Interviews
From Navigating the High Seas to Pioneering Real Estate Technology
.jpg&w=3840&q=75)
May 23, 2025
By Arianna Marino
The story of MLS and real estate technology as we know it begins with Saul Klein himself. His journey brings critical context to industry-defining moments including NAR’s sale of Realtor.com and Zillow’s decision to become a brokerage. He is widely recognized as the father of technology and internet adoption in the residential real estate industry, having presented internet training in person to over 800 local REALTOR® associations across the country. Klein’s 2008 MLS 5.0 whitepaper for the future of MLS has become a reality today. But how did he come to anticipate the technological shifts in real estate so precisely? To fully understand Klein’s profound impact we must trace his journey from the outset, beginning with his introduction to military technology at the United States Naval Academy.
From the Naval Academy to Navigating the High Seas
Saul Klein arrived at the Naval Academy in 1968, just as the earliest foundations of internet technology were taking hold. While computers were primitive and not concepts familiar to the public, the military had been pushing to assimilate the technology into its personnel and into its education programs. Klein and his classmates didn’t necessarily need to learn how to build or program the computers - they weren’t “computer people”. Rather, the Navy turned them into some of the earliest users of technology, fundamentally opening Klein’s eyes to the impact such technology could have on society.
When Klein graduated and became a naval officer in 1972, he served on one of the first computerized ships in the Navy. On Klein’s first ship the process of stopping these steamships required telegraphs to the engine room, and a waiting period for the propellers to stop, taking miles to stop a ship. By Klein’s second ship, new variable pitch propeller technology made it possible for these massive ships to stop on a dime and could be controlled from the bridge without telegraphing the engine room. In these pre-GPS days, Klein also witnessed drastic improvements to the navigation systems through computerized technology, observing how these computer systems applied algorithmic logic to score readings from satellite, dead reckoning, and Omega radio navigation system to determine the most accurate ship’s location.
In 1975, Klein was between ships and took the opportunity to get his real estate sales license. His interest in real estate was inspired by his father, who was also in the Navy. Each time Klein’s father was stationed in a new area, he would buy a home and then sell it at a higher price than he paid for it. This taught a young Saul Klein the potential for real estate to build generational wealth and unlock entrepreneurial opportunity. In that summer of 75, Klein not only got his license but sold two houses in between duty stations. By the time he was medically separated from the Navy in 1978, he was ready to begin his illustrious career in real estate and technology.
Early Real Estate Career
When Klein kicked off his real estate career, the MLS listings were printed every two weeks in an MLS Book, and nobody dreamed that there would ever be a system where they could be printed daily. Klein’s time in the Navy allowed him to instead see the listings in the MLS Book as data that could be input to and used by computers, and he immediately understood the value of how technology could help agents become more time efficient.
Beyond his technological foresight, perhaps the most remarkable aspect of Klein’s early real estate career was his ingenuity to apply an economy of scope to his real estate business. A real estate client may need to buy and sell a home once every few years, but they need investment and tax services year round. When Klein found that people were asking him for investment advice, he realized his expertise in real estate and investment could translate well to these other services and as a result he could work with his clients year round to maximize their wealth while creating a more profitable and stable business. This led Klein to obtain several sets of credentials, including a certification to offer financial planning (CFP), licenses to sell securities (Series 7, 24, and 63), a license to sell insurance, and a license to offer tax preparation services. This wide new breadth of knowledge complemented his love for teaching and enriched his core real estate expertise.
By 1989 Klein decided he wanted to volunteer at San Diego Association of REALTORS®, his local association. He enjoyed this experience making an impact on a broader level, and decided he wanted to become the president of the association. By 1991 Klein had become the vice president, and in 1993 he became the president of the association. He then became a director of the state association and met key individuals at the National Association of REALTORS® (NAR). This would position him perfectly for the consulting role he was soon to take with NAR, RIN, and Realtor.com.
RIN and the Sale of Realtor.com
In the early 1990s, NAR launched the REALTORS® Information Network (RIN) as a wholly owned subsidiary. In 1995 it developed its website, Realtor.com, which was viewed as an asset of RIN as opposed to a company in its own right. Klein was hired to the first Realtor.com team as a consultant tasked with bringing listings to Realtor.com and explaining to agents, associations, and MLSs the value proposition of the internet and advertising listings on the internet. Klein created a three hour program for agents to explain what RIN was as well as the role the internet played in the future. He then began traveling across the country selling the idea of putting MLS listings on Realtor.com to brokers, associations, and MLSs. Klein’s efforts resulted in the first 100 MLSs and first 500,000 listings to Realtor.com.
“Not many people still alive right now know this story. It’s not what people think.”
RIN’s business model at the time was to charge agents for each listing input to Realtor.com. They were charging a dollar per month for each listing and preparing to bring Realtor.com to market with great fanfare. Instead, Microsoft stole the show at the 1996 NAR Expo in Atlanta when they entered the space by launching a competing product called HomeAdvisor. The Microsoft offering allowed agents to enter listings for free, which destroyed the momentum and dollar-per-listing business model of Realtor.com. With the price driven to zero, there wasn’t enough immediate money in the business model to continue operations, and would have required NAR to invest more capital into maintaining Realtor.com.
“The decision was made by a large group of REALTORS®, not NAR executives”
NAR leadership and Board of Directors feared the prospect of sustaining future losses from RIN. In August 1996 they called an emergency board meeting, and flew the entire board of almost one thousand REALTORS® to the Sheraton outside Chicago O’Hare International Airport to sort it out. With the general risk of the World Wide Web and the risk of now competing against Microsoft and needing to develop a new business model, the board felt that their fiduciary duty called them to let go of such a high-risk investment. With Klein present, the NAR Board of Directors ultimately voted to allow a company called RealSelect to raise capital for and assume management of Realtor.com.
Internet-Crusade® and e-PRO
After Realtor.com changed management, Saul Klein and his business partners Mike Barnett and John Reilly hit the road again, teaching real estate agents and associations to “get connected” and use the internet. They began selling email services and domain names through a new venture called Internet-Crusade®, and notably created the first templated website builder for real estate agents, calling it the Internet Marketing Kit. Klein and his team built several innovative technology projects through Internet-Crusade®, including the first Internet Data Exchange (IDX) implementation in the late 90’s for Brian Larson and the Regional Multiple Listing Service of Minnesota. This positioned Klein and his team perfectly to receive the contract to run e-PRO online technology certification program for NAR in 2001.
When the company initially contracted by NAR to develop the e-PRO certification program went bankrupt, Klein and his team stepped in to salvage the program. They accepted the challenge to create an online course and platform to accept payments within six weeks to successfully launch the program. Luckily, creating the program was second nature to Klein and his team, who had been teaching this content for many years already. Unfortunately accepting money online was not commonplace in 2001, so when they began to find success in selling the program the banks would often cut them off from collecting payments in the early days.
With e-PRO in full force, Klein and his team embarked on a decade-long nationwide tour, conducting 10 to 15 presentations weekly to REALTOR® associations to promote and train NAR’s e-PRO certification program. Throughout this period, Klein and team visited over 800 local associations multiple times, enrolling over 70,000 REALTORS® and establishing deep connections with a wide range of real estate professionals from executive officers to association presidents. This extensive network and their notable dedication to educating REALTORS® on technology integration in real estate earned them the affectionate nickname "the three amigos" and solidified their reputations across the country.
MLS 5.0: Predicting the Future
In 2008 Saul Klein, as CEO of Point2 Technologies, authored a whitepaper for his concept of the MLS of the future: MLS 5.0. It called for MLS data that was parcel-based rather than listing based, leveraging property information from various sources with data beyond just the listings for sale at a given time. It called for a public search portal for consumers, a broader usage of Single-Sign-On, and Open APIs. At a time when few saw the true value of MLS data, he pushed for a greater focus on neighborhood and sold data. At the time, these concepts were relatively foreign, but in 2024 Klein’s vision has generally come to pass.
“MLS is a miracle - look at the things it creates, the marketplace, the benefits it provides to consumers, brokers, and agents.”
The essence of Klein’s MLS 5.0 whitepaper was a declaration of the value that the MLS can provide to the industry and to the consumer. It was also intended as a subtle warning for industry leaders and brokers who might fail to grasp and harness the strengths of the MLS in the face of consumer alternatives. Klein took exception to the chatter at the time of the MLS being “dead” or losing relevance, and went so far as to begin the white paper with a quote from Mark Twain, summarized to “the reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.” Over the years, the reports of the MLS’s death have indeed been greatly exaggerated.
Point2, Yardi, and Zillow’s Missed Opportunity
Klein first became familiar with Point2 Technologies in the early 2000’s during his time with Internet-Crusade®. Point2 was a technology company that had built agent and broker websites with capabilities ahead of their time, including predictive marketing, tracking in-bound client leads, and lead management and follow-up mechanisms. The Internet-Crusade® team was so impressed that they became resellers of Point2, and in 2007 Klein himself joined their board. When the CEO had to step down in 2008, Klein took the reins.
Klein and his new Saskatoon-based team shifted the corporate strategy to focus on syndicating MLS listing data. After pioneering the method of “opt-out” listing syndication, and with the help of a key hire, Walt Baczkowski (currently the CEO of the San Francisco Association of REALTORS®), Klein and Point2 acquired 1.5 million listings over a span of 18 months, making them the second largest MLS syndication network in North America behind ListHub. In 2010 the owners of Point2 decided they wanted to sell the company, so they hired investment bankers who then procured an acquisition by Yardi Systems Inc. It was at this time that Klein believes he made the biggest mistake of his career: selling Point2 to the wrong company, “a great company, but the wrong company.” Instead of using his connections to gauge interest in who may be interested in Point2, he allowed the investment bankers to procure a general party without a shared vision for the industry.
“When selling your company, make sure the other party shares your vision, if it’s important to you. Ultimately they're going to execute on their vision and not yours.”
In September 2010 during the quiet period preceding the public announcement of the Yardi acquisition, news broke that ListHub would be acquired by Realtor.com. That morning, Klein received a call from Zillow CEO Spencer Rascoff, who wanted to buy Point2. At the time, major sites like Zillow obtained their data via syndication from ListHub and/or Point2. When ListHub was acquired by Realtor.com, Zillow was faced with a competitor controlling two thirds of its listing syndication. This meant that Zillow needed to make an all-out effort to purchase Point2 to control the last third of the syndicated listings powering the platform. Unfortunately for Zillow, Point2 had already been acquired by Yardi
“Zillow was #1. And so how do you compete? You cut off their oxygen.”
Despite continued efforts by Rascoff to purchase Point2 syndication from Yardi, Yardi eventually sold the syndication arm of Point2 to Realtor.com in 2014. By 2015, Realtor.com’s parent company Move Inc. announced that ListHub would stop syndicating to Zillow and Trulia. By cutting off the primary sources of listings from Zillow and Trulia, Zillow ultimately decided their best move to guarantee access to listing data was to become a brokerage and obtain MLS data under an IDX and VOW data license agreement. While these developments were very publicly covered, Saul Klein had a front-row seat to the unfolding drama. He and Point2’s original owners will always ponder what may have happened if they had sold the company to a major industry player with greater motivation to pay a premium.
Data Advocacy and Becoming the CEO of SDMLS
After the sale of Point2, there was still a need in the industry for somebody to advocate for the increased relevance and utility of MLS data. Saul Klein had always been a data advocate, and during this time he became the data advocate, starting his website thedataadvocate.com with John Reilly and Terri Murphy. Klein spent the better part of the last decade living a wonderful life after the Point2 acquisition and working on his great passion for continued advocacy for a better vision of the future of the industry empowered and enabled through the power of data.
Fast forward 2024, and Klein is stepping back into the ring as the CEO of San Diego MLS (SDMLS). There are many issues to tackle both locally and from an industry level, but one of the biggest goals Klein has is to show the brokers in San Diego the true value of their data and awaken the brokers and the industry to the fact that multi-billion dollar companies have been created from the data that these brokers have sourced. Klein hopes to demonstrate how a technology-forward MLS can unlock the value of its own data. With any luck, his tenure at SDMLS will prove to be his greatest level of data advocacy yet.