Your Fiduciary Duty Does NOT Mean Do Whatever the Seller Wants — The Fair Housing Line SC Agents Can't Cross

Most agents believe their fiduciary duty to the client is the highest obligation in real estate. It's not — fair housing law comes first, and the way many agents operate right now may be setting them up for serious legal exposure.

Colette Stevenson, CEO of Resides in Hilton Head, joins Gary Pickren to break down exactly where the line is — and how exclusive listings, in-house deal strategies, and seller-driven decisions can cross it without agents even realizing it.

What you'll learn in this episode:
• Why "the seller told me to" is not a fair housing defense
• How exclusive listings and private listing networks unintentionally harm minorities, seniors, and first-time buyers
• What MLS policies actually protect you from — and what happens when you bypass them
• Where fiduciary duty ends and fair housing law begins — and why agents consistently get this wrong
• The real legal exposure listing agents face when they prioritize seller preferences over access

If you're a listing agent navigating seller pressure, a buyer agent being locked out of inventory, or a broker building ethical listing practices — this is required listening.

South Carolina agents: the fair housing rules and MLS compliance standards discussed here apply directly to your practice.

Don't forget to like us and share us!
Gary

* Gary serves on the South Carolina Real Estate Commission as a Commissioner. The opinions expressed herein are his opinions and are not necessarily the opinions of the SC Real Estate Commission. This podcast is not to be considered legal advice. Please consult an attorney in your area.    

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

A recent Emman News article read: I've seen a growing narrative take hold. A broker's fiduciary duty to a seller can justify limiting who gets to see, bid on, or purchase a home. The reasoning is familiar. We're just doing what's best for our client. That argument doesn't fail ethically, it fails legally. I saw this article written by Colette Stevenson and was immediately intrigued. First, because it was a tremendously well-written article, and secondly, because we just concluded Fair Housing Month in April. So today, Colette's going to join me on Dish and Dirt to discuss her ideas and her thoughts on this very subject. Greetings and welcome everyone to Dish and Dirt. I'm your often opinionated but rarely wrong host, Gary Pickering, and I'm coming to you from the beautiful downtown Columbia, South Carolina offices of Blair, Cato, Picker, and Cashline this the second week of May 2026. So let's jump right into our show today. Flett Stevenson is joining me. She is the CEO of Resides, which is a borderless MLS based in Hilton Head, South Carolina. We're going to hear all about what a borderless MLS is because I didn't know what it was until this meeting either. Flett is widely recognized as a visionary and thought leader in the real estate industry, known for challenging traditional MLS models and pushing the industry toward greater transparency. I love that, innovation, and broker empowerment. She's been at the forefront of what she calls an MLS without borders, reimagining how listing data is owned, shared, and leveraged. And she has helped pioneer one of the industry's first equity-based MLS models. So that's very interesting to hear all about that. Colette, I am very excited to have you on today. Welcome to Dish and Dirt.

SPEAKER_03 1:32

Thank you so much, Gary. I am uh honored to be here. I think I told you earlier I was just introduced to you last fall and was very excited that you reached out. I really uh appreciate that.

SPEAKER_00 1:45

Well, your article is outstanding, but the most outstanding thing I've learned about you is that you're a graduate of the University of Georgia, where my son is about to become a junior there. So go dogs.

SPEAKER_03 1:56

Go dogs. Yes. Um I uh was there quite some time ago, but graduated from the Grady School of Journalism and uh very much enjoyed my years there and provided me a lot of opportunity being able to go to school there.

SPEAKER_00 2:10

Well, I promise the listeners today there will be no barking. Uh, I know my son says he's coming to the GameCock game next year and he's gonna bark at everybody. And I'm like, do what you gotta do, son, but yeah, my we will not bark at each other today, I promise. So my first question to you, because this was very intriguing outside of the topic we're gonna talk about, what is a borderless MLS?

SPEAKER_03 2:28

So the goal overall of the MLS that we reimagined, if you want to call it that, was that if you were doing business as a brokerage, you shouldn't have to pick and choose where you want to enter enter your listings according to what MLS you belong to. And we understand that the traditions of, if you want to call it the borders of these MLSs have made it very difficult. And so giving somebody an option to expand what they do in into any area that they want to go into, we want to help them do that. Even though we do understand that you want to see all the listings in an area, you may not have all the listings in the area, but as we grow and as we develop relationships to push listings in other places and to receive listings, then we hope that those areas will grow. But not every not everyone needs the entire United States in order to do their business because as I'll probably mention later on, probably now more than ever in the atmosphere we're in, I realize how much local real estate being local matters now because it's always been real estate's local. And I guess we we always said, yeah, yeah, yeah, but it's all the same fields. When we we're looking at the data and this type of thing. But then we realize that there are things in every marketplace that make it unique. And you need to work with those professionals within that marketplace to get helping make the best decisions.

SPEAKER_00 3:52

Absolutely. I think that might solve the problem like we have in the upstate of having to be a member of Spartanburg, Greenville, Western Upstate, a canopy. If I could just put it in one and not have to do it in four different ones, it would save me time, money, effort, and then the concern of I didn't put the exact information in every one. So now I've got a big legal problem on my hands. So I really love that concept.

SPEAKER_03 4:14

Yes. And our goal is that we don't have the entire country, but if somebody wants to put a listing in from somewhere else, we in turn go ahead and develop that particular area or zip code or whatever else we need to do to assist that company. It won't be immediate, but we have to take it step by step.

SPEAKER_00 4:30

Fantastic. Well, what's this equity-based MLS concept?

SPEAKER_03 4:33

So we actually are privately held and anyone can own shares in what we do. So we have different types of shares. Of course, you have to follow SEC qualifications in order to purchase our shares, but there's different classes of shares, and depending on where you fit in those classes of shares, allows you to purchase them as long as you qualify. So we have brokerages and non-brokerages that have purchased shares in us.

SPEAKER_00 5:01

Very interesting concept. We're going to talk a lot later on about the data ownership because I think a lot of that's what's driving this entire discussion that you're and I you and I are having today, the article you wrote on Inman News, which was fantastic, as well as a lot of the other arguments and things that are going on in the industry. But first, I do want to talk about the article because it's something that I've been talking about a lot, and it's this exclusive listing idea, these in-house listings. And what we're hearing from proponents of the system is that they're claiming that the agent has a duty to do what their seller directs. Do you agree with the sentiment that the duty to the seller outweighs everything else?

SPEAKER_03 5:38

So, tricky question, because I'm not an attorney, but no, I don't necessarily agree with that statement. It's important, of course, that you you have a fiduciary responsibility, but it's not to be blind. You're not to be blind to everything else and use that particular statement as your defense. You can't serve the seller's best interest if you're guiding them in a manner that is going to restrict access to a property. Now, and that's access for everyone. I think, and I won't expand on it because I know we have a lot of questions and a lot of things we want to talk about. But the fact of the matter is there are access limits limiting activities that are taking place at every level. It's not just the first-time homeowner. It's not at every level, and it's affecting it will affect everyone, I believe, eventually will be confronted with an access issue.

SPEAKER_00 6:33

So let's talk about that in relation to the fiduciary duty and fair housing. You made a strong statement in your Emin News article that that fiduciary duty does not override the fair housing issues. I think that this whole argument of exclusive listings and in-house in-house listings, I think the best argument against it is fair housing. I think it is a fair housing nightmare. It's a lawsuit waiting to happen. So can you kind of under unpack a little bit about what you discussed in the article when it relates to that fair housing issue?

SPEAKER_03 7:00

When you are engaging with a brokerage to represent you and help you sell your home, there are a lot of stipulations or requirements or considerations that have to take place in order for that brokerage to assist you. It's you aren't selling the house on your own. You aren't having a friend who's calling you saying, if you ever want to sell your house, I wanna, I want to buy it, and they're and someone can't come and say, Well, I didn't get a chance to see that home. That's you personally selling that home. But now you've been you have entered into an agreement with a brokerage that now has another level of requirements because they are now publishing and advertising and representing that particular property in a certain way that cannot restrict, according to fair housing, cannot restrict access. It's about the access and not the outcome. It's more about the access to it. I don't want to get involved in how that house actually gets to its seller. I think every brokerage should be able to manage their company the way they see fit. But when it starts to affect the access, we all have to be honest that it is affecting access. When you do not display those listings, it is affecting access, whether it's intentional or not.

SPEAKER_00 8:24

Mm-hmm. And so you talked about that in your article. You emphasize that fair housing isn't about impact, it's not about intent. So can you explain that distinction for us?

SPEAKER_03 8:32

The access is the real story. It's not, it's not the intent. I love capitalism, okay? I don't fault a brokerage for wanting to make as much money as they can make. But the access is actually governing the opportunity now for ever for someone to participate in that offering. And that is where we have to really look at right now, it's in its infants, but what happens when it becomes this cloud burst? What happens when the the number of these listings outweigh or the method in which they're coming to market outweigh the traditional way in which we were able to see these? I will be the first person to tell you that when somebody says that's the way it's always been done, that's a huge red flag for me. I agree that things should change. Things should be better, though. We should not now enable, because we haven't thought far enough, we're looking at the short-term gain. But what's going to happen over long term with these particular practices? We can imagine, and if anyone who can sit back and think about it for a while, it could become a much larger legal issue than we've ever had before.

SPEAKER_00 9:47

Right. And if you wind up with a small brokerage, let's say that is basically a white male-dominated brokerage, and they're only sh keeping all of these listings in-house and only showing them to their clients, then that will squeeze out the opportunity for a minority-based agent or even a minority-based buyer to ever see that house unless they want to work with that particular white male agent. And that's not how it works in the marketplace.

SPEAKER_03 10:13

I don't know how often people analyze this, but I know there have been articles written on it where you have people who are you know over 55 who are now wanting to downsize, they're competing with the first-time own owner. So now if you're re if you're technically thinking, okay, this isn't going to be an area that a first-time homeowner is going to want to buy, or we want to make sure that we are we're marketing to the right people. But you are excluding more than just that. You don't know who you're excluding. You don't know until the actual claim comes forward. And you have had claims in the past that haven't really been um highly publicized where things like this have happened, where it could be a subdivision in California and someone purchases a home and they find out that literally a home five doors down was for sale than the one they purchased, and they're like, why didn't I get to see that? And they were both being represented by brokerages. So how did that happen? And so I the reality of things is yes, there are situations that happen like that. You can't help it that you got a listing at 10 a.m. in the morning, you went to lunch, just so happened that somebody was sitting down next to you, and you overheard them say, Gosh, I really wish I could find a house, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you go, I just listed one. I get that. It happens all the time. There's nothing wrong with that. But it's when it is a more of the a policy within a company that we need to be careful about. Right.

SPEAKER_00 11:50

I was at an EXP conference the other day in Leo Perea, who runs EXP, said out of 300,000 transactions they did, less than a thousand of them were done in-house. And the reason that they were done in-house were domestic violence, celebrities, something of that nature, which does happen. But when you have companies that are doing 35 and 40 percent of all transactions is in-house, that's now a company policy. And I think that's where we're heading, unfortunately, and I think that's the problem. You wrote in your article fair housing protects opportunity, not outcomes. I really like that distinction. Let's talk about that.

SPEAKER_03 12:19

Yes. Yeah. So I don't think you can justify the fiduciary responsibility when it 100% affects the outcome of that sale. It's too, it's too risky. All of the properties need to be put out in the marketplace. Doesn't mean that our company is going to create policies around that. But this is my opinion that overall I think at scale, when brokerages are consolidating and it's happening on an annual basis, they're creating these mega brokerages. And then when you have, let's just say, 15 or 20 mega brokerages who are all doing this, but yet the you still have a massive amount of smaller brokerages. Is that now becoming a situation where, I'm gonna say it, where price fixing can happen and limiting those that exposure is now becoming almost a, I don't want to say antitrust because I'm not a lawyer, but now you are actually participating in a marketplace that is excluding a certain business model. And I think that could be harmful, but I get it. They're all competing. And if you want to compete, think up something else to do. And I'm all for that, but I do think that because it's happening so rapidly that we're we're in a higher danger zone than we normally are about it blowing up, but we'll see. I I'm I'm surprised some of the things have happened that have happened, and we we haven't seen that much conflict about it. I am involved with the people at Northwest MLS. I have been in the past. I totally respect what they're trying to do up there. It will be interesting to see if they can come to some common ground and where it ends up. I think if everyone's watching it, hopefully they will resolve it in a way that benefits the consumer.

SPEAKER_00 14:22

And we'll talk about uh Robert Refkin because I actually uh disagree with most of what he's been doing. Though the other day he did talk about something with MLS we'll get into in just a few minutes. But overall, I feel like it's almost as an industry, we've already forgotten about the $1.5 billion verdict we just had to had to deal with with Sitz Burnett. And it's either either we've forgotten it and just don't care anymore, or we think, okay, well, that's done, it's all over, and we don't have any more risk. But that's not true. We still have risk, and I don't think any lawyer is going to sit here and watch catch mark make $450 million and go, well, I missed my opportunity. They want to get their piece of that money as well. Anything we're talking about here today, do you think any of it diminishes a seller's right talking about fair housing and and not limiting access? I don't feel how that diminishes any seller's rights.

SPEAKER_03 15:05

I don't think so. There are provisions when sellers have conditions that they they don't want to expose their property. There may be reasons, like we've said before, they're a celebrity that they don't they really don't want everyone to um be traipsing through their home. That's heavily simplified. But I get it that there are conditions, but if you do the right thing, the outcomes are always exponentially better.

SPEAKER_00 15:33

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 15:35

And if just we need to be concentrating on that.

SPEAKER_00 15:39

And we're not trying to dictate what sellers set for their sales price or what terms they want in the contract. Well, we're just saying as a broker can't exclude market. I think you've said that exactly in your article.

SPEAKER_03 15:49

They're the professional. Right. So let's not be disingenuous, okay, and say, oh, you need to put your listings in our special network over here because you're going to, you know, I don't know, make more money, uh, sell it quicker. Whatever the stat is that you can come up with, which we all know, you can always find a stat to justify what you're doing, or an article, or something about what you're doing. Let's don't forget that we do need to be held to a higher standard. We are professionals and we are representing a market that affects every single person in this country. Every single person. No one should be left out of an opportunity to change their life, to build wealth, to live that dream that they so desire to live, whether it be when you're 21 years old or you're 71 years old. Let's allow the market to make those decisions. I don't blame a company for wanting to make as much money as they can. That's great. But let's do it in an ethical way and let's be upfront and don't try to mask it under something else. That's all I'm saying. Just say it is what it is. We want to make more money. But I'm okay with that.

SPEAKER_00 17:09

You're singing to the choir. I love it. That's exactly what I've been saying.

SPEAKER_03 17:13

I'm totally okay with that. But let's just say, okay, you I get it. You want to make more money, but how can we do this better? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:18

Quit gaslighting us. Don't lie to us and say this is about seller choice. It's not.

SPEAKER_03 17:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:22

Honestly, we haven't really seen a lot of fair housing claims here in South Carolina, which is a really good thing, quite frankly. It is. But with all these new models, are you seeing where an agent could unintentionally cross that line into a fair housing issue because of all these exclusives and in-houses?

SPEAKER_03 17:39

I think is happening, I think, a lot of times unintentionally, but we do have to remember, and I always, you know, I am a very empathetic person. I always try to see it from the viewpoint of the person that is actually actively engaged in that, right? And I get it. You know, my sister's a real estate agent. I don't have a real estate license. But they are all independent, commissioned people. If they are not making these sales, they are not maybe able to make their house payment. I get that. This is your, this is your form of income. And so with that comes a lot of pressure that maybe you can say, well, I, you know, I need I need to make this sale. I need to hurry up and do this. Let me go ahead and put it over here in this, you know, network and I'll worry about getting in the MLS in two days or wherever it is that they want to expose it. Okay. And I don't think it's intentional. I think it maybe if we checked ourselves a little, maybe it's a little, a little bit on the selfish side and we're skirting along that that line. Don't think most times it's intentional. I find that most agents, most, I'm sure that we have all kinds, but most agents want to do the right thing. They want to expose those listings and get as many people involved in this transaction as they can. So, yes, I do believe it's happening. I think most of the time it's not intentional, but maybe if we check ourselves, maybe we just kind of pushed it a little so we can kind of skirt around it for just a minute or two. What's the harm?

SPEAKER_00 19:23

Well, as a CEO of an MLS, obviously litigation and risk of litigation and lawsuits is obviously something y'all have to pay very close attention to. What do you want as the head of an MLS for an agent to do when the seller starts asking about limiting access?

SPEAKER_03 19:38

I think the main thing you should be doing as a professional is educating that seller and finding all of the information to give them so they can make the most informed decision and not making suggestions that could influence your best interest, maintaining that neutrality, but yet professionalism when it comes to entering that listing somewhere. And if we are educated enough and the MLS is able to give them a significant amount of data that is good data, we really pride ourselves on having good data so that you can now take that data, put it into your system that you want to use, it gives you all of your statistics and your models that you want to show your seller, and then let them say, I'm still really not comfortable with putting it all out there first. Is there anything else we can do? And then go down that path. But don't suggest it first or don't say this is this is how we do it because it's gonna make you more money or whatever. And I don't know what their talking points are.

SPEAKER_02 20:48

Right.

SPEAKER_03 20:48

But when you listen to people who publicly speak about it, it appears that that is a a policy. And I think that it's really not for everyone.

SPEAKER_00 21:00

And the time we have left, I want to kind of shift gears now and talk about some other policies of the MLS. I want to talk about coming soons, clear cooperation, and things of that nature. We've kind of been talking about clear cooperation already. So let's really talk about coming soons. How do you see agents misusing or misunderstanding coming soon listings? To me, if you're marketing, it's not coming soon. It's already gotten there. And that's kind of a little bit of a misnomer I'm seeing in the industry right now of coming soon. How do y'all handle that?

SPEAKER_03 21:26

So we do not have a coming soon status. What we do is we have a a delayed listing, which ours is still not even defined as some people define it, but it allows someone to overcome the obstacles of reality. We understand all of South Carolina has been is now become like a second home market. And and a primary market. We have a lot of obviously all the statistics show all the migration here, right? Yeah. And so we need to have a way that listings can get. Exposed to as many people as possible while it is being prepared for marketing. And I get it, everyone the first impression is the best impression. We understand that. So it's up to you. If you want to go take a picture with your cell phone and send it out on the internet and let that be, let that go, that's up to you. But if you want to put it inside the MLS, which traditionally, which I know is a dangerous word, has housed most of the eyeballs that put the information in front of those buyers, then at least somebody can say this house is in is in a delayed status right now because it's not ready to be marketed. It also says though, while it's in listing lay, I can show it to you.

SPEAKER_00 22:42

Right.

SPEAKER_03 22:43

Okay. So which because it's for sale. Like we and I know we've discussed just recently in uh Wild Dunes. I'm sorry, when a seller signs that listing agreement, do they think their house isn't for sale?

SPEAKER_00 22:55

Exactly. It's for sale. It's not coming soon. It's there.

SPEAKER_03 22:59

Let's tell people that there's a property for sale. It's not coming soon. Like I and and I have this discussion with people a couple of times a year. They'll call me about it. And I said, So are you telling me that today, if somebody called you and said they wanted to buy that house, you couldn't sell it to them? Is there something in there that says that? And they're like, Brilliant. Well no. Brilliant. And I said, So are you telling people about it when you go to lunch or dinner or at your office? Or yes. So the how the house is for sale. So it needs to be registered with with, at least with the MLS, to get it, to try to give it an opportunity that it needs.

SPEAKER_00 23:35

Absolutely. Well, and I and I get tired that they use that word coming soon, and I think it's they don't realize the legal ramification of the word. Coming soon says it's not available yet, it will be coming at some point. But the reality of it is once they sign that listing agreement, that house is for sale and it is available to everyone for sale. And so I feel like in some ways this coming soon is kind of a workaround for clear cooperation, or could start becoming a workaround for clear cooperation. And that's what concerns me.

SPEAKER_03 24:02

Well, and Gary, the rumor that I just heard was that there are some MLSs that have been asked now to get a pre-coming soon status. So how disingenuous is that? I mean, that's that's flat out saying we're just trying to figure out another way we don't have to put the listing in the MLS, or we don't have to expose it, or we don't have to tell anybody about it. We are in a industry that is responsible. What's I what I keep saying is we're we have have a responsibility. And I know I can get loud and I get on my, I get going, right? Can we just can we just admit that we don't have the privileges that you think we have with what we do? We don't have those privileges.

SPEAKER_00 24:44

It's a highly regulated industry on the federal level, the state level, even the local level. And people want to act like that we don't have regulations, we just do what we want to because our seller tells us that. And that's just not true.

SPEAKER_03 24:56

It's not true. And it says it right there in fair housing. Absolutely. It says it. I said, I why is everyone not just highlighting that one? I think it's like two sentences. That should be hung on every wall in every office. Once they engage a broker, here's how it needs to roll.

SPEAKER_00 25:13

Absolutely. And that's where I think we're we're losing that very quickly right now because everybody's trying to come up with these portals and they're not really looking at where we're really going in this industry. What where is what is the risk? We've just had a tremendous lawsuit against us, and we still think this risk isn't there. And if we're going to use terms and not use these terms correctly, somehow we don't think that that's gonna come back and a lawyer's gonna say you were misleading, you were gaslighting, you weren't transparent.

SPEAKER_03 25:39

Well, and you know, I I've experienced it just when, you know, when we were looking for a house, it was right before COVID. The only reason why I discovered something was because I was I'm head of the MLS. I was like, wait a minute, what is this, what is this house doing what in here? We used to have a more visible status for even for admins in our system where it was in like a hold status and we could kind of see what was coming in where we we don't necessarily have that now. You if you wanted, you probably could find it out some way, but it's when our system converted, you can't do it the way it used to work. And so I just so happened to see, which I wasn't even intentionally looking at it. I think somebody called me one day and asked me to look up something on a Saturday, an agent. I said, Well, let me look it up. And I just so happened to go in to the system, and I and after I answered their question, I saw this house in there. I'm like, wait a minute. So then I find out when I call about it, because it's supposedly not even for sale yet. It was in like almost like a draft. And um I and I said, This just so happens to literally be on one of the streets we wanted to live on, right? And so I called, which probably is, you know, taking some some liberties there on my own, right? And they're like, oh, we already have a contract on that. Well, I was like, Well, wait a minute. And so I I learned, I was like, okay, so how are people I learned how some people were using our system is what I learned. And to get around, to be in the shadows for a little while long.

SPEAKER_00 27:05

And where that becomes a problem is when that seller and you accidentally run into each other in a grocery store and you're like, Well, I would have paid you X for the house. I never saw it on the market. And they're like, oh, well, my agent told me they already had me a buyer and I would make more money by selling it to them. When the reality of it is you may have paid two, three, five, ten percent more. We don't know because the house never made it to the market.

SPEAKER_03 27:24

And I get it. Some people money isn't a factor. I get that. You know, some people say, I just need to get rid of this house. It was in my family and we can't afford to keep it, so whatever, right? But that still should not limit the access.

SPEAKER_00 27:37

Right. And money's not a factor until when it becomes a factor.

SPEAKER_03 27:40

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 27:42

People say all the time, money ain't about money until it becomes a fact. So would you, would you rather, would you rather make more money or or have it be on the market less time and let them they can tell you that they can say, I just want to sell the house right now, money's not a factor, and then they sell the house, and six months from now, when they decide, wait a minute, money was a factor, let me go talk to a lawyer. And that's the problem in all of this.

SPEAKER_03 28:01

Well, and it only takes fun for an attorney to go, let me see how many others. And I feel like that not only by the consolidation that we're having, which is one of the articles I am looking into right now, is that when you have these large players, what does that do to the marketplace as a whole as far as commission structures? I tell the story that when you're in a certain area, like if you're maybe a subdivision or maybe um a zip code or something that has a history of maybe having more money or the houses being worth more, and you call three plumbers to come to your house, they all tell you it's $125 an hour here. Now, in three zip codes over, it's $55 an hour. And so what happens when you have large corporations now who aren't related, but somehow when I call around, everybody's charging me the $125. So, how does that work in the future? And are we ready, consumers? Are we prepared and are we ready to have limited choice? Because it's going to create limited choice.

SPEAKER_00 29:15

That's what it's going to do. It's going to make it more difficult. Before we get to the portals, let me ask you a question on days on market and price reductions. This has been a big complaint of some of the leaders in the industry that that shouldn't be disclosed. I understand your MLS does, uh I have a cold, so I apologize. My voice is changing. But I understand that your vo your MLS still does provide days on market and price reductions and things that's important. Why is that?

SPEAKER_03 29:37

Well, first of all, transparency is important. By putting something on the market, taking it off, putting it back on, hiding days on market. I hate to say it, consumers as well as other brokers are smarter than that. So why are we pretending that if we don't expose days on market or we don't expose a price change? Now I understand in the beginning when you're trying to price it, I understand it's not fair when you put the listing in. If you go in and then before you actually go to market it, you go what? I talked with a few people and this house just sold and it didn't have a pool, and that pool's worth another 20 grand. I need to I get that. I don't want to influence that at all. But once it's on the market, people would know whether a house was higher or lower. Whether you're the consumer or whether you are an agent, the information is already out there. There, if you just go in your save searches and just look at the results from way back when, you can see how long the thing's been on the market. It's why are we why are we complicating it now? I don't agree with that.

SPEAKER_00 30:46

And I think it's disingenuous and not transparent that when I can sit here and say I've marketed the house internally for 60 days and now I put it on the MLS this afternoon and it's day one on the market. No, it's been on the market for 60 days. I think it's basically lying, misrepresentation, and fraud to try to argue that it's not on the market. It's on the market the day you start offering it to the public. It might not be on the MLS, but it was on the market.

SPEAKER_03 31:10

And we, and since we have that delayed um status that allows you to prepare the listing, we technically don't count those days. But here's the thing if it sells all the days on the market count, and we make them all count. If it if if they get an offer all the day, all the days count. And so if the offer falls through, sorry, you can't go back to zero. Right.

SPEAKER_00 31:32

And so what days on market's telling us isn't it's a bad house. It's telling us you've overpriced it if it's sitting there too long.

SPEAKER_03 31:38

But it affects so much more. All these statistics affect the economics of a zip code. It affects decisions that are made, like at a governmental level. They need to know these things. They want to know how quickly are things selling? Can we how what is our market looking like compared to year over year? Are we more depressed now than we were before? Should we raise our taxes this year? Should we implement that two cent gas tax? All these things that they rely on these statistics for. It's not just for that particular house, it's for the whole community. The whole community is affected.

SPEAKER_00 32:13

That's a very good thing.

SPEAKER_03 32:14

We need to consider that.

SPEAKER_00 32:15

Let's talk in the last couple of minutes we have left about these portal wars. They are very concerning to me. Today I released a podcast. We're recording this on Thursday, uh, April 30th. And I think I may now understand a little bit where Refkin's coming from. He says he's not opposed to mandatory MLS entry. What he's opposed to is mandatory use of his information through an IDX feed to his competitors. And I think where he's getting at is he doesn't, he doesn't mind putting on the MLS. He just doesn't want the MLS to immediately push it to Zillow. He's a redfin guy, a Rocket Mortgage guy, and that's one of their biggest competitors. What is your thoughts on is there a possibility that the IDX feed changes where it's it's a selection by the seller, or is it always IDX feed is IDX feed and it's going everywhere?

SPEAKER_03 33:02

So very difficult question to answer. Um the I do believe that there should be some more flexibility in that. But once again, without infringing on access, this hasn't hashed itself out yet. But I could definitely see where brokerages get it at this point, portals get it at this point. It immediately comes to me. I have the opportunity for a certain amount of time to push it where I need it to go. But it's all about it's all about the power and control. I get it. And it's still it's still what's gonna help their bottom line. It's still about that today. Um, but I IDX is old. The policies are were old, and we handle data distribution a little differently. But I do think that there should be maybe some more flexibility in that. I just haven't reconciled it yet to what that should look like.

SPEAKER_00 34:02

And I think we need to have a conversation nationally about IDX and V VOX. The problem is we should have had this discussion 12, 15 years ago when Zillow first came on the scene. Now Zillow is a brokerage and they have the same right as Cole Banker, ERA, Berkshire to get the same information as a brokerage. The problem is that I think that they have with it, Refkin, is that they use that information to compete against them, make money against them, and then sell their data back. I think this is a conversation that needs to be had, particularly with AI coming in.

SPEAKER_03 34:31

Definitely. I I agree. Unfortunately, these large entities that are portals, they were traditionally portals, but now they've all become brokerages. So now you have another level of complexity to the situation. And that's not going to be easy to, I think, work out. But I think historically that the industry has always done too much too late, and then it's beyond whatever the condition is that they've tried to correct from 10 years earlier. We're past that when we finally get to that. And then the brokers are angry because they've been doing it for 10 years anyway. So I don't blame them. That's dumb to do that. And then, of course, what happens is I think it sometimes takes 10 years for the results of what was initially happening for you to see those results. And then fear hits. Oh my gosh, we need to create a policy at a national level, regional level, whatever, so that we don't lose power or control of something. A lot of instances causes the brokers to just be even more angry at whatever entity is trying to push that down on them.

SPEAKER_00 35:39

Yeah. And unfortunately, as the MLS, y'all get the ones who take a lot of the arrows from the brokers. These days they blame y'all for everything and it's not yours.

SPEAKER_03 35:46

And so I and I want to be as open as possible with them and allow them to do what they want to do. It's not my job to enforce law. I'm not going to allow you to break the law inside of what we're doing, but it's not my job to enforce it. If you see something going on, then you need to report it to those entities. It's not for me to make a rule in our system that now it can prohibit someone from doing something that is legally available to them that the law doesn't say you cannot do.

SPEAKER_00 36:15

Right.

SPEAKER_03 36:16

That's, and we get that a lot. Can't you just do something? Can't you just make a rule? Can't you just find them? We're like, no, we can't. They they're allowed to do that. There's nothing illegal about it.

SPEAKER_00 36:28

So this has been a great conversation, and I think we should continue this conversation later in the future because I do believe we're going to continue to see a lot of changes with the portals with the IDX feed. And so I'd love to have you come back on Dish and Dirt. But Colette, thank you so much for your insight. And honestly, your article was probably one of the top two or three articles I've read all year. Well, thank you.

SPEAKER_03 36:50

Something I've been thinking about for a while, and I just said I gotta do it.

SPEAKER_00 36:53

Well, great. Well, guys, that's our show for today. Thanks everyone for tuning in again to another episode of Dish and Dirt. Please like us, subscribe to us, and share us. And please share this episode with everybody so that we can continue to get to the bottom of all of these issues. Thank you so much. Y'all have a great weekend.