Canada's public MLS site, mls.ca, has been hailed as a powerful marketing tool for Realtors, giving consumers what they want: free and easy access to information about homes for sale in their neighbourhood. You don't have to register to use it, there are no ads, and it's supported by all the real estate boards and provincial associations in the country. The public loves it -- the site attracts more than 1.5 million visits every month.

But not all Realtors love it, and on Sept. 14, members of the Fraser Valley Real Estate Board (FVREB) in B.C. are holding a special meeting to vote on a proposal that would delay placing MLS listings on the national website.

Jerry Heed, a member of FVREB since 1987, says his board's 2,000 members pay about $4 million per year to maintain its MLS. "At issue with FVREB is whether it is sensible to pay this huge amount of money each year to create something, and then give it away to the general public for free," he wrote in a guest column in REM, a Canadian real estate industry publication.

"We believe that the ease with which the public is able to access this high-quality data at one location is training the public to work 'Realtor free' by reducing contact with all Realtors, and particularly buyer agents."

Buyer agents, who work for those looking for a home, say their clients are finding new listings on mls.ca as fast as the Realtors are able to gather them from the MLS database. "They raised an obvious concern," says Heed. "Why were they having to compete with mls.ca to be on top of the market and look professional?"

The FVREB vote is part of a national debate among Realtors about mls.ca. Realtor Brent Defoe of Ottawa says mls.ca should be shut down, and the information should only be made available to "professional real estate agents who are licenced by their respective provinces to trade in real estate." In a letter to REM, he says that to be consistent with Canada's new Privacy Act, photos and other information about a seller's home should not be readily made available to the public.

Other Realtors believe that it's time the site switched to a user-pay system, to weed out "tire-kickers," attract only serious buyers, and help pay for the maintenance of the site.

As reported at Realty Times recently by Blanche Evans, a public MLS site in Chicago was recently shut down, and Evans says there may be dozens more public MLS sites that are under pressure.

The Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) says it is addressing Realtors' concerns with a series of research projects. Ken Mackenzie, the executive officer of the FVREB, is also the chair of CREA's MLS and Technology Council. He says the council is asking what buyer agents want from mls.ca, and looking at ways it can promote the benefits and services of all Realtors on mls.ca.

"Explaining the difference between mls.ca and MLS is also on our priority list," says Mackenzie in an article published by CREA. "Consumers need to know only a Realtor has access to all the information in an MLS system, and that the website is an advertising medium for properties."

Mackenzie says that in a survey of Canadian Realtors last year, more than half said they sold a property because the buyer saw it first on mls.ca. But Heed isn't convinced that the current system is working.

"When you provide the entire MLS database to the public for free, we believe it diminishes the perceived value of service that Realtors provide. And the public will pay us according to their perceived value," Heed says.

"We believe the current format of mls.ca is tantamount to a free MLS system. We believe it will be detrimental to our industry over the long term by reducing economic viability."

Published: August 26, 2004

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Jim Adair is editor of REM: Canada's Real Estate Magazine, a business publication for real estate agents and brokers. He has been writing about Canadian real estate, home building and renovation issues for more than 30 years. You can contact Jim at .