Recently, the National Association of Realtors® Board of Directors approved several policy changes that will impact our MLS and your business. As an Association-owned MLS, CHS Regional MLS must implement these policies by March 1, 2022 to be in compliance with NAR policy.
The changes were passed by NAR’s Board of Directors with the intent to create transparency for consumers and bring consistency in services for brokers nationwide.
Please review the NAR policy additions below, noting the new field that has been added to MLS.
MLS Policy Statement 8.4: Services advertised as “free”
MLS participants and subscribers must not represent that their brokerage services to a client or customer are free or available at no cost to their clients, unless the participant or subscriber will receive no financial compensation from any source for those services.
MLS Policy Statement 8.5: Non-filtering listings based on offers or compensation or name of the brokerage or agent
MLS participants and subscribers must not, and MLSs must not enable the ability to, filter out or restrict MLS listings that are searchable by and displayed to consumers based on the level of compensation offered to the cooperating broker or the name of a brokerage or agent.
In order for the MLS to comply with the NAR MLS Policy which restricts filtering listings by the compensation offered, CHS MLS has removed the compensation fields from Quick Search in Flexmls. No other change to these fields is in place - they are still available everywhere you need them most (i.e. listing input and detail reports). They are only removed from Quick Search as a search criteria.
Read more about recent NAR MLS policy changes.
MLS Policy Statement 8.8: Display of listing broker offer of compensation
MLSs must include the listing broker’s offer of compensation for each active listing displayed on its consumer-facing website(s) and in MLS data feeds provided to participants and subscribers and must permit MLS participants or subscribers to share such information though IDX and VOW displays or through any other form or format provided to clients and consumers. The information about the offer of compensation must be accompanied by a disclaimer stating that the offer is made only to participants of the MLS where the listing is filed.
With this item, CHS Regional MLS has added a Compensation Notes field into MLS. It is not a required field.
Compensation Notes Any dollar bonuses or other monetary incentives (if any) offered by the listing broker to cooperating brokers can be part of an offer to compensate cooperating brokers and should be placed in the new Compensation Notes field as opposed to Agent Notes.
MLS Policy Statement 8.9: Property Addresses
Residential listings filed with the MLS must include a property address where one exists at the time the listing is filed. If a property address is unavailable, then the parcel identification number must be submitted at the time the listing is filed. If no address or parcel identification number is available at the time the listing is filed, the listing must, at a minimum, contain a legal description of the property sufficient to describe the location of the property. This information shall be available to participants and subscribers at the time of filing.