Nov 03/10 - Pt 2: MLS Website

We started this segment with a clip from Corinne Lyall. She's a Broker/Owner in Calgary. And she's scanning through the Multiple Listing Service or MLS. If you've ever bought a house or a condo, you've probably spent hours on the MLS website. It's a shared listing service that allows you to look at a large number of properties ... no matter which company lists them. It used to be that you had to list your home with a real estate agent if you wanted to get it on MLS. That began to change a few months ago and last week a formal agreement made it official: individuals can now pay a flat fee to a broker or an agent to post their property on MLS.

But even with that change, you don't get to see everything that real estate agents do ... information such as the prices of previous sales ... the real estate history of a house and the prices houses in the neighbourhood sold for, not just what they were listed at.

Now there are reports that the Competition Bureau is investigating MLS to determine whether all of that information should be available to everyone. And some say the industry could be headed for a major shake-up ... one that would give home-owners a lot more control over the process and one that could sideline some real estate agents. But that's not how Corinne Lyall sees it. We heard from her again.

Bernadette Lonnegan lives in Calgary. And she is selling her home privately without an agent on MLS. As of this morning, it's still on the market.

MLS - Lawrence Dale

Lawrence Dale has spent nearly a decade trying to get the Canadian Real Estate Association to open up the MLS system. He is a real estate lawyer and the founder of an on-line real estate service called RealtySellers.ca. The service just resumed operations last week, after being closed for the last three years. Lawrence Dale was in Toronto.

We requested an interview with the Canadian Real Estate Association. The association's President was not available this morning .

MLS - Phil Soper

But not everyone is convinced that greater access to MLS data is a good idea. Phil Soper is the CEO of Brookfield Real Estate Services. Among other things, it owns Royal Lepage. He was in Toronto.