However, the MLS is a service created by the realtors, for themselves, that they allow “end users” to access. There is far more information buried inside the MLS that casual users are simply unaware of and may not even find of value. I believe they should be able to control their own world and decide who they allow in.

In my perfect world, I would find it fine for CREA to agree to allow homeowners to list their homes on the MLS, but I would want a fixed fee of say $500 to $1,000 for this service (to ensure the MLS maintains itself as a higher integrity sales listing service) and it has to go through a Realtor to fill in the actual listing to help maintain this integrity. The average homeowner has no idea how much marketing a professional realtor does to sell a property, from ads in the paper, to open houses to soliciting other realtors in their office and other offices. Also they don’t realize how much time realtors waste on tire kickers who then go buy a property from someone else.

If the client wants a la cart services these should be set up as a higher price per item than getting the whole package, perhaps seeing these broken out will provide more of an impact to them? My biggest beef with a majority of the realtors who approached us when we sold properties privately was the spiel of, if you list with us, we have 4,000 other realtors all working to help sell your home. I understand the listing game where the realtor with the most listings makes the most money, but as an entrepreneur who has a slight grasp of how things work, I don’t want 4,000 realtors selling my home, I want a great realtor who is selling my home and also has 4,000 other realtors stopping by.

On the other hand, if the Competition Bureau finds it unfair only realtors can list on the site publicly, I have no problem with them taking it offline and making it a private system. Then we will see who really starts to holler!

The bottom line is that nobody is telling the home owners that they have to hire a full service Realtor. They have many other options such as welist.com, comfree.com, etc. where they only get a minimal amount of services. The truth is that a few incompetent Realtor in Ontario have decided to blow this issue out of proportion because they were unable to compete based on value, rather they have decided to offer crappy services to their clients for a minimum fee, yet they still want to be part of MLS. Why do they want to be part of the MLS community? Because it works and it’s a great system that brings buyers and sellers together!

Here is another thought – currently the MLS system offers great integrity by providing accurate data to establish real estate values. If we allow the general public to post inaccurate or misleading listings into that system, how will you be able to complete a reliable appraisal in the future or provide piece of mind to the buyer that the displayed property information is accurate? If anything, the general public should be thankful to Realtors for sponsoring such an organization to eliminate the “Wild West” type of mentality when it comes to real estate type of transactions.

Not too long ago, I was looking into buying some real estate in Europe. I quickly found out that neither is the buyer or the seller is truly being represented to during a transaction. As a buyer, I had to go through dozens of Realtor’s website to search for the property that I was looking for. Can you imagine how many hours and days of work that took during my holiday? As a buyer, I would have paid for someone to do all that legwork for me, but I couldn’t, yet here in Canada this all comes as a free service to the buyers with many other benefits when deciding to take on a Realtor. I guess all I am trying to say is that we are so blessed to have a system in place that took 20+ years to build and now a select group of people is trying to destroy it.