WASHINGTON — A committee of the National Association of Realtors approved a proposed policy amendment today that would require multiple listing services to provide data feeds to brokers wishing to use the data to create automated valuations of properties for clients.
However, the committee made tweaks to the amendment to clarify that MLSs may restrict how third parties use the data if they obtain it through brokers.
“Now we’re very clear that they can limit third-party uses that are appropriate,” Bill Lublin, chair of the Multiple Listing Issues and Policies Committee and CEO of Century 21 Advantage Gold, told Inman News.
The amendment text, which now heads to NAR’s Executive Committee, reads as follows (bolded text indicates changes to the amendment approved today):
None of the foregoing shall be construed to prevent any individual legitimately in possession of current listing information, sold information, comparables, or statistical information from utilizing a reasonable amount of such information to support an estimate of value valuations on a particular propertyproperties for a particular clients. Any MLS content in data feeds available to participants for real estate brokerage purposes must also be available to participants for valuation purposes, including automated valuations. MLSs must either permit use of existing data feeds, or create a separate data feed, to satisfy this requirement and where deemed appropriate by the MLS, subject to a third-party license agreement. MLSs may require participants who will use such data feeds to pay the reasonably estimated costs incurred by the MLS in adding or enhancing its downloading capacity for this purpose. However, only such iInformation that an association or association-owned multiple listing service has deemed to be nonconfidential and necessary to support the estimate of value may not be reproduced and attached to the report used as supporting documentation. Any other use of such information is unauthorized and prohibited by these rules and regulations.
The Executive Committee will review the language of the proposed policy amendment approved today by the Multiple Listing Issues and Policies Committee. The Executive Committee could endorse the proposal and place it on the agenda for approval by NAR’s board of directors at a meeting scheduled for Saturday, recommend further changes to the wording, or block it from coming to a vote altogether.
As originally proposed, the policy amendment generated considerable debate among industry leaders, raising thorny questions about whether listing brokers would be able to opt out of providing their listing data for use by other brokers to create automated valuation models (AVMs), enforcement of MLS rules, and whether AVMs could threaten real estate deals, among other issues.
