Latest / Dishin' Dirt with Gary Pickren / Is Robert Reffkin Playing 3D Chess with Real Estate Data? | Compass, IDX & the MLS Power Grab

Transcript

Is Robert Reffkin Playing 3D Chess with Real Estate Data? | Compass, IDX & the MLS Power Grab · Dishin' Dirt with Gary Pickren

0:00
SPEAKER_00: Imagine creating this massive inventory.
0:02
SPEAKER_00: You pay to market the inventory, you've got time, you've got money, you've got effort, all in this inventory.
0:07
SPEAKER_00: And then you have to upload this inventory on a platform where you have very little control over it, with very stringent rules, requirements, and guidelines.
0:14
SPEAKER_00: And then you watch the data that you uploaded basically be given or sold to billion-dollar companies for pennies, who then take and monetize all that inventory, those clients and that data.
0:25
SPEAKER_00: They pay you absolutely nothing for this while making billions of dollars, and then have the audacity to come back to you and try to sell you those very clients you gave them for exorbitant fees with an area.
0:36
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
0:37
SPEAKER_00: But guys, that's a debate we're having right now in the real estate industry today, and it's exploding all over the place.
0:42
SPEAKER_00: This all centers around IDX feeds, Vox feeds, Redfin, Trulia, Realtor.com, Zillow, Compass, and all the MLSs.
0:50
SPEAKER_00: This isn't just the latest musings of Robert Refkin of Compass.
0:54
SPEAKER_00: This is going around everywhere.
0:56
SPEAKER_00: People are talking about the data.
0:57
SPEAKER_00: Now, if you've listened to this show for more than two minutes, you've heard me be very critical of Robert Refkin, particularly his exclusive and private listings, which are very wrong for our industry.
1:06
SPEAKER_00: You've also heard me be very critical of his gaslighting.
1:08
SPEAKER_00: He claims this is all about seller choice.
1:10
SPEAKER_00: Don't believe that for a minute.
1:11
SPEAKER_00: I think that's a lie.
1:12
SPEAKER_00: But perhaps I was wrong.
1:14
SPEAKER_00: Yes, your highly trained, highly educated, rarely wrong host might have actually read these tea leaves wrong.
1:20
SPEAKER_00: And maybe, just maybe, this is what Robert Refkin's been angling for all along.
1:24
SPEAKER_00: Did Refkin create the private listings, the exclusive listings, simply to try to put pressure on all the MLSs and Zillow?
1:31
SPEAKER_00: Is this some type of three-dimensional chess game that he's been playing?
1:34
SPEAKER_00: Is he three moves ahead of everybody in this whole thing?
1:36
SPEAKER_00: Or am I giving him too much credit?
1:38
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
1:38
SPEAKER_00: We're going to talk about that today.
1:40
SPEAKER_00: Because if this is his real fight, which I most definitely think it is, it's been all about controlling the IDX feed and thus the real estate data.
1:48
SPEAKER_00: And if that's the case, then what Robert Refkin's doing here is some matrix level red pill stuff.
1:53
SPEAKER_00: And that's pretty freaking amazing.
1:55
SPEAKER_00: And not only might I not only agree with Robert Refkin here, shockingly, of course, but I have to say maybe I have some mad respect for this guy, because this would be playing the game at an entirely different level.
2:06
SPEAKER_00: We're going to tackle all of this today and a lot more on Dish and Dirt.
2:10
SPEAKER_00: Hey and Greens, and welcome back, everyone, to another episode of Dish and Dirt.
2:12
SPEAKER_00: I'm here off an opinionated rarely wrong host, Gary Pickering, coming in from the beautiful downtown Columbia South Carolina offices of Blair Cato, Pickering, Castellan, this the second week of May 2026.
2:22
SPEAKER_00: First of all, if you're watching this on YouTube, thank you.
2:24
SPEAKER_00: I'd ask you please click that subscribe button and help us grow that channel and get those videos pushed out more.
2:29
SPEAKER_00: And if you're listening to us on a podcast platform like Apple or whatever, go ahead and subscribe as well and I'll keep you updated when we have new episodes.
2:36
SPEAKER_00: Also share it with any new agent that you know about.
2:38
SPEAKER_00: Now, before we begin our discussion on the IDX feed, want to remind you that the Blythewood office is now open.
2:43
SPEAKER_00: If you're a Northeast Columbia agent and you don't want to drive downtown to do a closing, you can drive there on Killian Road behind the Chick-fil-A, and we can take care of all your closing needs at our brand new office.
2:53
SPEAKER_00: Real excited to be in the Northeast, ready to do your closings.
2:56
SPEAKER_00: Now, there's another major move that was just announced last week in the real estate brokerage market.
3:02
SPEAKER_00: We are continuing to see the consolidation of brokerages all across the country.
3:06
SPEAKER_00: What we learned this week was EXP World Holding and Leo Perea.
3:10
SPEAKER_00: They acquired Next Home and James Dwiggins.
3:13
SPEAKER_00: Sounds to me like there should have been a future round draft pick thrown in there, maybe some cash considerations, but that is the deal.
3:17
SPEAKER_00: In fact, what we know about this deal so far is the financial terms of the acquisition have not been publicly disclosed.
3:23
SPEAKER_00: So we don't know what those numbers are.
3:25
SPEAKER_00: We do know that EXP simultaneously changed its NASDAQ ticker information from EXPI to AGNT.
3:32
SPEAKER_00: So this is way down the road and is going through, it appears.
3:35
SPEAKER_00: Now, NextHome is going to reportedly continue operating independently of EXP with his existing leadership and branding.
3:41
SPEAKER_00: This is a very smart move, in my opinion, because James Dwiggins has quickly become one of the strongest names and voices in this market, and you certainly don't want to lose his strong leadership.
3:51
SPEAKER_00: I personally like James Dwiggins a lot because he has appeared on Dish and Dirt multiple times, but also because I tend to agree with the things that he finds to be the real threats in our market.
4:01
SPEAKER_00: When you agree with me, I tend to like you a lot more.
4:03
SPEAKER_00: Just saying.
4:04
SPEAKER_00: This deal is very important because the strategic implications of this deal is that EXP is moving from a pure cloud-based brokerage model to a multi-model real estate platform.
4:15
SPEAKER_00: EXP now supports the traditional franchise ownership model, which is the next home model headed by James Dwiggins, as well as the cloud brokerage operations system and EXP Realty, which is headed by the CEO Leo Pereira, who's also been on Dish and Dirt multiple times.
4:28
SPEAKER_00: They're going to continue to support teams and independent agent structures.
4:31
SPEAKER_00: This is a major industry evolution because historically EXP has kind of fancied itself or positioned itself as the anti-franchise model, where Nexthome was seen more as a traditional franchise platform.
4:44
SPEAKER_00: EXP appears to be saying now that agents and brokers want optionality, not just one model, and we're going to give it to them.
4:50
SPEAKER_00: So what we're seeing now as an industry as a whole is that there's this fight over the control of the consumer relationship, and that's paramount.
4:57
SPEAKER_00: The transaction reflects that the industry trend, the brokers want this.
5:00
SPEAKER_00: They want direct consumer relationships, they want proprietary ecosystems, technology ownership, they want data leverage, and they want stronger brand control.
5:09
SPEAKER_00: I think the industry is realizing that whoever controls the consumer relationship and thus all of that data is going to control the economics.
5:16
SPEAKER_00: And this is what these major industry moves seem to be all about.
5:19
SPEAKER_00: And maybe, maybe this is what Refkin appears to be aiming for, even through his controversial moves, which he seems to abandon relatively quickly, which tells me that the moves he's making are not about those moves, but something larger at play here.
5:33
SPEAKER_00: Secondly, we are seeing this consolidation accelerate.
5:36
SPEAKER_00: This EXP deal is part of a much broader consolidation trend.
5:40
SPEAKER_00: You've got the cloud brokerages that are buying franchises, you've got franchises that are buying technology companies, you've got brokerages building vertical integrated ecosystems.
5:49
SPEAKER_00: And in the end, what we're moving toward is fewer but much larger brokerages that are technologically driven, that have platform-style companies.
5:57
SPEAKER_00: And then that brings a lot of concern for me about how are these boutique brokers going to survive?
6:02
SPEAKER_00: The mom and pop brokers that are so very important to our real estate industry.
6:06
SPEAKER_00: How do these small brokerages survive if they don't have access to these platforms and these platforms aren't made available to everybody in the public?
6:13
SPEAKER_00: How does a minority-based broker survive in this?
6:16
SPEAKER_00: If these listings are not going to be centralized, but they're going to be rather on these select platforms, it looks like there's going to be about three or four of these major platforms.
6:23
SPEAKER_00: I just don't see how minority-based brokerages or smaller brokerages can get to these listings, seize these listings, and keep their clients.
6:29
SPEAKER_00: Thirdly, what EXP leadership has been repeating time and time again is maximum optionality.
6:35
SPEAKER_00: And what this means is they want agents to be able to choose different operating models, brokers that can choose franchise ownerships, teams that can choose cloud-based scaling, and having it all done under one infrastructure.
6:46
SPEAKER_00: It's strategically important because brokerage business, as we've been talking about for weeks now, is definitely fragmenting.
6:52
SPEAKER_00: And agents want flexibility while the consumers want the seamless technology.
6:56
SPEAKER_00: And how all this is going to play together in the consumer's best interest remains to be seen.
7:00
SPEAKER_00: But the merger transactions suggest that the industry is now organizing under three centralized type powers.
7:06
SPEAKER_00: You have power number one, which is the traditional MLS system, this is which is controlled cooperation and data standards.
7:13
SPEAKER_00: And then you have the portals, which is all about controlling consumer traffic.
7:16
SPEAKER_00: And then thirdly, you're going to have these broker platforms, which is going to try to reclaim that direct consumer relationship so they can control the data.
7:24
SPEAKER_00: And that, my friends, is likely the real war, the true war that's under this IDX debate.
7:30
SPEAKER_00: And probably also under this exclusive listings and private listings debates.
7:33
SPEAKER_00: I think it all has to do about the data and how that data is shared through the IDX debate.
7:39
SPEAKER_00: The real estate industry, I think, is entering a brand new phase where brokers, portals, and MLS systems are all going to be fighting over the same thing.
7:47
SPEAKER_00: Who's going to control the consumer relationship?
7:49
SPEAKER_00: And that fight is probably going to ultimately reshape how listings are distributed for this generation of real estate agents as well as the next generation of real estate agents.
7:58
SPEAKER_00: And I'm not sure that's going to be the best for the consumer or for the industry.
8:02
SPEAKER_00: That brings me right back to our topic, which is the IDX feed.
8:06
SPEAKER_00: The core question to any IDX discussion is who really owns the listing data?
8:12
SPEAKER_00: Because that's where all the money is.
8:13
SPEAKER_00: Is it owned by the broker?
8:14
SPEAKER_00: Is it owned by the person who enters the information?
8:16
SPEAKER_00: Is it owned by the MLS?
8:17
SPEAKER_00: Or is it owned by the person the MLS sells the data to, like a Zillow, who actually takes that data and makes something of that data?
8:24
SPEAKER_00: Should the MLS be dictating where all these listings can appear, or should it be the broker who enters the data who decides where that IDX feed is pushed?
8:32
SPEAKER_00: Is limiting the IDX distribution anti-consumer?
8:35
SPEAKER_00: What does the law say?
8:36
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
8:36
SPEAKER_00: That's going to be the big fight here.
8:38
SPEAKER_00: Is that while we all recognize the data is the important commodity here, how does that play in with what's in the best interest of the consumer?
8:45
SPEAKER_00: And are these portals helping realtors or is it going to replace them?
8:48
SPEAKER_00: If you want to sum it all up, as the great poets from the 1980s Tears for Fears did, everyone wants to rule the world.
8:54
SPEAKER_00: But we're going to dig a little deeper.
8:55
SPEAKER_00: I think to understand this current IDX fight, we first got to understand how we got here.
9:00
SPEAKER_00: The MLS was originally created as a broker cooperation system.
9:04
SPEAKER_00: Prior to the internet, it was all about the listing books.
9:07
SPEAKER_00: Had to have all of your information in to the MLS by a certain time, usually like on Tuesday, they would then print these big, huge catalog books that had all of the listings in the books.
9:15
SPEAKER_00: You would then separate them by sections and by price.
9:18
SPEAKER_00: And when your client came to meet with you, you pulled out the book, you look to the section of town they wanted, you'd run down the prices, and you stop there and that's the properties you would look at.
9:26
SPEAKER_00: The problem with the books is that once the books were printed, a lot of things in the book had already been sold.
9:31
SPEAKER_00: And a lot of things that had been taken as listings simply didn't get in in time to get in there.
9:35
SPEAKER_00: So the information was vastly outdated and inaccurate.
9:39
SPEAKER_00: But the purpose of the books and pre-internet MLS was cooperation, cooperation between the brokerages and guaranteed compensation, which obviously that's all kind of gone away now.
9:49
SPEAKER_00: But it was also about inventory sharing.
9:51
SPEAKER_00: How do I get my inventory in front of as many agents as possible so that we can share that information and the agents aren't having to call me every day asking me what we have, we could just show it to them in a book.
10:02
SPEAKER_00: The internet changed everything.
10:03
SPEAKER_00: When Al Gore invented the internet, as he claimed in the presidential debate, which probably lost in the presidential race, brokers wanted everything online.
10:09
SPEAKER_00: I think the brokers quickly realized, which a lot of real estate agents didn't, that the information needed to be on the internet because the internet was really going to be what was going to drive this industry for the next couple of decades.
10:19
SPEAKER_00: And it did.
10:20
SPEAKER_00: The IDX fee was created in the late 1990s and the early 2000s.
10:23
SPEAKER_00: And what IDX did was when you entered your listing into the multiple listing service, it would then push that out to all of the members of the MLS, all of the brokers.
10:33
SPEAKER_00: If I work for Blair Cato Brokerage and I put a listing on the MLS, it would then get pushed out to every other real estate broker who's a member of the MLS.
10:42
SPEAKER_00: And we all signed an agreement as to how that would work.
10:44
SPEAKER_00: And part of the agreement was if you took my listing from Blair Cato Realty and you put it on your website, you had to give me credit.
10:50
SPEAKER_00: What it did is it allowed brokers to display others' listings.
10:54
SPEAKER_00: So it helped get those listings published and put them out in front of everybody.
10:57
SPEAKER_00: It helped consumers search for the inventory.
10:59
SPEAKER_00: It created equal exposure.
11:01
SPEAKER_00: Everybody had an opportunity, and there were no fair housing issues of this certain group of people who didn't get access or didn't have ability to find out about the house.
11:08
SPEAKER_00: And I think that system worked very good because the original version of IDX included cooperation, which is good, exposure for sellers, good.
11:17
SPEAKER_00: And it helped smaller brokers compete online against the bigger brokers, which is also good because of antitrust issues.
11:23
SPEAKER_00: This system worked very, very well for many years.
11:26
SPEAKER_00: But nobody fully anticipated how powerful the data itself would become.
11:32
SPEAKER_00: When the internet was in its infancy, no one could foresee that the data created was the true value.
11:38
SPEAKER_00: Everybody thought the value in the internet was being able to reach as many people as possible.
11:43
SPEAKER_00: And that was true.
11:44
SPEAKER_00: But the true monetary value is getting that data and making that data into worth billions of dollars.
11:51
SPEAKER_00: And that's what these websites are all about.
11:53
SPEAKER_00: It's about collecting your data, selling your data to somebody else so they can sell you football jerseys and vacations and cars and everything else that you ever think about and ever search.
12:04
SPEAKER_00: All of that search history, everything about you, your data, is what is truly marketable.
12:09
SPEAKER_00: Buying the house, selling the house is the ticket to get into the data to be able to sell the data.
12:14
SPEAKER_00: In some ways, it's a secondary business.
12:17
SPEAKER_00: And the question is, which is secondary?
12:19
SPEAKER_00: The data or the selling and buying of the house?
12:22
SPEAKER_00: Some would say the data is more important than the actual listing itself.
12:25
SPEAKER_00: But back in the late 90s and early 2000s, no one in this industry had any idea that this data would be so valuable and it would be able to be sold.
12:33
SPEAKER_00: No one that is, except perhaps Zillow.
12:36
SPEAKER_00: Because here we are 15 years later, now realizing the monetary value of the data.
12:40
SPEAKER_00: It's sort of like Priceline.
12:41
SPEAKER_00: When Priceline came out, it was valued more than all of the airlines and hotels that gave them the listings, which made no sense.
12:49
SPEAKER_00: How does a website that owns nothing, how is it worth more money than the very airlines who give it the tickets?
12:54
SPEAKER_00: If the airlines quit giving it the tickets, then price line cease to exist.
12:58
SPEAKER_00: But that is the world that we're now in with the internet and the value of the data.
13:02
SPEAKER_00: I think Refkin apparently understands this.
13:05
SPEAKER_00: And I think he understands the value and he thinks, I think he's understood what we just gave away.
13:09
SPEAKER_00: And he wants it back.
13:10
SPEAKER_00: I think he's sitting there saying Compass and now anywhere make up a massive part of this industry, of this data.
13:18
SPEAKER_00: We're handing this data to the MLS, who then turns around and essentially hands it to all of these portals, the realtor.coms, the trillias, the redfins, uh Zillos, they're making billions of dollars off of it.
13:29
SPEAKER_00: Compass agent lists the property, and then the league gets sent over to a compass agent who then has to pay 40% or whatever the number is, and a commission referral.
13:39
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's what Revkin's doing here.
13:41
SPEAKER_00: I think he's pissed about that.
13:42
SPEAKER_00: And Revkin, like everybody else, wants a piece of that because as the commission rates have been squeezed so badly.
13:50
SPEAKER_00: And look, I've been doing this for 30 years.
13:51
SPEAKER_00: 60-40 was what people were getting back in the day.
13:54
SPEAKER_00: And once you earned your way up to 80-20, you had made it.
13:56
SPEAKER_00: But now you're seeing 95-5 deals and you know, capping out at$12,000 or$15,000.
14:02
SPEAKER_00: The whole model for the brokerage has changed and unfortunately doesn't financially work.
14:07
SPEAKER_00: So the only way that it works financially is to figure out other sources of income.
14:11
SPEAKER_00: The data you create by your listings is that main source of income.
14:16
SPEAKER_00: And I think what Refkin is saying is we're giving you billions and billions of dollars.
14:20
SPEAKER_00: I want my piece of it.
14:22
SPEAKER_00: But the question here is now is can this genie be put back in the bottle or is it too late?
14:28
SPEAKER_00: In fact, we probably should have had this fight 15 years ago when it first started happening, when Zillow first came on the scene and that information would start being given.
14:37
SPEAKER_00: I remember sitting in my parking lot with John Bolis of Century 21, and he asked me like 12, 13 years ago, what are we going to do about these Zillow people?
14:44
SPEAKER_00: I'd never heard of them.
14:45
SPEAKER_00: I didn't know what he was talking about.
14:46
SPEAKER_00: He's like, well, they're taking all the data.
14:47
SPEAKER_00: And I said, Well, who cares?
14:48
SPEAKER_00: They're getting your listings and they're putting them all out over the world.
14:51
SPEAKER_00: That's good for y'all.
14:52
SPEAKER_00: It's going to help sell your listings.
14:53
SPEAKER_00: Little did any of us know that the value wasn't the listings itself, being able to make a commission on the sell of a property.
14:59
SPEAKER_00: The true money was all of the data that came from that that then could be sold off to umpteen million companies who want that information.
15:07
SPEAKER_00: So the question is, what do we do we wait too long?
15:09
SPEAKER_00: Can we even have this fight now?
15:11
SPEAKER_00: Because is the consumer so intertwined now with this data and the portals that to pull back from it, to try to reclaim it, to try to take it back in our own name, is it now going to result in some time of some type of harm to the consumer?
15:24
SPEAKER_00: And I think that is really the problem here is how is Refkin going to get hold of this IDX, get the information back, make money on the information without causing harm to the consumer.
15:34
SPEAKER_00: And because you're a highly regulated industry, federally and statewide, as a profession, the consumer has to come first.
15:42
SPEAKER_00: The fiduciary duty to that consumer has to come first.
15:44
SPEAKER_00: So why I'm empathizing with Refkin, and I'm actually believing in what he's saying now, I don't know how we get there.
15:50
SPEAKER_00: Zillow saw that value of the data.
15:53
SPEAKER_00: They originally joined the MLS, they paid for that data.
15:56
SPEAKER_00: They aggregated that listing data at scale.
15:58
SPEAKER_00: They built a customer audience that is second to none.
16:01
SPEAKER_00: In fact, their numbers rival or exceed the number two through 10 in the industry.
16:06
SPEAKER_00: And what resulted in this was consumers stopped searching brokerage websites.
16:10
SPEAKER_00: Nobody went to C21, a Coldwell Bank, or an ERA.
16:14
SPEAKER_00: They went to Zillow.
16:15
SPEAKER_00: And we know this is true.
16:16
SPEAKER_00: The traffic has been centralized on these portals.
16:19
SPEAKER_00: Our sellers want to be on Zillow yesterday.
16:22
SPEAKER_00: The buyers start their search on Zillow.
16:25
SPEAKER_00: Even people who aren't buying or selling real estate go to Zillow to see the value of their house, to see what their neighbors' houses are worth, to see what their neighbor's house looks like.
16:32
SPEAKER_00: I do it myself.
16:33
SPEAKER_00: It is exactly where the consumers have gone.
16:35
SPEAKER_00: And this is a huge, huge economic shift because brokers create the inventory.
16:40
SPEAKER_00: The multiple listing service organizes that inventory, but it's the portals, the portals who are monetizing the inventory.
16:46
SPEAKER_00: Not even the MLS.
16:47
SPEAKER_00: The MLS is not the one who's making the money on this, it's the portal.
16:50
SPEAKER_00: The listing itself has become the product, not the consumer trying to buy the house or sell the house.
16:56
SPEAKER_00: So Zillow has built this billion-dollar platform and it's smartly now become a broker.
17:01
SPEAKER_00: No longer are they having to go to the MLSs to buy the information.
17:04
SPEAKER_00: They just made themselves into a broker.
17:06
SPEAKER_00: Now they're getting the IDX feed at the same rate as a Keller Williams or a C21 or C Dan Joyner, Kane, all of them get the information at the same price that Zillow does.
17:18
SPEAKER_00: But Zillow is able to get that information, put it into their portal, and make billions and billions of dollars over it.
17:24
SPEAKER_00: It's absolutely brilliant because they're entitled to the same listing information that every broker is.
17:29
SPEAKER_00: They took that data, they built the world's largest real estate platform, and they don't pay any brokerage for that information.
17:38
SPEAKER_00: They don't even say thank you, and then they turn around and sell your clients back at exorbitant fees.
17:43
SPEAKER_00: And all I can say is brilliant.
17:45
SPEAKER_00: It's absolutely brilliant.
17:47
SPEAKER_00: Most consumers remember Zillow.
17:49
SPEAKER_00: They remember seeing the property on Zillow, but they rarely remember which brokerage actually listed it or which real estate agent is even involved.
17:58
SPEAKER_00: The broker's assuming the liability, the portal's capturing the attention, the portal owns that customer relationship, and that's pissing off a lot of these brokerages.
18:06
SPEAKER_00: Fkins says that he's not opposed to the MLS.
18:10
SPEAKER_00: He's not against the MLS.
18:11
SPEAKER_00: And all along it has looked like he has been opposed to the MLS.
18:14
SPEAKER_00: When you talk about the private listings, you talk about the exclusive listings, it's very anti-MLS.
18:19
SPEAKER_00: But what he says now is he supports immediate MLS submission, which is what we've all been saying on this end.
18:25
SPEAKER_00: James Dwiggins, Leo Pereira, myself, we've all been saying that the properties have got to go immediately to the MLS for fair housing, if for no other reason, if for antitrust to stop the small brokerages from being run out of the business, it has to be put on an MLS.
18:39
SPEAKER_00: And he's saying now he supports cooperation, which is telling me there's more to this game than just the exclusives and the privates.
18:47
SPEAKER_00: Everybody's been focusing on that and saying, oh, Robert Refkin, he's just trying to get both sides of the transaction.
18:51
SPEAKER_00: And sure, that's part of it.
18:52
SPEAKER_00: He can get both sides of the transaction.
18:54
SPEAKER_00: But I don't think that's the true mission here.
18:56
SPEAKER_00: The true mission is going to be later revealed here in a second.
18:58
SPEAKER_00: He says he supports the cooperation.
19:00
SPEAKER_00: He supports compensation.
19:02
SPEAKER_00: What his objection is, is that the MLS should not force brokers to syndicate listings to platforms they don't want to support.
19:10
SPEAKER_00: That's it.
19:11
SPEAKER_00: He does not want the IDX feed being pushed to his competition to platforms he doesn't agree with and doesn't want to monetarily support.
19:18
SPEAKER_00: And that's something to really think about there.
19:20
SPEAKER_00: There's a lot to that.
19:21
SPEAKER_00: Would a KW agent really want to help an EXP agent, for example?
19:26
SPEAKER_00: Or would a real agent want to help a Fathom agent grow their business?
19:30
SPEAKER_00: Probably not.
19:31
SPEAKER_00: I mean, if you really sit down and talk about it, if you're the number one agent, do you want all of your listings showing up on your biggest competitor's page, looking like they're their listings, even though they give you that little credit?
19:40
SPEAKER_00: Do you really want that?
19:41
SPEAKER_00: Probably not.
19:42
SPEAKER_00: Would you like to see your competitor making millions of dollars off of your info and getting rich as hell off of it?
19:47
SPEAKER_00: Probably not.
19:48
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's what is really galling Refkin.
19:51
SPEAKER_00: And that's probably because he wasn't in this business for the past 30 years.
19:54
SPEAKER_00: He came from a hedge fund, as I understand, is just now in the business.
19:56
SPEAKER_00: He's probably looking at this going, this is stupid.
19:58
SPEAKER_00: We're giving the information to Zillow and they're making billions of dollars off of this and then selling this information back.
20:04
SPEAKER_00: His objection is we shouldn't be forced to syndicate listings.
20:07
SPEAKER_00: I don't know how we get to there.
20:09
SPEAKER_00: That's the big problem, Refkin believes.
20:11
SPEAKER_00: The brokers earned the listings, they market the listings, they created the photo, they created the content, they've uploaded the listings, yet Zillow is monetizing that traffic.
20:20
SPEAKER_00: They're building the billion-dollar valuation and they're selling the leads back to the listing agent.
20:25
SPEAKER_00: Compass argues the portals have become more powerful than the actual broker supply in the inventory.
20:30
SPEAKER_00: And the same could have been said for Priceline.
20:31
SPEAKER_00: Back in the 90s, when it first came out in the early 2000s, Priceline was more powerful than all of the airlines and all the hotels that they sold tickets for.
20:40
SPEAKER_00: And in a lot of ways, you can say the same thing about Amazon.
20:42
SPEAKER_00: Amazon is definitely more powerful than the individual companies for which they sell their goods.
20:46
SPEAKER_00: He is not wrong.
20:47
SPEAKER_00: I said it.
20:48
SPEAKER_00: Robert Refkin is not wrong.
20:49
SPEAKER_00: So on the one hand, I 100% empathize with Refkin.
20:53
SPEAKER_00: I would be pissed too if you take all of my information, you make millions and billions of dollars off of it, you cut me out, and worse, you charge me these ridiculous fees to get my consumers back.
21:03
SPEAKER_00: I get it.
21:04
SPEAKER_00: And I think that his threats that have been pushed toward the MLS and Zillow is all about withholding that information so that he can try to get control of the data back.
21:13
SPEAKER_00: Originally, I thought what he was trying to do is get both sides of the deal.
21:16
SPEAKER_00: If I don't put it on the MLS, I can sell it internally.
21:18
SPEAKER_00: I get the buyer side and the seller side.
21:20
SPEAKER_00: And that seemed logically what he was doing.
21:22
SPEAKER_00: And his argument for not doing it was all about seller choice.
21:25
SPEAKER_00: He didn't buy that.
21:26
SPEAKER_00: And the reason we know he didn't even buy that is the second he entered into a deal with Redfin, he says, all of that's going to be put on.
21:33
SPEAKER_00: Well, if it's on Redfin, then it's no longer private.
21:35
SPEAKER_00: It's no longer exclusive.
21:36
SPEAKER_00: It's out the world to the entire world.
21:38
SPEAKER_00: But all of a sudden appeared to be it wasn't about keeping the information private or exclusive.
21:43
SPEAKER_00: It was about keeping it on my portal and not keeping it on your portal.
21:47
SPEAKER_00: What he's telling us there is this whole fight y'all been seeing me hit fight about, and all y'all been going at me and calling me wrong about this and telling me I'm bad for the consumer ain't got a thing to do with this, guys.
21:57
SPEAKER_00: It has to do with this data.
21:59
SPEAKER_00: And I think what He's doing is he's using the MLS and these private listings and these exclusive listings to go at Zillow and say, Look, you aren't paying us for this, and I'm not going to give it to you anymore.
22:12
SPEAKER_00: Start paying me, or I'm taking my toys and I'm going home.
22:15
SPEAKER_00: And I think this is some really three-dimensional chest stuff.
22:18
SPEAKER_00: If that's where he's been on this and this is how he's been working to get it, I have to say the man's brilliant.
22:23
SPEAKER_00: And I think everybody would already say he's brilliant.
22:25
SPEAKER_00: I mean, he made a lot of money and knows what he's doing.
22:27
SPEAKER_00: I didn't think he knew what he was doing.
22:28
SPEAKER_00: We was coming here making these private listings.
22:31
SPEAKER_00: I'm telling you, it has nothing to do with the private listings.
22:33
SPEAKER_00: It's all about putting pressure on the MLS so that they don't give his information to Zillow so he can sell it to Zillow and he can make the money.
22:40
SPEAKER_00: I'm telling you right now, guys, that's what I think this is all about.
22:43
SPEAKER_00: When you threaten to withhold 35% of your listings, 40% aren't going to come to you, that puts a real crick in what Zillow is trying to do.
22:52
SPEAKER_00: In fact, Zillow's so upset about it, they're now filing another lawsuit about it.
22:55
SPEAKER_00: He's testing the waters to see how they're going to react.
22:58
SPEAKER_00: The industry is obviously reacting horribly to this.
23:00
SPEAKER_00: And I honestly have to say, I think this is a legitimate frustration from the brokers who feel that they built the inventory while the portals have built the enterprise value.
23:09
SPEAKER_00: No one's getting paid.
23:10
SPEAKER_00: Where it goes now, that guy's is going to be the billion-dollar question.
23:14
SPEAKER_00: Because, as that American icon Randy Travis once saying, but on the other hand, the opposing side argues the issue isn't about broker economics, it's about seller representation.
23:24
SPEAKER_00: And that's where we got to balance this thing because we can all agree, maybe we can all agree, that the fact that the brokers all lost this data, thus all this control and money to Zillow and didn't get paid for it, maybe that's unfair.
23:36
SPEAKER_00: Maybe the broker should be cut into it.
23:37
SPEAKER_00: But then you got the seller representation side.
23:40
SPEAKER_00: The broker's duty is not to protect the brokers and the data.
23:43
SPEAKER_00: The broker's duty is to maximize exposure for the seller, to protect the seller through the fiduciary duty.
23:48
SPEAKER_00: And when you look at it from the seller perspective, it's about more exposure, more buyers, more competition, potentially higher sales price.
23:56
SPEAKER_00: It is not about limiting exposure and limiting who knows about your property.
24:00
SPEAKER_00: With the portal reach, you got the Zillow, the consumer dominance.
24:03
SPEAKER_00: They have massive buyer traffic, relocation buyers, mobile app usage.
24:08
SPEAKER_00: That's where everybody wants to be and needs to be is on Zillow.
24:11
SPEAKER_00: So if buyers are searching Zillow, limiting exposure by not putting those listings on Zillow could arguably disadvantage a seller.
24:18
SPEAKER_00: And we have to admit that every seller wants to be on Zillow.
24:21
SPEAKER_00: That's where they want to be.
24:22
SPEAKER_00: And buyers are going there.
24:23
SPEAKER_00: That's where they start their search.
24:24
SPEAKER_00: It's a fact of life.
24:26
SPEAKER_00: The fact is, Zillow's made billions of dollars off your data, and two things can be true at the same time, but the fact is that's where the consumers are going.
24:33
SPEAKER_00: So if we cut the consumers out to protect our data, we've done wrong with the consumers.
24:38
SPEAKER_00: And of course, that's where all this potential liability comes.
24:40
SPEAKER_00: Could a seller later come back to you and say my property was underexposed because you didn't put it on Zillow.
24:44
SPEAKER_00: You didn't put it on the portals, you only put it on your portal.
24:47
SPEAKER_00: Fewer buyers saw it.
24:48
SPEAKER_00: Less competition existed, so I didn't get a bid anymore.
24:50
SPEAKER_00: I didn't get to drive my price up.
24:52
SPEAKER_00: And so you owe me money.
24:53
SPEAKER_00: And I understand the argument has been that some sellers want exclusivity, but that's very few.
24:57
SPEAKER_00: I mean, when you listen to Compass, this 35%, that's that's manufactured.
25:01
SPEAKER_00: When you look at EXP, for example, Leo Perea told me when I interviewed him at their event here in South Carolina, they had 300,000 transactions and less than a thousand went to exclusive listings.
25:12
SPEAKER_00: Well, that was because they were celebrities or there was some type of domestic violence or they worked in uh military or the government where they couldn't have their names exposed.
25:21
SPEAKER_00: But that's not most people.
25:22
SPEAKER_00: Most people want maximum exposure.
25:24
SPEAKER_00: And that's where this debate's going to go now is broker control versus the seller interest.
25:29
SPEAKER_00: And this is the problem.
25:30
SPEAKER_00: The debate exposes a tension between broker business models and seller fiduciary obligations.
25:35
SPEAKER_00: 15 years ago is when this fight started.
25:38
SPEAKER_00: Unfortunately, it might be too late because real estate is different.
25:41
SPEAKER_00: It is highly regulated as it should be.
25:43
SPEAKER_00: It is the most expensive financial transaction in almost every American's life.
25:48
SPEAKER_00: It is highly federally backed, insured, regulated.
25:52
SPEAKER_00: It's regulated at the state level, the local level, at the commission level.
25:56
SPEAKER_00: It is regulated at every step of the way.
25:59
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes things just suck.
26:01
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes things aren't fair.
26:02
SPEAKER_00: As I tell my kids, fair is the place you go to ride rods.
26:05
SPEAKER_00: It has nothing to do with life.
26:06
SPEAKER_00: But when you are in the financial world, you have to do what is in the best interest of your consumer, even if it's not in your best interest.
26:13
SPEAKER_00: Ask every stockbroker.
26:15
SPEAKER_00: Every stockbroker can make trades every single day and rack up commissions while you lose money.
26:20
SPEAKER_00: They cannot do that because they have a fiduciary duty to you.
26:22
SPEAKER_00: And those who do that wind up getting sued for lots of money.
26:26
SPEAKER_00: But the biggest issue also sitting here in the background that we've talked about ad nauseum is fair housing.
26:31
SPEAKER_00: When you start restricting access because you're pissed off at Zillow making money and you don't put it on Zillow and you don't put it on this platform and you limit it, is restricting the listing visibility.
26:40
SPEAKER_00: Is that now selective exposure?
26:42
SPEAKER_00: Office exclusive private networks, are we really limiting exposure?
26:46
SPEAKER_00: And then the question begs: who gets access?
26:48
SPEAKER_00: Who does not get access?
26:49
SPEAKER_00: Does limiting syndication reduce the market visibility?
26:52
SPEAKER_00: And could that disproportionately affect certain buyer groups based on race, religion, national origin, color, sexual orientation?
26:58
SPEAKER_00: If the answer to that is yes, it doesn't matter whether the intent is yes, it matters as to the result.
27:04
SPEAKER_00: And that's where the DOJ, and that's where the regulatory attention starts coming in.
27:07
SPEAKER_00: They start looking at the transparency, they start looking at open marketplace concerns, they start looking at equal access, and none of these issues are going to be simple.
27:15
SPEAKER_00: And these regulators are going to actively evaluate where this line should be drawn.
27:19
SPEAKER_00: So obviously, the broader and the more open the marketplace, the easier it becomes to defend equal access.
27:25
SPEAKER_00: Where does it go all from now?
27:27
SPEAKER_00: The answer is I don't know.
27:29
SPEAKER_00: Does the fiduary duty and the risk of the fair housing law violations make fixing this problem impossible?
27:35
SPEAKER_00: Does Refkins bluff his way through this with his private listing force and the MLSs in the Zillow fight to try to table some type of negotiation and some type of financial arrangement?
27:45
SPEAKER_00: That seems to be where he's heading.
27:47
SPEAKER_00: He's going to put so much pressure on Zillow that Zillow is going to have to come to the table and say, okay, we're going to set up some fund for the brokers.
27:53
SPEAKER_00: You put the information in here, we're going to pay you a percentage.
27:56
SPEAKER_00: I think that could be it.
27:57
SPEAKER_00: I don't know that Zillow will do that.
27:59
SPEAKER_00: I don't know that realtor.com will do that.
28:01
SPEAKER_00: I don't know that any of these companies would do that because they all can go back and say, wait a minute, I'm a brokerage just like Colwell Bankers, just like EXP, just like real.
28:08
SPEAKER_00: I'm a broker like all of them, like Yip Realty.
28:11
SPEAKER_00: I'm a broker.
28:11
SPEAKER_00: I'm entitled to this information.
28:13
SPEAKER_00: How I get there, I don't know.
28:15
SPEAKER_00: But it seems to me that's where this is heading.
28:17
SPEAKER_00: Trying to get everybody to the table where Refkin can say, if you won't compass in anywhere listings on your program, I'll happily put them in the MLS, but I want to share in some of that billions and billions of dollars that you're generating.
28:30
SPEAKER_00: And that's what this fight's all about.
28:31
SPEAKER_00: And maybe this is what Refkin's been trying to do all along.
28:34
SPEAKER_00: And I'm telling you, if this is what he's been doing all along, hats off, I was wrong.
28:39
SPEAKER_00: You're actually a real estate god.
28:40
SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry I should never have doubted you.
28:42
SPEAKER_00: If that's what he's doing.
28:43
SPEAKER_00: If now, on the other hand, if that's not what he was doing, he was just trying to get both sides of the listing, then I got a problem with that.
28:49
SPEAKER_00: More I look at it, I just don't see that.
28:51
SPEAKER_00: I really believe that Refkin was planning this all along, put the pressure on the MLS, put the pressure on Zillow, force them to the table.
28:59
SPEAKER_00: What they're doing.
29:00
SPEAKER_00: So our future questions are going to be: will brokers regain more control?
29:04
SPEAKER_00: Will the porters continue to dominate the consumer traffic?
29:06
SPEAKER_00: Will the MLS rules evolve or will they stay the same?
29:09
SPEAKER_00: Will they get entrenched?
29:10
SPEAKER_00: Will sellers eventually choose syndication preferences directly?
29:13
SPEAKER_00: Will they decide which ones it goes to?
29:15
SPEAKER_00: And what discussion will that be between the real estate agent and the consumer as to which one they should do?
29:20
SPEAKER_00: This debate is really about power.
29:22
SPEAKER_00: It's about who controls the inventory, who controls the consumer attention, and who's going to profit from all of this.
29:29
SPEAKER_00: I'm a little bit conflicted.
29:30
SPEAKER_00: I 100% agree with Refkin.
29:32
SPEAKER_00: And if I was in Refkin's position, I would be highly pissed off that realtor.com, Zillow, Trillion, all of these are making billions of dollars when I'm putting 30, 40% of the data into their inform into their system and I'm not getting paid anything.
29:46
SPEAKER_00: And worse of all, you're making my agents pay you to get that data back.
29:50
SPEAKER_00: On the other hand, the fight might be too late.
29:52
SPEAKER_00: The genie might be out of the bottle.
29:54
SPEAKER_00: The consumer has come to expect Zillow, they want Zillow, they participate.
29:58
SPEAKER_00: And how you get that information back or lock Zillow out without harming the consumer is going to be a real battle.
30:05
SPEAKER_00: And when you start having that battle and consumer groups start coming up and saying, your fight to get this data back is harming consumers, is when the DOJ and every other three-letter agency in the federal government gets involved.
30:18
SPEAKER_00: And whenever these agents get involved, you're screwed.
30:21
SPEAKER_00: We want them out of it.
30:22
SPEAKER_00: So what do you think?
30:23
SPEAKER_00: Should brokers control where their listings appear or should the seller receive maximum exposure everywhere possible?
30:29
SPEAKER_00: Is this even a fight we can have today?
30:31
SPEAKER_00: Drop your thoughts to me in the comments section or at Gary at BlairKeto.com.
30:34
SPEAKER_00: And please don't forget to subscribe, particularly if you're on YouTube.
30:37
SPEAKER_00: Subscribe on the podcast platform you listen to so that you'll be notified of when new videos come out and continue to listen to Dish and Dirt.
30:44
SPEAKER_00: I hope everybody has a wonderful weekend, and we'll see you again next week for another episode of Dish and Dirt.