Is real estate heading back to a pre-MLS world?
In this hour‑long interview, host Leigh Thomas Brown talks with James Dwiggins, CEO of NextHome, about the seismic shifts reshaping the U.S. residential real‑estate market. Dwiggins traces his family’s multigenerational brokerage roots and explains why NextHome calls its agents “members” to reflect a franchise model that supports independent shop owners. The conversation then pivots to the rise of private listings, especially Compass’s post‑Acquisition strategy that hides roughly 28‑30% of inventory from public portals, turning inventory into a recruitment lever. Dwiggins predicts a consolidation war among the industry’s biggest players—Compass, eXp, Keller Williams, RE/MAX, and others—potentially culminating in a single, national MLS akin to the airline reservation system. He warns that the current MLS governance structure, riddled with unqualified board members, is paralyzed and that the lack of historical knowledge among new leaders fuels poor decision‑making. The discussion covers consumer‑harm risks, looming class‑action lawsuits over private listings, and state‑level legislative attempts in Wisconsin and Washington to curb the practice. Dwiggins and Brown debate the role of Zillow and IDX in promoting transparency, compare the U.S. MLS ecosystem to markets without a central listing service (e.g., Argentina), and touch on corporate‑law considerations such as eXp’s move from Delaware to Texas. The interview ends with a call for agents, brokers, and MLS boards to document industry history, protect the public trust, and educate grassroots realtors to avoid being left behind as the market evolves.
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I think our industry reputation will get tarnished on a significant scale because agents are not standing up to the leadership in companies who are misguiding them. I think the whole industry will suffer because of it and consumers will suffer because of it.
This is Real Talk with Leigh Thomas Brown. You're about to go down a really fast highway with a lot of detours with the one and only James Dwiggin, the CEO of NextHome, and I would say the most influential voice in all of real estate at the current time, and he has carried the torch for a couple of years. So I'm very honored to have him on the show. Can't wait to hear what you guys think in the comments. So hold on to your hat. I'll see you on the other side. We're in the Joe Rogan vein right now of people are wondering who my guest is, unless you're a nerd in real estate, in which case you already know his voice. James Dwiggins, welcome to the show.
Thank you. It's good to see you, by the way. Last time we were together, we were in an airport stuck somewhere.
I know. And you wound up making me buy that double monitor thing that plugs into my laptop. But what you didn't explain to me is that it tips everything over. So I have to figure out the physics of it.
No, it has a thing that comes out of the back. You just got to pull it down.
Um, maybe I didn't do it the right way. I might have to look.
That's funny.
I do have a budget leak for technology. And if you have an Amazon link, I'm very likely to buy it. And then it sits at my house and my husband is going to hear about this episode and affirm it in the comments later, because that's how we roll. But tell our viewers and listeners, because part of my viewers are not super real estate nerds. They're just wildly intrigued by it. Tell them a little bit about you. How long you've been in and around the real estate game? Where do you call home? Give them the thumbnail of James.
Well, I'm an SOB. I'm a son of a broker. I have been actually, all joking aside, I've been in the real estate game my entire life. So both my parents were real estate brokers. Both my grandparents were. My grandfather started his company in 1967. I actually have the photo of him taking a picture in front of his real estate office. I found it. I put it in my keynotes. So I've been in the business my whole life. I worked for my parents' company. I was involved in prop tech in residential real estate, and then I've been running a couple of different real estate franchises since 2006. The current one now is a company called NextHome. It's about 600 offices across the US, close to 6,000 members. And then, yeah, and then I do a lot of podcasting as well, which I know you'll be joining my podcast later today. And then I do a lot of keynotes. I'm probably most known for not being shy like you. I like to voice my opinion on things and kind of call it how it is. And so I do a lot of public speaking on the industry and sort of where things are and calling people out for their bullshit.
So, and full disclosure, audience, sometimes we agree and sometimes we don't. And I think that is the key to figuring things out in life. But I have to ask you a question since you said your grandfather opened the brokerage in 1967, where was it located?
It was in Central California. So I'm born and raised in San Luis Obispo, California, which is right smack in the middle of the state, right on the coast. So think halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Town of 40,000 people. He grew a real estate company back in the '60s, '70s, and '80s to about 125 agents in 3 locations. That'd be like 1,000 agent brokers today. Yeah, so my family has been very deep in residential real estate for a long time.
So I had to ask because I just finished reading Chaos, and I'm only 30 years behind reading the true story of the Manson murders. And so anytime I hear about the '60s in California, my head goes to MKUltra. And all the things that went on. It's crazy. Have you read Chaos?
No, no.
Okay, well, it's a whole different rabbit hole to go down.
California is a lot more than, than the Manson murders, by the way, but totally, I hear you.
So yeah, but see, that was just a symptom of what was going on under the surface. And oh wait, isn't that real estate right now? What we're seeing is a symptom of what's been going on below the surface.
Mhm, mhm. It's a good correlation. I like that, the connection to those two.
Yeah, just saying. And the other thing I noticed that you said was you said in NextHome, which, hey, all my NextHome friends, you're gonna be glad I have some orange in my flowers cuz they're very, very attached to the orange of the brand. But you called 'em members and didn't call 'em agents. Where did that come from when you said you have 6,000 members?
So we basically, we look at the organization a little differently. We try to encompass everybody into the company. So our culture is, obviously our agents are very important, but We also look at the staff that helps support them, the assistants, the brokers, the managers. Like we try to create a company where everyone has an equal footing in the success of the organization. So we've always just called them members. I don't know, it just started that way. But our culture, as you know, you've witnessed it, is very unique. It's very high energy. And I, I think it comes from the fact that our business model's a little different and we are a franchise that has always been a home for smaller independents that that want to be, want to run their own shop, but then want the support and tools and kind of leadership when they, when they need it. So it's, that's why we have so many locations. And then our, our agent count isn't, you know, 50,000 people out of 600 locations. We're much smaller, but much higher production. So our broker owner tends to be a high producer who left the company, opened up their own brokerage, typically went independent, realized it's a little harder than they thought, and then want to be able to run their own business still, but then affiliate. And that's been our bread and butter for, you know, 12 years.
So, so in looking at the, the size piece, obviously in real estate right now, the consumer, I think, is finally starting to see the effects of the big settlement, the big verdict from October of 2023. In the way that the names of the companies keep moving and we're seeing more mergers and acquisitions. And here in the Charlotte, North Carolina market, one of the biggest changes we've seen was we had Allen Tate Realtors here, one of the biggest independent brands in the country. And of course, Allen Tate was a freaking legend. I got to know his wife, Barbara, before she passed away. She was hilariously awesome. And of course they got, after Allen passed, It had turned pretty corporate in nature, which happens with a bigger company, but they got purchased by Howard Hanna. And just this year, which I guess is 3 years post-acquisition, the signs have changed to Howard Hanna Real Estate. And so the consumer is noticing, oh, wait a minute, what's going on in real estate? Which I think is an interesting aftereffect of the merger, because they're not questioning what happened to Allen Tate. It's more about what's happening in real estate is the question I've heard from people, which that is not what I expected. I thought that, and I've talked to some agent friends over there too, they thought there would be a bigger hurdle in the name change, but instead the bigger hurdle is what is this? And I, then I look at the merger and I haven't dug all the way down on what's happening with Rocket Compass, Redfin, and you see all these big giant conglomerations. And the question that I would have is Is a 6,000-member company going to be a big player, a boutique player, or are you in that very challenging middle ground where you're probably gonna have to join somebody bigger or become bigger, or you dig your heels in as a boutique niche? Because the middle ground is the questionable part to me.
It's a very good question. The answer is I don't know yet. I'll give you the scenario of what I think this will play out like, and then I'll give you some paths. We obviously as a company are, you know, we're very in tune. We're looking at all the different scenarios on where we need to be from a growth perspective, from a perspective of how we continue to gain market share, and then what the sort of chess pieces are on the table. So the Compass Anywhere acquisition, I'll start there, is, as I've stated publicly, Robert and I have very different philosophical ideas and views of how this industry should operate. And I can also congratulate and admire him for the work that he did. That's a big thing to do. It's a great thing to pull off. And as an entrepreneur, I totally respect it. That being said, Compass Anywhere acquisition puts, you know, one company between their franchise division and their brokerage division to be almost 20% market share across the US. It's being scrutinized by a lot of people. There's investigations going on about how it was passed without the DOJ going through it. I don't think that's going to go anywhere personally, but what the effect is, is consolidation. And I've been very vocal about this for over a year and it's unfortunately most of my predictions are coming to bear. I think this is the beginning of a consolidation war. I think there will be very large companies that will come out of this. And the reason I'll explain that in a second, but I want to back into it. The reason this is a big thing is that Compass has a very strong initiative. Of private listings. They want to drive traffic to their website. They want to pull traffic away from the portals, which, you know, fine, go for it. I think it's a lost cause. Homes.com spent billions of dollars trying to take down Zillow and didn't do anything, but they want to do that. And private listings are becoming mainstreamed, and private listings, in my opinion, are not about the seller. There's a small, tiny percentage of sellers who actually need to do something like that. They're being steered, I'm going to use that word strongly, into making decisions to take their listings off market. Now I'll give you an example of this so you have some perspective. Where I'm at, I'm looking to buy a house in Northern California here. I haven't bought a house in a while. I'm going through the process and, you know, in this particular market, Compass has huge market share. They're a massive player right here in Northern California. And just a week or two ago, I was on shopping on Zillow, doing what everybody else does, looking at realtor.com. It's basically the same data for the most part. And then I remembered, because I'm in the industry, that I should probably go to Compass and look up and see how much inventory they're hiding. You wanna know what percentage it was?
Mm, I think, no, I guess, yeah.
Uh, 30%.
Oh, I was right.
28% of the inventory was not available to be seen.
Now I have a, it's only available on one website.
Mm-hmm. And I either have to go down to the office in order to look at a book, 'cause apparently the '60s and '70s are coming back and, or I need to know somebody over there who would gimme the list, which I haven't, have lots of friends at Compass. So they, you know, I said, I called somebody, I was like, can you just gimme the damn list for for God's sake, I want to know what houses are for sale, right? Your sellers are not selling their houses. I'm a buyer. Can we stop this nonsense? And most of the agents over there, by the way, I think it's a good portion of them don't like this.
I get it. Yeah.
They're like, yeah, they're like, yeah, totally. So anyways, point I'm making is that game is about sort of this. It's driving up inventory. It's creating inventory that creates more buyer inquiries, which is leads for their people. If you can only get it there and you can only see it through a Compass agent, then it brings leads into the business. And it also drives recruitment, and this is the big part. So if you can't see that inventory, but you've got the rest of the MLS data and you want to see what inventory is available, then it's like, well, come over here and work here, and then you can have our inventory and see the rest of the MLS data. So it's a recruitment strategy and it's working. So what happens is you got to follow game theory. If this becomes an issue, which it's becoming an issue. Then what's stopping the other big companies from playing the same game? And they're going to. They're— you've already had a warning shot from Eric Carlson at RE/MAX and the press release last week saying, we don't want to do this. We don't think it's a smart move. And we have a really big, big network. If we need to, we'll play in the same sandbox. You basically are just dealing with this, this big companies that are moving all this inventory to their own sites or their own paths, and the consumer gets hurt. The MLS no longer exists in any relevancy at that point. Consumers are having to search on all these different websites to find what's for sale. So to answer your question now, yeah, messy middle, not a good place to be. If you don't have big enough market share, your agents, your buyer's agents either leave and go to one of the big companies that has inventory, which strips down your revenue, and then those companies merge or consolidate. So I think it's two paths, very small niche companies that list that, that are heavy on the list side because they're immune to that. And then really big conglomerates, kind of like the airline industry, right? You got 3 major airlines. You may have 3 major companies. My predictions are it's— this is just prediction, by the way. It's not like I know anything. I'm just looking at the tea leaves. It's Compass, obviously. I think it's eXp, and I think it's, it's Keller. I think most of the other companies get picked up or acquired. And those are the 3 big boys. So yeah, in that world, if that's the world we go to, I'm in the middle. I have to figure out a path. What path that could be, that I go down the road of venture capital, could be that we go down private equity road, could be we get picked up by somebody else. Could be that Zillow stops this whole thing because they're like, if you guys want to play around in that sandbox, we're going to just go nuclear. And Zillow going nuclear is a real possibility here. And then everyone's like, whoa, we gotta stop this game. So there's a bunch of chess pieces to be played here. And so time will tell.
Well, I think it was about 24, 23 years ago. I was at RE/MAX, of course, for the first 20 years of my career. And a long time ago when Dave still had all of his really high energy, he had said on our stage at the convention that there were only two paths in the future. One was the very tiny boutique and the other one was the giant company. And of course Dave's been a visionary in the business forever, because RE/MAX changed the game. And I look at it, it's actually kind of parallel to the church. If you look at the mega churches that have come up, they are taking over spaces. They are not denominational, so they can do their own thing, make their own rules, and they are exploding. And we have a couple of them here in the Charlotte area. And then your super tiny congregations, they do fine because they're small enough to only require one staff person. So if you're giant, you have all the money for all the staff and all the programs. And if you're tiny, you don't need a lot, but you have enough to keep going. In the middle, if you have enough people, you have to hire staff, but you don't have enough money to hire the staff because you don't have enough people. So they get crushed in the middle. And it's, I'm always fascinated, James, by the parallels that exist between different industries and professional spaces. And I wish in real estate, we didn't always have tunnel vision about how we are unique and special because we're actually not that special all the time. But I have a question for you.
Yeah.
Okay. So as I think about what you're experiencing looking for a house, my head always goes to forget agent recruiting and retention. The consumer has a stake in this and they're the ones getting harmed and they might not have figured it out yet, but they will. And so realtor world, I mean, let's, I hate to say this because I have given my blood, sweat, and tears to our trade association. I just don't think NAR cares about the consumer. And I know that's a strong statement, but I don't think they do. It's lip service at best. So who actually protects the consumer at the end of the day in the middle of a turf war between Zillow, Homes.com, Anywhere, Compass, RE/MAX, I think RE/MAX and Keller Williams have to merge because the reds match, just for the record, for the colors. And so you have all of these players that are fighting over the dollars. The only organization that's going to focus on the consumer is going to be your real estate commissions, because at the core of our licensure model, or in every state and territory, we're granted the public trust by the license. Is the public trust being violated when those are hidden? And when is it that pathway going to open up to where the inquiries go in that direction?
Unfortunately, God, I don't want to sound like a pessimist here, just for clarity, but I just, I just am so in tune with what's happening that I don't know how to see the past here. Associations and MLSs are paralyzed because of the governance structure. The end. I'm not ragging on our industry, but I've been in it long enough to know that there are too many unqualified people sitting on boards to make decisions, and then it just ends up in being meeting after meeting after meeting after meeting. So just, I, I just, I said this yesterday at a keynote I did in, down in Florida. I was like, I just don't have faith that the board will make the right choices and fast enough. So that to me is just a—
incentivized from that. They have no incentive to make the right choice.
No. And it's also like they're incentivized to make sure the dues keep coming in, not ragging again, but that is understandable that they make their money off that. So they're not going to want to piss, right? They're not going to want to piss off a lot of big companies, so they're not going to ruffle feathers. So that to me is just a dead-end conversation. I think it ends up in one of two spots. I'll add one other comment. I do actually believe— I'm going to piss a bunch of people off. I understand for viewers and listeners what Zillow's business model is. I understand that most of you hate them. I understand that you have to pay referral fee. I get all of that. Two things can be true. I also believe, because I know the executive team over there, that they haven't continued to push a consumer product. Meaning Zillow is the best website because it gives the consumer what it's looking for, whether you like it or not. That's just the truth. And I'm buying a house right now. And I tell agents all the time when I do keynotes, you don't understand what it's like to buy a house. Go try to buy one in a city you don't know and experience this shit show that it still is today. Right? So I do believe that Zillow in this fight, is actually fighting also, also for consumer transparency. And, and so I think that's something to watch. Are they going to— how far will they take this fight with Compass? I mean, they're in litigation with them. To the last two answers is this, and this is unfortunately where I think it will go though. I think class action litigation is coming. I think that consumers are going to be harmed through private listings. It's a very easy case to win. I don't give a shit what disclosure you have, there's a lot of incentivizing these consumers to do this going on right now. A jury ain't going to like it in court. Look how we lost in litigation for Burnett-Sitzer. And it's not hard to show that. I still cannot hear a rational conversation as to why you would ever push a private listing unless a consumer came to you and said, I'm getting divorced, or I'm a public figure, or whatever. I need a solution. There should never be a, you should try this conversation. And so all the studies show that you're going to lose money. And all that's going to do is create a class of sellers that were harmed. The lawyers are going to figure this out. They're going to go, well, here's what you said. Here's what they sold it for, what it could have sold for. There's the damages. It's federal courts, trouble, class action. And we're in a billion-dollar case all over again. That is a reality. But the problem is the class isn't big enough yet. So I think you're going to see that a few years down the line. The third one is what's most interesting is what is, to your point, is the states are starting to step in going, this ain't right. Like there's, this just isn't right. So you've got Wisconsin that has a bill in place that to restrict that. You have state of Washington coming out with a proposed bill to restrict private listings with very clear guidelines that are being worked on. I think that's a path. I think that takes a lot of time. Unfortunately, I think the carnage will occur before there is a solution to this. I think over the next 2 to 3 years, it gets really ugly. And I believe, and I've said this enough, I hope this ages well. I think our industry reputation will get tarnished on a significant scale because agents are not standing up to the leadership in companies who are misguiding them, I think the whole industry will suffer because of it. And consumers will suffer because of it.
I mean, to be fair, because I will always be a champion for the grassroots realtor who has— well, they'll never see this conversation because this is out of their wheelhouse. They're hunting for a listing or a buyer. They don't know any of this is happening. So for them to push back would require them to get up to speed quickly and and we can debate all day long whether or not people should be educated about what's happening in and around their professional space. I think they should, but they're not because I get it. We're in a 1099 commission-based business. It makes sense. They can invest time in this or invest time in finding somebody. So they're not going to push back because they don't have the time or the energy or the bandwidth for it. And so it does run rampant. And I have, I mean, I'm kind of agnostic to Zillow at this point in my life. I, irritated with them at first, but mainly because agents were paying for leads they didn't have to pay for. And Zillow took advantage of that. And I guess I can't blame them from a capitalist standpoint, but if I'm agnostic towards them, I'm agnostic towards their business model, but they are actually trying to remove barriers to the consumer to see what's out there and they make money on it. Okay, whatever. But their model supports transparency.
So does everybody else on their website. The whole point of IDX is to make money and inquiries off of listings. I don't ever understood the argument, to be honest with you.
So it depends on which side of it you're on as to how you're going to spin your version of it, which is of course the opposite of the public.
Can I push back on one thing? Just one comment, not on Zillow.
Yes.
I don't, even if an agent isn't following along with all the industry drama like you and I do, I said this, I do this and I do this intentionally because, you know, you've, you've seen me speak. I'm not shy. I go, I ask people in the room, how many of you in the room here as agents would actually list your own home and keep it in a private status where you're not showing it on the MLS to consumers? And don't lie to me. Raise your hands if you would do that. And nobody ever raises their hand, by the way, because they all know that, that they want to sell their house for the highest price possible in the cheapest amount of time or the slowest or the fastest amount of time. And so I go, then if you wouldn't do it to yourself, then stop pushing this shit. To other sellers. Like, it's called your fiduciary duty. Like, it, it, if you don't believe in the own messaging that your company is telling you to do and you wouldn't do it yourself, then why would you do that for somebody else? You don't need to be educated on all the drama in the industry to know what's right and wrong. I believe that.
Well, and also, I, I got to add on to that. When they talk about that vanishingly small number at the top who desperately needs the privacy of their listing. Well, I get my emails from the Charlotte Business Journal and every week when I get my business journal articles, this and such famous person listed their house for this as many dollars and they won't, they got 14 paragraphs about it. And I'm like, that public figure absolutely wants you to know their house is on the market. They crave the attention.
I think the only people who don't are probably dealing with restraining orders, but The MLS provides a mechanism and has for as long as I've known for keeping things private inside the MLS or not posting to Zillow and on the internet. These, it's just, I, people don't know the rules. Unless Zillow wants it. Right.
But they, the average agent agrees with us, but they're not gonna push back on leadership because they've got fear of change.
Well, they're gonna wake up one day and the industry is gonna look nothing like what it does today. And they're gonna go to the MLS and 40% of the inventory isn't there anymore. More and they won't know how to do their comps and their buyers going, I don't, I didn't know this home was for sale over at this company. Why didn't you tell me that? And you're like, well, I didn't know it was for sale at this company because there'll be 7 companies or 3 companies controlling 60% of the inventory of which they won't share unless they work with one of those agents. Like everybody better wake up because this is history repeating itself. This isn't new and you know this. This is how it was in the '60s, '70s, and '80s. This is literally the world we went from to what we are today. And now we're headed right back to, which by the way, how the rest of the world currently operates because there is no MLS in Europe. There is no way to know what's for sale. And, and agents are just kind of like la di da di da. And I'm like, you better all wake up and see what's coming because it ain't gonna be fun at all for anyone.
So, well, I mean, every time I'm out of the country speaking, the thing that agents will tell me is you guys are so lucky to have an MLS. We would give anything to have one. And for those of y'all that really don't understand it, all right, look at Buenos Aires, which is my favorite foreign city. I love Argentina. I love Buenos Aires. I went into a real estate office. I was there to speak for a brand. And so I was touring a brokerage and they had a cash machine on the desk. And it looks like one of those card shufflers in Vegas where you can load in a few decks of cards. On the, where they're proving to you that they're not stacking the deck. Haha. So it's this huge version of that. I said, what is that for? And so he pulls out a stack of bills this thick and he puts it in the machine. It's a cash counter. And I was like, shut the front door. I've never seen anything like that. And I said, tell me why that's in a brokerage. And this was in 2016. So this is a decade ago and they're still in the middle of drama because even with Javier Millet, it's a long process to come back out of a socialist system.
Sure.
But the money in the machine was to count for purchases because all purchases were cash. I said, why are all purchases cash? Nobody will do a mortgage here. Why won't somebody do a mortgage here? My mind's of course blown because there's no mechanism for foreclosure. And so it's too risky to a bank to lend money there. So it's all cash purchases. I said, okay, so it's all cash purchases. How does this even work? And they said, there's a white market and a blue market. And the white market is the above-board market. And the blue market is the under-the-table market because the government tax what it sells for. And so you only disclose a certain portion of the sale for the government to see it. And the rest of it's under the table. And I'm sitting here thinking, okay. I said, I'm a practitioner. I've been a practitioner a long time. How do you price anything? And they're like, oh, you just have to ask people. I'm like, okay. So. If I'm going to list a property over here, I have to go tap on the doors of neighbors and find out what they sold it for. And they have to trust me enough to give me the white and the blue market. Or is it just the white market? Because they don't want the government to know. Am I a spy for the government? Holy crap. How do you do any of this? And they said, well, you know, we don't have a data source like the MLS. And even if you did, it would be very bad data because nobody's telling the truth because they have bad regulators in the government and in looking at the layer upon layer of trouble they have, I still see in the middle of it, agents that are like, it's fine. We figure it out. We go find the information. We tap on the doors. We get it. You have brokers that are hiring people, people that are buying and selling real estate in what can only be described as onerous conditions. And so people are still able to operate, but it's unnecessarily hard. And I'm watching what's happening here. And I've told this story as many times as I can. And I'm like, y'all are trying to go into the worst possible scenario where you don't just lose your access for your buyers, you lose the ability to run comps, which means your appraisers can't run comps, which puts all of your lending at risk. Because what financial institution is going to lend when they can't trust the appraisal because there was no data? So we're actually not just going to lose the ability to see houses. We're gonna watch our lending market shrink. Tell me I'm wrong.
No, I have nothing to add. I literally have nothing to add to it. It's, it is so easy to watch this domino effect occur. You've seen me, I, I was on 105 flights last year. I was running around the country trying to like raise a red flag going, y'all better be paying attention. And it just, everyone's like, well, you know, okay, well, you know, James is just being a conspiracy theorist, whatever. I'm like, no, literally the things I've been saying are all happening right now. And yeah, I don't know what to tell you.
We're not conspiracy theorists, we're coincidence spotters. That's the current phrase because none of it's conspiracy and it's not theory. So the question is this, if you are in a, an MLS leadership position, so you are a broker who said, you know what, I'm going to be a part of the solution. He signed up for the board and now he's in the room. What is the first thing you would tell somebody to do if they're in a position of leadership in the grassroots level of the business, working on the Multiple Listing Service, assuming, assuming that they have a heart for the betterment of the real estate profession and assuming that the betterment of the real estate profession in their mind is not their own dollars, but is the needs of buyers and sellers. It's a giant pile of assumptions.
It's a lot of assumptions. I think most people, by the way, fall into that. For what it's worth, I do. I think there are people that put their own interests first, but there's, I think, a large portion of our industry give, care massively about the consumer, to be clear. You know, it's a tough question to answer because I've, I did one year of leadership at an association and I gave up. Then I say I gave up because I found it was going to be such a struggle to try and maneuver the history and structure of an organization. That I was better suited to go down a different path to influence the industry. And that, you know, and I, I have my own way of influencing the industry obviously, but I think if you're on an MLS, MLS has some very, some very small moves left that they can make at this point. If there is a consolidation of big companies, let's play out that scenario. You said, you know, RE/MAX and KW merge. Let's, that's what I've been predicting, by the way. That's totally just speculation again, but just let's pretend those go.
The combo is good, man. It's always good. Sure.
Makes sense. They're also two franchises, whatever. So, Berkshire Hathaway gets picked up, they're for sale, they have been for a while. You know, you've got RE/MAX being picked up and let's just go with KW, eXp, and Compass just for conversation's sake. When the war is over, the three of them are going to get together at some point and be like, hey, this whole discombobulated mess that we've created, let's just build a new MLS. And then all whoever's left can join it to avoid the antitrust issues. And it'll be a new set of rules and there's no longer 500 MLSs. It's just one conglomerate. And here's the thing, if they've got 60% of the inventory between the three companies, All the independents will join that MLS because they have no choice. By the way, does that sound familiar? Like the airline industry, United, Delta, American, there's still one reservation system. They're all the same. History repeats itself. And so the war occurs and it's like, hey, this is a real problem. We gotta like, I gotta get my passengers on your planes when we cancel a flight. Notice how magically they can get everybody booked on different airlines really easily. It's because there's one system. So like, the point is, I think there's a very clear path. If MLSs don't move quickly to thinking about 6 moves ahead of where they need to be, which is consolidation at a quicker pace, real quick pace. And I think getting very deeply embedded into the AI world and then not this whole, we gotta protect our data thing. We gotta just stop that shit. Like we need to be thinking much more like How do we make it so that OpenAI and Google and Grok rely on the Multiple Listing Service for their data? Then you're circumventing what the brokers will eventually do on their own in a few years, and you become essential not only with the, the largest technology platforms, but to the entire real estate industry. Unfortunately, I'm not convinced that can happen. It's not that there aren't people that want to do it, it's the nerve and the ability to push through hard decisions of saying, we're gonna consolidate for the betterment of the industry, for the betterment of our members. And unfortunately, a lot of people are gonna lose their jobs. And no one wants to have that tough conversation.
Not a bunch of passive-aggressive people-pleasers, which is unfortunately how most realtors are wired, cuz they are very loving, caring people who can't stand to see anybody hurt.
And there are, there are a lot of very good MLS executives. I know a lot of them. Oh yeah. And then there are a lot of people that should not be running MLSs. But if you look at the top MLSs in the country, like I could name a bunch of them, there's really smart people there. It's a matter of how we get the boards to agree to merge. And unfortunately, I just don't have faith that that will happen.
So I don't think it will happen until it's too late. Somebody else creates a national MLS and the existing MLSs will try to play catch up, but It'll be too late. So I gotta ask you a question. There was a big news article a couple of days ago. We're recording this, by the way, on Friday, February 27th. So whenever you find this video, this is recorded on February 27th, about eXp moving their headquarters from Delaware to Texas. And the headlines are, of course, because of the sexual harassment stuff that they've gone through. And well, they haven't. Faced up to, let's be honest. But they're moving their headquarters. Is it a red herring to call it about sexual harassment? Are they moving down there so they're closer to Gary Keller's operation in Texas?
I have, I have no idea. All I can tell you is from a corporate perspective, maybe. You never know. I mean, I, like I said, I think there's going to be a lot of acquisitions and mergers.
But the easiest way to shed employees is to move, and they don't want to move with you, so you say, golly gee willikers, your position's gone.
The only thing I would add is, and just because I run a, you know, fairly large company, there's a lot of issues with how the courts are dealing with corporate structure and corporate litigation in Delaware. I'm a Delaware corp, so I can speak to this, that are not as favorable as what it used to be. And so companies, it, again, it could be tied together. I don't know. What I do know is there is a lot of discussion about moving to states that are more favorable for, from a litigation perspective, that move. I happen to know more about it because there's a lot of Silicon Valley companies that are doing that here in California that are going to Texas as well. And the states are all doing whatever they can to get more businesses in their states. So Texas being Texas is being much more favorable for corporate, you know, business and litigation. That is something I am aware of because I am a Delaware corp. It's something we have looked at too. I can't speak to what the reasons are. I obviously don't work there.
So, well, obviously I have no idea, but that just occurred to me while we're sitting here talking that I do know there's a lot of red herrings that get thrown out there.
Sure.
And also the journalists that do business journal articles aren't necessarily embedded in our profession to consider all the possible outcomes and why the outcomes might happen. Okay, you talked about the history of leadership, and for that imaginary new person who's coming into the board with their best and brightest energy and ideas, because they love the profession, they love the agents, love the consumer. The history of leadership right now doesn't go back far enough to remember a day without the MLS.
So true.
Yeah. And so the only history they have is the good old days that were created after the bad old days when we had to let All brokers have access to the MLS because I love getting to remind agents that the MLS, the way that the commission piece that we've been told to get rid of, the reason it came into being where it was universal cooperation and compensation was to keep companies from boycotting. And it was to keep them from saying women couldn't get compensated and brokers that were a different skin color couldn't be compensated. So it was created.
Yeah.
To be the freest and most fair marketplace. And all of that stuff goes down in the '80s. So it's not that long ago. Or as my kids like to remind me, mom, you're from the last century. Like, thanks guys. But even our leadership, these young professionals, the, the YPNs, they've not been in— a third of our members have been in the business less than 5 years. And so they're COVID realtors with no concept of any of this. Their only conceptual awareness has to do with the dismantling that's gone on. And even your old guard who are Realtor Emeritus now, they don't remember the concept of compensation being related to fairness and removal of boycotts in the business. So the history of leadership doesn't include any of the most important history. So where are we going to get the education for this? Are we just gonna have, we're gonna have to learn it again 'cause history doesn't repeat, it rhymes.
Well, it's actually interesting you bring this up. So in the keynote I did yesterday in Florida, I said to the audience, one of the most important things, this is an audience of association leaders and MLS directors, to be clear. I said one of the most important things that you could do is go document the history of this industry and every new board member is required to read and have an understanding of the history of our industry. Because, you know, I, I asked people to raise their hands, like how many have been in the business, you know, X number of years. And I'm just looking at the audience going, none of these people know what an MLS book is. I do. I grew up in a real estate family. I remember my parents got dressed up to go get the damn thing every month. The other comment is there's leaders, very prominent ones who aren't from this industry, who don't have an understanding of the history either. And so they're making decisions. That are influencing this industry that people think are the right decisions. But for those of us who've been around a while, no, they're driving the industry off the edge of a cliff. It's not me like trying to be older person saying, well, your generation, it's like, no, we've actually made these decisions. We've, we've done these things. This is what it was like before. You don't understand because imagine a world that looks like this and they can't comprehend it. So I think your comments really spot on. There should be a, it should really be something puts together even at NAR. Here's the history of our industry from top to bottom. And every single association member and MLS executive should be really both history of the MLS, history of the industry, where it started, where it goes. It's required reading before you take the position so that you have some historical perspective on the way things were as you're making decisions in the future. Now, to answer your question, as I didn't answer it before, Look, it's political. And so like you have to understand who influences what when you come into an MLS perspective or an association. You can't just come in with like, we're going to do this. It's because you got to, there's people that got to make decisions. So you need to figure out how and who has the ear of decision makers or who's, who's going to help influence things. You got to work through that. You got to get some people to respect you and respect your opinions as well. And then you can start to influence people. And then maybe change occurs. But I think it's two things. It's knowing where things were. I'm still learning stuff. There's things that I'm like, man, I didn't even know that either. There's tons of things that I learned with NER, and you know that I'm not afraid to throw rocks. I'm also a fan when they do things right. But sometimes I'm like, shit, I didn't know that. I didn't even know that was a thing. And I'm going, man, there really needs to be a Bible or the historical perspective of how we started and where we are today that I think would be very, very informational for people. And then maybe, to be honest, maybe people have more confidence to stick up against leadership that's uneducated about these things and educate them or push back. I don't know. But it is too many people that don't know that are just going along with it and they're going to wake up one day and it's, it's going to be like, what happened? Like, we were telling you, here we are. And I think we're almost there.
Which means for any of you who have barely hold, held onto the edge of your seat while you've listened or watched this, because we did not go in a straight line, you're welcome. Just like your real estate business. You're gonna have to share this with your realtor besties on your little text thread. And you're gonna have to say to them, if you don't understand this conversation, we've gotta get you up to speed because we can't leave the practitioner realtor behind or any of our small brokers behind because of a lack of exposure to information. There's a moment we're in right now when we could probably bring some of our elected officials and regulators to an understanding of what we have created and why it's not necessarily bad so that it doesn't get dismantled completely. Because there are people around real estate who live only for the dollar and they will tear it apart for their own benefit and forget everybody else, but we'll never stop having hope as long as we hold the public trust. As long as you remember what the pocket card means, even if it's digital now, keep the real one in your head. You were granted the public trust by the powers that be as an individual person who is charged with helping somebody make a giant decision.
Yep.
And so we have to make sure that we're keeping all available tools in front of us so that we can protect the public trust. James, I hate to end our show because I should have had you on before, but my bad. So we'll, we'll come back for part 2. If you've got something you need to James, put it in the comments. I'll have his contact information for NextHome in the show notes for this episode. So you can go to his— and post and comment too.
And you're going to be on our podcast so they can go there and listen to a conversation we're going to be recording today as well. So that'll be fun as well.
Absolutely. So you can cross-reference and then you can read Keith Robinson's Substack too, which is wildly interesting too. Lots of places to interact. No excuses, because if you want to be in business 5 and 10 years from now, no more moss grows on you. Get involved. And James, I got to say thank you because you've been a very consistent voice of reason, especially over the last 2 and a half years of change. And you've spoken for many of us who don't have the same voice that you do. So thank you for putting yourself out there on behalf of the people who don't work for your firm, may never work for your firm, but you care intently about them. And that's a huge difference maker.
Thank you. I mean, that means a lot coming from you, genuinely.
So, well, I don't say things I don't mean, as you're probably aware.
I am well aware. Well aware.
All right, guys, say something nice in the comments. Make sure you hit the bell and we'll see you next time. And hey, if you've got a story too wild to keep to yourself, send me a message because you just might be the perfect next guest. Thanks for hanging out with me. I'll see you next time, right here where real estate gets real.
