Listings
What is multiple listing service (mls)?
A Multiple Listing Service is a regional database where member brokers publish their listings and agree in advance to compensate other members who bring a buyer, making cooperation between competing brokerages practical.
The MLS solves a coordination problem. Without one, every brokerage would hold its inventory privately and buyers would have to approach each in turn. By pooling listings under a shared offer of cooperation, an MLS makes it rational for a broker to expose their listing to every competing agent in the market.
MLSs are regional and independently governed, so rules, data fields, photo limits and syndication policies vary considerably between them. Software that works with one market's MLS does not automatically work with another's.
MLS data also feeds most consumer property portals, which is why listing data quality has effects well beyond the professional audience that sees it first.
Related terms
IDX is the set of rules and feeds that let a brokerage display other members' MLS listings on its own website, so a visitor can search the whole market from one agent's site rather than only that agent's inventory.
A listing agreement is the contract between a seller and a brokerage that authorises the brokerage to market the property, setting the price, duration, compensation and the extent of exclusivity.
A pocket listing is a property marketed privately, without being entered into the MLS, so that only the listing agent's own network sees it.
Syndication is the automatic distribution of a listing from its source — usually the MLS — out to consumer property portals and partner websites, so one entry appears across many destinations.