MRED Leads Effort to Rejuvenate National Home Search Portal

The MLS-owned site won’t make brokers "buy their customers back," leaders with Midwest Real Estate Data and Broker Public Portal told Real Estate News.

 

A new type of real estate portal will soon enter the fiercely competitive home search space. This week, a major MLS announced that it will lead the effort to reimagine and relaunch the Broker Public Portal (BPP), an initiative to provide regional MLS data on a national scale. 

 

Midwest Real Estate Data (MRED), a Chicago-area MLS with nearly 50,000 subscribers, will collaborate with the BPP to deliver a new, yet-to-be-named consumer-facing home search site that is expected to launch later this year, BPP CEO Dan Troup told Real Estate News. BPP's existing site at BrokerData.com offers agents and consumers a glimpse at how listings data could be presented and shared with a broader, national audience, Troup noted. 

 

An alternative home search model

In a crowded field dominated by portal giants like Zillow, Realtor.com and Homes.com, BPP aims to differentiate itself as a service that agents can get behind.

 

Unlike other leading home search sites that focus on monetization of listing data — something that impacts both the broker and consumer experience, Troup said — the new MLS-driven portal won't take referral fees or charge for leads, showcase placements or other forms of "advertising that competes with the broker," he noted.

 

"The industry supports it," Troup said. "That's what brokers are asking for. They're asking for a portal which they control and a portal that doesn't turn around and make them buy their customers back."

 

A portal that agents 'can trust'

MRED President and CEO Rebecca Jensen said the reimagined BPP effort, which was first introduced a decade ago, represents the MLS's "promise of providing additional value" to members. The public portal will abide by Fair Display Guidelines and not seek to compete with agents or brokers — instead, the goal is to become the portal that agents "can trust," Jensen added.

 

"For my subscribers, it's really easy, because a lot of them are buying their leads back and they would rather have an alternative. So we're just here to provide an alternative and let the competition do what it will," she said.

 

Supported by infrastructure 'at the level of an Amazon'

In July, North Carolina's Doorify MLS partnered with BPP, and other MLSs may soon announce their involvement in the relaunch effort, Troup said. 

 

He's currently testing a site that has "integrated about 15 different MLS," and major developments in tech have helped make a nationwide portal feasible. 

 

"All the moats have shrunk," Troup said. "On the technology side, we all have AI available to us and we all have infrastructure that's at the level of an Amazon available to us."

 

What BPP doesn't have is "the marketing to go out there and buy a Super Bowl commercial,"  Troup said.

 

"But we don't need that."