WHAT IS AN MLS?


According to the National Association of REALTORS®, an MLS is the facility by which brokers enter into cooperative agreements for the sale of their listings and provide the necessary information to permit such cooperation.

An MLS is NOT:


  • a database,
  • an advertising vehicle,
  • a public utility, or
  • a vendor

Listings are offers of compensation among the participants in an MLS. Listings contain proprietary information owned by the originating broker. The database containing the listings is a service of the MLS cooperative.

At his/her discretion, a broker is likely to place excerpts from a listing in an advertisement. These advertisements contain only a portion of the original listing content. However, they have become so synonymous with the term "listing" that consumers and an increasing number of vendors have come to believe that they have access to "listings" on the "MLS", which they do not.