realtor.com ILEAD page, or as a framed listings service to be featured on the agent's other Web sites.

Everybody wins, including competitors. Realtor.com's successful partnership with Realestate.com, which also sells agent Web pages in direct competition to Realtor.com, can only be enhanced by framed listings. Realestate.com will sell even more Web pages to agents because agents have more reason to buy them. This business-to-business relationship can be co-branded to other companies, a situation which could appease nosy government monopoly-busters.

Al Napier, a former Realtor.com listings bootlegger, can hardly wait. "Our MLS doesn't offer this service yet, but I would buy framed listings in a heartbeat, if they met certain standards," says Napier. Here's what Napier would tell Realtor.com to do, if the company asked:

1. Don't sell the service to brokers only. "My broker chose not to buy Broker Gateway, and the agents in the office couldn't get the listings because of it."
2. Don't price the agent out of the market. "Many agents don't have Web sites now because they are so expensive. Agents want the listings more than they want a Web site."
3. No ads or off-site links. "If you can't do that, at least co-brand the links with the agent so they can be sponsors."
4. Don't underestimate agents. "I know the programs that it takes to get listings done. I'm not a programmer, but I know one who can do what Realtor.com can do for me for about $1,000 and it would be completely custom, exactly the way I want it. With Realtor.com, it would have to come from a template, but that doesn't mean it has to look like one."
5. Keep the competition in mind. "Homes.com and HomeSeekers both offer framed listings at no extra charge if you have a Web site with them, and if the MLS isn't a Gold Alliance member."

The NAR can't, of course, dictate that MLSs reach agreements with Realtor.com, but it certainly has opened the door so that can happen. But the door is also open for other revenue ideas, too.

Find out what one MLS is considering doing to implement Broker Reciprocity in tomorrow's Part III - What Will The MLSs Do?