[quote sdrealtor]The MLS is not a public utility it costs alot of money to support and depends on the fees paid by realtors and other members. I would love to see what would happen when you got sued for non-disclosure of an item and had to defend yourself in a court of law or were ready to move and had closed on a new house only to find out that you didnt fill the contract out properly and your buyer just walked with his deposit and you are screwed.
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I have to disagree with you on this.. and in this case you are in my own area of expertise. In reality, the MLS is very easy and cheap to run, though it does use the fees paid by realtors and other members. The ‘cost’ statement is the same reasoning made by the IEEE, ACM to justify their costs. If you have been paying attention to the online world, arXiv.org blew them out of the water on their justification for their costs. In the ‘print’ world, there was reason for the costs, but in the current ‘electronic’ world, the cost of putting up a web based information distribution system is easily amortized over the number of users. (It does depend upon the hosting system you use).
As for “when you got sued for non-disclosure of an item”, this is a different subject from the MLS itself. Listing Realtors do have a responsibility in this area (the MLS does not take the responsibility) and is a reason why one does need to be careful, and an honest, experience realtor has value.
It is also useful to note, that the secretive behavior of the MLS, has allowed questionable behavior on the part of some realtors to continue. The existence of sites like zillow and sdlookup have allowed more ‘exposure’ into some of this behavior (realtors purchasing a property just to flip it directly to a client{buyer} that they knew about). What is interesting, from a history perspective, is that this behavior is part of what caused the Great Depression in the 30’s, and was outlawed by the SEC with respect to securities brokers. Do something like this as a stock broker – and you can loose your license for life – not to mention prison time. Personally, I would like to see licensing of RE brokers and mortgage brokers structured along similar lines. For most people, a house purchase is the single largest money transaction they are going to do in their life.
