CEO Require MLS Freedom From Real Estate Agent Control

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DeCatsye will be retiring on Dec. 31, 2026, however before she goes, she is making certain Canopy Real estate agent Association no longer controls Canopy MLS or relies on it financially.

- Increased analysis of Real estate agent subscription requirements to access the MLS influenced Canopy MLS's decision to invite non-Realtors as subscribers last fall.

- DeCatsye thinks NAR is moving liability to local MLSs - but says that's "great" provided the legal dangers of NAR's MLS policies and its handling of the commission claims.


In 2022, Anne Marie DeCatsye informed her Real estate agent association she would just stay on for 5 more years and provided the management team with a thought experiment: If the association and its numerous listing service passed away in five years, why would it happen?


The group concluded that the MLS would fail "because of the legal landscape and the risk from larger companies starting a nationwide MLS, or the syndication sites doing it," DeCatsye informed Real Estate News in an exclusive interview.


"Why [would] the association close its doors? Because the MLS disappeared. That's bad. There requires to be worth in the association outside of the MLS, and we need to be able to articulate that worth."


That realization triggered Canopy Real estate agent Association's improvement: Unlike the vast majority of its peers, the Charlotte, North Carolina-based association and its MLS would become independent of each other, and the MLS would welcome non-Realtors.


Two companies, 2 CEOs


"We have functionally and economically separated the MLS from the association," DeCatsye stated. It's the kind of move some in the market have been advising in the last few years.


"Our association board of directors has nothing to do with MLS policy. The only thing they see are the minutes of the MLS board conferences and the financials as the parent company."


Completing that separation implies that each company will get its own CEO when DeCatsye leaves at the end of next year.


The association will continue to own the MLS, which DeCatsye sees no problem with, however she highlights that Real estate agent associations need to no longer control or be economically dependent on an MLS.


"I'm surprised at the number of [associations that own an MLS] not just are depending on funds coming back to them from the MLS, however they likewise, one, believe they are the MLS; and 2, they see their worth as a Real estate agent association being the MLS, which kind of blows me away," DeCatsye said.


Membership mandates pose a 'liability danger'


DeCatsye began with Canopy Realtors as its internal legal counsel in 2000 and ended up being CEO in 2001. That legal training has actually imbued her viewpoint on how the association and its MLS should run.


For example, in light of the Federal Trade Commission's position against anticompetitive connecting arrangements in the property industry, plus the recent flurry of antitrust suits challenging the National Association of Realtors' three-way agreement and the requirement by numerous MLSs that subscribers be Real estate agent members, Canopy MLS decided to offer an MLS-only choice at the end of last year - something other MLSs have actually also begun considering or carrying out.


Mandating Real estate agent membership to access the MLS is "a liability danger waiting to happen," DeCatsye said.


Canopy Real estate agents has about 14,000 members, and Canopy MLS has more than 22,000 customers; currently, just 125 or so are "MLS-only" non-Realtor subscribers.


MLSs are more than 'simply a service'


NAR has long identified Realtor-affiliated MLSs as a service of their associations. By that measure, associations have a right to need subscription to access the MLS. But DeCatsye challenge the idea that the MLS is a simple "service" and firmly the MLS "has actually grown up."


"When you include on the tools and the training and the technology and the information licensing and data integrity and all the important things that we do on the MLS side that have absolutely nothing to do with the Real estate agent association, ... to state, 'Oh, it's just a service of the Real estate agent association' is a total injustice to what an MLS truly does," she stated.


'Local discretion' shifts risk to MLSs


Regarding NAR's effort to minimize the legal risks of its policies, DeCatsye thinks the trade group is not being completely transparent about what that suggests for MLSs.


"I've heard [NAR CEO Nykia Wright] say 'de-risking our portfolio' multiple times, and after that she started saying 'that does not imply we're shifting the risk to the MLS' - and I do not think that's true," DeCatsye stated.


Leaving policies to "local discretion," such as the implementation of NAR's delayed marketing exemption, automatically increases liability for regional organizations, according to DeCatsye.


"It is being shifted to the regional MLS, and if the MLS is owned by a Real estate agent association like ours, the entire company is at risk," she said. Some MLSs have actually just pulled out of executing the policy.


Time for NAR to hand off MLS policy oversight?


But DeCatsye says the liability shift is "fine" by her, considered that NAR-driven policies were at the root of class-action suits nationwide.


"I would rather stand on our own two feet and not be dependent on NAR MLS policy, since that is what got all of us in difficulty," DeCatsye said.


She believes it's time for another company to take the reins on MLS policy regulation or MLS finest practices. That could be the Council of MLSs, the Real Estate Standards Organization, the Association of Real Estate License Law Officials, state realty commissions, or some new or revamped entity.


"I sure would rather be managed by our realty commission than the DOJ," she stated.


NAR lobbyists should have 'done more'


Echoing the belief of some big brokers and other industry leaders, DeCatsye thinks NAR needs to have done a better task of handling the commissions lawsuits.


"If NAR's legal team had actually done more to educate members of Congress about what was occurring, there could have been a federal legal intervention into some of the lawsuits that were assaulting the market," she stated.


"The settlement quantities are simply mind-blowing, and I do not think a great deal of members of Congress have any idea."


Leaving 'Real estate agent' behind?


DeCatsye believes the day might come when Canopy Realtors will be Canopy Real Estate Professionals instead - however it's not what she's pushing for.


"My mommy was a Real estate agent," she said. "I still strongly believe in the function of the Real estate agent. I think in the Code of Ethics.