TheRealtyAlliance

12/18/2025

HOUSINGWIRE: According to [William] Raveis, NAR hurt its relationship with his firm by leaving it out of its commission lawsuit settlement agreement. Due to this, he said the company is exploring leaving the national trade association in markets where MLS access and association membership are not tied.
“Decoupling ourselves from NAR and getting involved directly with the MLS is something that we are very strongly looking at in 2026,” Raveis said. “We have always been involved in the Realtor associations and at all three levels due to the three-tiered system, but that has been blown up a bit by the lawsuit and them coming after us when we didn’t do anything to essentially pay a fine for how NAR is structured.”
Raveis said he and his team had previously been proud NAR members, but that is no longer the case and they see little to no value in belonging to NAR.
“In our view, the MLS is really where the value is. We don’t see much value from NAR at this point,” he said.
In order to mend the relationship, Raveis wants NAR to reimburse the brokerages left out of the settlement for the amounts they paid to settle. He would also like to see the association provide brokers with technology or systems they can use to reinvest in their own businesses.
“What are they doing to help us be more efficient?” Raveis posited. “They have to convince us of their value, and that wasn’t the case 10 years ago.”

12/15/2025

RIS Media: [Craig] Cheatham shares what The Realty Alliance and some other traditional “big brokers” are looking for from NAR:
- Provide clarity and “safe harbors” for fundamental industry practices through its legal and advocacy teams
- Utilize its advocacy arm on major initiatives to “move the needle in meaningful ways” on housing affordability and inventory”
- Streamline its governance while simultaneously ensuring that the industry’s significant players are given opportunity to shape NAR’s decisions in the future
- Enhance the efficiency of the delivery of the research and economic data and insights NAR produces so it can be better utilized by brokers and agents alike
- Develop significant resources specifically for brokerage leaders, not just agents, associations and MLSs
- Reduce its budget by focusing on core services, cutting niche programs, putting purchases out to bid and moving at least temporarily to a zero-based budgeting system while improving financial transparency
- Rebuild its reserves to be able to reimburse large brokers left out of the NAR settlement
- Decide whether or not the association will remain the place for MLS policy development, interpretation and enforcement
- Clarify the roles of each level of the three-way agreement, along with justifying any overlap, allowing each to make its own case for its value proposition

12/08/2025

RESPA News: "Craig Cheatham said The Realty Alliance members are questioning if the industry’s current framework can handle developing and enforcing policy nationwide and what significant changes need to be made to their business practice. 'Our brokers aren’t happy with what the existing infrastructure produced. It should come as no surprise that we, along with probably everyone else in the industry, believe the financial protections should apply to all brokerages. And the industry and consumers would have benefited from significantly more clarity around the specifics of practice that local MLSs were left to determine on their own, producing varying procedures even in adjacent MLSs within a larger market footprint.' He said he thinks it’s 'untenable' to try to regulate the industry through settlement agreement. 'We have state- and territory-level laws and regulations and the accompanying statutory bodies to enforce them for a reason,' Cheatham continued."

12/04/2025

RIS Media: "[Mike Hickman, CEO of Seven Gables Real Estate] believes that repairing relationships between NAR and brokers in the '$2B club' cannot happen without monetary compensation.
'This should be repaid. People made decisions on my behalf that are affecting my business. I’m just a family-owned business, and it’s businesses like mine that make up (NAR’s) constituents.'”

12/01/2025

RESPA NEWS: "If given the chance to look at the NAR settlement again for the first time, [Craig] Cheatham said he believes that 'we would direct our major industry association to be proactive and utilize its advocacy resources right away to begin amending federal and state-level laws and regulations to provide both clarity and a safe harbor for real estate practitioners. … The reactionary, defensive posture not only caused the losses in the courtrooms but also allowed false and misleading narratives to take hold in the media and left willing policymakers without instructions on how to resolve the questions for consumers and the industry through legislation and regulation.'”

11/26/2025

11/24/2025

Special report by RESPA News, produced by October Research, on the industry after the settlement:
https://www.respanews.com/rn/nar-settlement-report-rn.aspx
Sponsored by SoftPro, allowing free downloads

11/23/2025

"Several items on the [2013] list could be summarized by 'prioritize supporting broker success' … and some would add 'through data ONLY.' Expedite feeds, keep the process and cost to a minimum. Work with brokers on learning the formats and use cases that address what brokers need now to keep up with consumer expectations.
Another thing: More and more of my brokers are talking about how, in the future, they would like to see MLSs getting out of the business of setting rules that regulate business practices, and instead the only rules the MLS has are around the utility of data -- getting it into the system correctly (via more than one option), ensuring data accuracy, maintaining compatible data formats, protecting data integrity and ensuring distribution methodology meets current needs.
Yes, brokers are moving away from wanting their MLSs to set rules around how properties are marketed and what kinds of business models and business practices brokerages employ. They want the marketplace and various market cycles and consumer preferences to have more leeway and don’t want their MLS deciding everything about how business gets done." -- Craig Cheatham

11/19/2025

"[Our MLS has] some strategic priorities that are really easy to say. 'Ensure market efficiencies' is one of them. 'Strengthen the community' is another. So, it's really easy to look at the products and services that we are bringing out, and we ask ourselves, 'Is this for market efficiency? Is this one of those sorts of things that will create efficiency across the entire market, or is it a differentiator?' If it's a differentiator, we step away, or we figure out another way. We're looking at other ways, maybe tiered services in the future, so that we're not competing with our brokers. But finding those new ways, because we want to say 'yes,' to provide the innovative, forward-thinking technology, and we want to say 'yes' to our brokers for what they want." -- Shelley Specchio

11/19/2025

Struggling to find a home because of a housing shortage? Blame rent control.

The devastating effects of rent controls are well-documented, and the policy is even more disproven by basic economics.

11/18/2025

https://realestatemagazine.ca/phil-soper-elected-chair-of-the-realty-alliance-board/

Royal LePage CEO becomes the only Canadian representative on the board of directors for The Realty Alliance, a network of real estate brokerages across North America

11/17/2025

2025 TRA session at CMLS in Toronto ... transcript available at this link ... good for MLS self-evaluation exercises, MLS strategic planning retreats and for any time an MLS is evaluating launching a new program or service ... QR code format to assist in sharing.
https://fairmls.org/2025-followup-session.html