The National Association of REALTORS is all aboard with Homestore for some exciting new initiatives, but is the track all clear? There are some potential conflicts of interest which may end up hurting some of the organization's longest-standing strategic partners. How will the NAR keep Homestore, Realtor and MLS organizations and the brokers and agents happy all at the same time? An MLS cooperative may be the unlikely answer. The NAR's strength in its gate-keeping status which allows vendors access to the organization's membership of 730,000 members. The most successful example of this is Realtor.com, which sells products and services to Realtors. But the organization, either directly or indirectly through its subsidiaries has other vendor relationships to protect, on behalf of the Realtor associations they serve. And now, some of them may be in cross purposes, with the broker and Realtor caught in the middle. VistaInfo, Inc. has just announced that the company has created an online National Multiple Listing Service Infrastructure (NMI). NMI will be the industry's first national MLS infrastructure using the open data exchange platform sanctioned and co-developed by the NAR Tom Gay, CEO of VistaInfo, Inc., says that NMI will not displace local MLSs, but will significantly reduce their cost of services and improve listing data delivery to agents to use in their marketing. The company serves many of the largest MLSs in the country and over 350,000 agents, yet the NAR's endorsement of the Gold Alliance agreement with Realtor.com shuts those agents' MLSs out of sharing their listings with the company's subsidiary, Cyberhomes. The loss of reduced costs in services not to mention marketing opportunity for the agents is staggering, yet the NAR seems oblivious to the conflict, because of its alliance with Homestore. A perfect example of this is NTREIS, an North Texas MLS organization formed by 17 North Texas county Realtor organizations served with information management systems by VistaInfo. The company and the MLS have undergone an expensive, time-consuming cut-over fraught with the problems of aggregating sensitive data from 17 organizations who organize and populate information fields differently than the next. Like other MLSs across the country, NTREIS members individually can't communicate with each other effectively even when they are right next door, so consolidation is inevitable. VistaInfo's new XML/RETS-compliant software is capable of taking this local nightmare and smoothing it nationwide with significantly reduced costs to membership. With listing data management hardware and software services, disclosure services and other listing marketing tools which could be facilitated with the adoption of VistaInfo's new XML and RETS-compliant software services, agents could have an ideal tool to facilitate transactions without the barriers of local custom. Although Gay declined to comment on the sensitivity of the company's position, there are some markets like North Texas, where VistaInfo is invited to clean the house but not stay for dinner. And its thousands of Realtor members, serving the two hottest relocation destinations in the nation, Plano and Dallas/Fort Worth, are blissfully unaware that service levels to them will be compromised. To remain competitive, the company is obviously left with the choice of selling its listing data services facilitation to the MLSs at a higher price (which are then resold to Realtor.com, and resold back again to the Realtor) or VistaInfo must force the Gold MLSs to release their stranglehold on the listing data so that they can integrate the listing/marketing services into lower cost solutions for Realtors. Neither option bodes well for the Realtor who is unaware that the stakes are being raised and that s/he will pay higher prices as a result. That's the situation for one MLS information services vendor. What about other service providers? Is the answer in Strategies for a Real Estate Information Services Cooperative? Realty Times has learned that the document is a white paper, the precursor to a business plan which has yet to be written but the purpose of which is to provide lower costs of services for Realtors through an MLS cooperative. Ross, one of the authors of the Cooperative white paper, is a long-time advocate of MLS organizational change from information management focus to technological services provider. His company MRIS, serves 28,000 brokers and agents, making it one of the largest MLS services in the nation. To Ross, an MLS service provider should be about serving Realtors and their clients with the tools they need to make faster, smoother transactions, with cost-efficient solutions to the Realtor. The initiatives announced by the NAR and Realtor.com collectively show a similar plan, but will the cost efficiencies be included? Trading on Homestore's tremendous traffic, Realtors have willingly paid higher prices for services such as web site development, enhancements, and even agree to be charged link-back fees to be featured on their own listings. Is this out of loyalty to the NAR or the belief that Realtor.com is providing the best services at the best prices? Without other competition in the market, they have no way to know. Homestore/NAR wants to be an Internet service provider (ISP.), but they will hardly be laying fiber-optic cable networks across the country. Instead, they will be a reseller of existing broad-bandwidth connections, which are any that are faster than a dial-up connection. This reseller revenue stream is in keeping with Homestore's other advertising revenue models which dependent on the extensive Realtor and consumer traffic base. But where does that leave the MLS service providers? MLS organizations are either operated by their local real estate association or they employ an MLS services provider, not to be confused with an information systems supplier. The services provider, under the association by-laws is able to provide and charge the association's members for services and make a profit, which the association can not do by regulation. It is in the interest of the MLS organization and their technology providers to provide services as reasonably to the members as possible, lest the association get complaints. MRIS doesn't offer broad-bandwidth ISP services, but it does offer its members free email, and some hosting services for free. Will those services disappear or continue when Homestore becomes the MLS ISP supplier? Is the purpose of the cooperative a pre-emptive measure to insure that its members will get better pricing - from Homestore, among other vendors? "The cooperative is inclusive, not exclusive," explains Ross. "Every MLS will be able to cooperate. We're talking about shared services. It is not exclusive, it is inclusive." Ross explains that one example is the extraordinary number of tech support calls MRIS receives from agents - 16,000 calls a month. "We do a lot of things beyond simple tech support for MLS. An MLS could contract with the co-op to provide tech support services. This would bring costs down for the MLS and Realtors long-term." Has Ross, et al, approached the NAR? "Yes, briefly," he says. "We have not resolved anything with them. This is among ourselves. It is offered by MLS organizations. We aren't even sure we are going to do it. If we can write a business model that makes sense, we will, but right now there isn't a costing model yet. Is this a model for a global MLS? "No, it is a model to save MLSs some money," says Ross. "What are the pieces of the MLS that makes sense for the cooperatives to share? Each piece has positives and negatives." Would the cooperative be a new governing body? "NAR is the trade organization, and they have an MLS committee," says Ross. "I'm the director this year."