In case you haven't noticed, the listings war is heating up again. Back in the fall/winter of 1998, MLS organizations were put squarely in the middle of a battle between two titans, Realtor.com and HomeAdvisor. Their goals are the same, but their methods are different - to attract and retain as many consumer eyeballs as possible. Realtor.com wants to obtain as many exclusive MLS listing agreements as possible, limiting the number of listings available on competing sites. HomeAdvisor wants all listings open to all portals - especially theirs. The battle raged with gusto, and both sides fought dirty. HomeAdvisor cried out at the hypocrisy of exclusive listings by Realtors who are supposed to give listings the most exposure possible. Realtor.com used HomeAdvisor's outsider status as a weapon - what does Bill Gates want with listings except to milk other services through the Realtor? Bloody, but victorious, Realtor.com emerged with twice the number of listings as HomeAdvisor. But now, the tide is starting to turn. HomeAdvisor announced last week that it has over 800, 000 listings, a full 150% increase since the start of the spring. Although Realtor.com still has a solid lead with approximately. 1.3 million listings, HomeAdvisor is closing the gap, partially with the help of its strategic partner, HomeSeekers. Wait a minute. What does HomeSeekers have to do with it? Plenty. HomeSeekers is the dark horse that everybody keeps forgetting about. It's not widely known, but as the titans were slugging away, HomeSeekers was quietly gaining on them both. According to its machiavellian president, John Giaimo, HomeSeekers has over 805,000 listings, making it number two in the listings race. HomeAdvisor and HomeSeekers entered a strategic alliance in January, in which HomeSeekers would share its listings with HomeAdvisor (where there were agreements in place between the MLS and HomeAdvisor) and the site would also provide HomeAdvisor with data aggregation services. The caveat? HomeAdvisor would have to get its own agreements, but Realtors and brokers who cooperated found their listings could go "live" instantly with HomeAdvisor. The deal added thousands of new listings to the HomeAdvisor site while providing HomeSeekers' customers with unprecedented exposure to millions of consumers throughout the MSN Network. Then, in May, HomeSeekers offered a free kit to entice Realtors to the Web - Internet Marketing Kit. Virtually a key to the Internet in a box, the kit was designed to overcome broker and agent resistance to the Web. entice more listings to HomeSeekers, as well as provide a larger customer base for its lucrative Web hosting service. The kit includes an Internet service provider at $16.95 per month, a desktop tool kit for contact and listing inventory management, and a guide to marketing yourself on the Internet. Last month, HomeSeekers offered stock warrants to those MLSs who signed listing agreements with HomeSeekers, but to the brokers who provided the listings as well - something even Realtor.com didn't think of. That move put the broker squarely in the middle of the listings war. And many of them chose not to take sides. While their MLSs accepted lucrative stock warrants from Realtor.com, some brokers felt not only left out, but insulted that their MLSs would assume ownership of the data that way. Once again, HomeSeekers was there with the right document at the right time to intercede. The form is a permission request written by the broker of record to the MLS to allow the broker's listings to be posted on the site. The Broker Permission Form announces boldly at the top - Yes, I want to advertise my listings on HomeSeekers.com. Following on the heels of HomeAdvisor's "Broker Direct" an initiative that will allow brokers and agents to upload their listings daily onto HomeAdvisor at no cost, the broker form allows HomeSeekers to do what it could do as the data aggregator for HomeAdvisor - peak at the other names in the database and offer them the same thing, with the full permission of of HomeAdvisor to do so. "The purpose (of the broker permission form) is that there are MLSs who have gone "Gold," and what we have effectively done is that the MLSs don't have a problem with us going beyond them to their broker base," says John Giaimo, president of HomeSeekers. "There is no cost to advertise, and we will advertise their listings. Some MLSs have gone into an agreement with us, it is just allowing us to get a relationship with the brokers, to sell our products and services." And what about strategic partner, HomeAdvisor? "It doesn't benefit HomeAdvisor directly, as brokers would have to sign a separate agreement with HomeAdvisor, but it does open the door to free up the listings," says Giaimo "which is good for everybody." As far as resistance goes, Giaimo says that most brokers, once they are contacted by HomeSeekers team of telemarketers or seminar presenters, are on board with it. "Many can't understand why their board would sign an exclusive agreement in the first place." The broker permission form allows the MLS who has signed an exclusive agreement with Realtor.com a method of winking aside its gatekeeping duty. HomeSeekers is also undaunted by the task and the expense of marketing to brokers one by one. After all, they do get the occasional help from the HomeAdvisor database. They claim it is also a tactical advantage to losing whole databases due to Gold Alliance agreements. "We get the permission forms faxed in on a continuous basis. When an MLS decides to go away, we are at risk, so this way, we are only at risk for the brokers we don't have signed up. If the bulk is from broker agreements, then the whole database won't go away," explains Giaimo. "We have some work to do, and it hasn't been easy," says Giaimo, "but we are up for it."