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MLS Leaders Build the Alliance Now Before Compass Takes Over | Darryl Davis
June 4, 2026

An Open Letter to CMLS Leadership: Build the Alliance Now, Before Compass Builds Yours 

MLS leaders must unite under a CMLS-led national alliance before Compass’s rapidly expanding private listing network renders local MLSs obsolete.

By Darryl Davis, CSP 

I am writing this one directly to the executives, the boards, and the association leaders who run the Multiple Listing Services in this country. If you are an MLS CEO, a CMLS board member, or anyone with a vote on what your MLS does next, this is for you. Agents, you are welcome to read along. But the action that I’m calling for in this article is not yours. It’s theirs. 

Before I go any further, let me say something. Many of you in MLS leadership, I know personally. I have spoken at your conferences. I have worked with your members. I respect what you have built. I genuinely believe the people running the MLS industry today are some of the most thoughtful, principled leaders in real estate. I am not here to throw stones; I’m here to tell you what I am seeing and to ask you to act before the window of opportunity closes. 

Because the window is closing. Faster than most people realize. 

Compass Built a National MLS in Six Weeks 

I do not mean Compass merely announced a plan to build it. I mean Compass signed the contracts and that ball? It’s rolling fast. Let me walk you through the receipts, because if you have not stitched these together in one timeline, the picture is sharper than you think. 

That is four major MLSs in six weeks, plus one demand letter pending, plus a federal antitrust suit, plus a CEO publicly stating the strategy in his own words on an earnings call. This is not a debate about whether a national MLS is forming. The national MLS is being formed as you’re reading this. The only open question now is who owns it. 

Let Me Say What I Mean by “Compete” 

Reffkin used the word compete, not replace. I take him at his word on that framing. But understand what compete means when one brokerage brings 340,000 affiliated agents and four major MLS partnerships into the fight in six weeks, with a sitting demand letter against a fifth. On a five-year timeline, compete and replace start to look like the same thing. 

If the path continues unchanged, the practical reality by 2030 is that the MLS still exists technically, but it functions as a secondary clearinghouse to a privately operated national platform. The local MLSs handle the leftover inventory. The national listing system, where the action is, is operated by one publicly traded brokerage with its own designated portal partner and its own pre-MLS marketing rules. 

That is the situation CMLS leadership is being asked to respond to. So let me lay out what I think the response should be. 

The Math Is Already on Your Side 

Here is what most people do not realize when they hear about Compass’s MLS partnerships. The math, before anybody has called a single meeting, is overwhelmingly in CMLS’s favor. 

Compass and its affiliates have about 340,000 real estate professionals worldwide, including franchise brands like Coldwell Banker, Century 21, Sotheby’s International Realty, and Better Homes and Gardens. 

CMLS represents 231 member MLSs with over 1.8 million combined subscribers. 

That is roughly five times more agents inside the CMLS member network than Compass has anywhere on the planet. Five times. Read that twice. The MLSs in this country, working together through CMLS, already have the membership advantage. By a lot. The reason it does not feel that way right now is that CMLS members are not yet organized as a single front. They are operating as 231 independent organizations facing a single coordinated competitor. 

But organize the 231, and the math changes overnight. 

The Alliance, Specifically 

What I am proposing is an MLS-controlled national alliance. CMLS itself, or a CMLS subsidiary purpose-built for the task, organizes a coalition that participating member MLSs sign onto under a clear founding agreement. The alliance handles only what no individual MLS can solve on its own. In creating this alliance, five rules are non-negotiable. 

  • Rule One: Every member MLS gets one vote on alliance rules, regardless of subscriber count. The 5,000-member MLS in Boise and the 80,000-member MLS in California vote with equal weight. This is the principle that protects the alliance from being captured by its largest members the way Compass is now functionally capturing the MRED board. 
  • RuleTwo: No brokerage holds a controlling stake in the alliance or any of its member MLSs. This is the same idea bank holding company rules use. If you operate a brokerage, you cannot also own the marketplace your competitors are required to use. 
  • Rule Three: A hard rule against selling member data outside the alliance. Not to Wall Street. Not to hedge funds. Not to AVM trainers. Not to AI model developers. The data members create stays inside the system members built. 
  • Rule Four: Same IDX feed and same IDX rules for every member broker, regardless of size. No premium tiers. No preferred portal partnerships that hand one company a competitive edge. 
  • Rule Five: Local control of business rules. The alliance sets shared data standards, single sign-on for agents across member MLSs, and search across member markets. Each member MLS continues to set its own rules on showings, disclosures, and commission practices. The alliance is a coordination layer, not a takeover. 

What the Alliance Has to Deliver in Year One 

If this is going to work, the alliance has to deliver. Real things. Not a working group. Not a study. Not a position paper. Year one deliverables, the minimum. 

RESO data standards should be required across every member MLS, with a published timeline. Have one sign-on for any agent licensed in multiple member-MLS markets, funded by alliance dues. Create a unified consumer-facing search experience that pulls inventory from every member MLS, owned by the alliance, with no data resale to outside parties. Insist on a signed public agreement that bans selling member data to anyone outside the alliance. 

This is not technically hard. RESO already has the data standards. Single sign-on is solved with already-existing technology. The consumer search across member MLSs is exactly what Compass is paying to build inside its own system right now. The alliance can build the same thing, faster, with the inventory of every member MLS, and without handing one publicly traded brokerage the keys to the whole industry.  

Some MLSs Are Already Ready 

If anyone is wondering whether the membership is willing, look at what some MLSs are already doing on their own. 

CRMLS, the largest MLS in the country by subscriber count, terminated its HouseCanary data license earlier this year after alleged license agreement violations, sending a clear message that member-MLS data does not get used for unauthorized consumer-facing distribution. CRMLS also returned listing data revenue to its brokerage community in April. CRMLS expanded Coming Soon syndication through IDX in March, choosing transparency over data hoarding. And CRMLS CEO Art Carter sits on the CMLS board. 

Northwest MLS has long held strict rules against pre-market private listings. Northwest is now in active litigation with Compass over the same issues at the heart of the broader fight. Justin Haag, the Northwest CEO, is the CMLS 2026 Vice Chair. 

Stellar MLS in Florida has championed cooperative data standards and broker-first practices for years. Their global advisory arm has been exporting MLS best practices to dozens of countries. Stellar has the operational reach to be a founding member. 

There are dozens more like them. These MLSs are not waiting to be asked. They are waiting to be organized. CMLS is the body that can do that. 

The Forum Already Exists. The Date Is Already on the Calendar. 

CMLS Open House 2026 runs from September 29 through October 1 at the Omni Fort Lauderdale. Every MLS executive in the country who matters will be in the same room. If the alliance is going to launch with credibility, it needs to launch there, with public commitments from founding member MLSs and a signed founding agreement when the gavel comes down on October 1. 

That gives CMLS leadership roughly four months to get the founding documents drafted, the technical roadmap agreed, and the founding members aligned. It is doable. It is also the last clean window before the next round of Compass partnership announcements lands. If Hive MLS signs, you have five down. If two more sign after that, the alliance starts at a permanent numerical disadvantage. 

If CMLS Open House 2026 happens without a launched alliance, the next twelve months will be a story about which CMLS members joined Compass instead. The conversation we should be having at Open House is about which CMLS members signed the founding agreement, and what the alliance is shipping in the first six months. 

The Legacy Part 

I want to share something I have been thinking about a lot lately. 

I have been in this industry for more than 35 years. I have watched it change in ways that helped consumers and in ways that hurt them. I have watched leaders make decisions that paid dividends for decades, and others they would undo if they could. I have also watched leaders fail to act when the moment called for action, and live with the consequences for the rest of their careers. 

The MLS system in this country is one of the great cooperative achievements in American business. It is what makes the United States residential real estate market the most transparent, competitive market in the world. It is not perfect, but it works. And it works because brokers and associations, working together through their MLSs, agreed long ago to share information for the collective benefit of consumers and the industry. After all, consumers are the beating heart of this entire industry, and their best interests must be protected. 

That achievement is at risk right now. Not because the model is broken. Because no one is organizing the defense of it at the level the moment requires. 

Speaking honestly here. I would not want my legacy to be a footnote in a story about how the MLS industry watched a single publicly traded brokerage build a national MLS while the trade body held panel discussions about what to do. And I do not believe most of you in MLS leadership want that legacy either. The people I know in this industry are builders. They got into the MLS work because they care about the cooperative model. They are exactly the people who should be leading the defense of it. 

This is the moment that decides whether the cooperative model continues into the next generation, or whether it gets replaced by a corporate model run by one publicly traded brokerage. The decision is in front of you right now. The longer it is deferred, the fewer real options remain. 

To CMLS Leadership, Directly 

To Nicole Jensen at realMLS. To Justin Haag at Northwest MLS. To Art Carter at CRMLS. To every CMLS board member reading this. The MLS system in this country was built by brokers and the associations they belong to, for the agents and clients they serve. Your members built it. Your boards governed it. Your staffs ran it. You are the trade body for the people who own it. 

You have the structure. You have the membership. You have the forum. You have the math. You have the moment. What you need now is the decision to act. 

Build the alliance. Build it now. Build it before September. Build it before the next Compass partnership announcement. Use the Open House conference for the launch. Get the founding agreement signed by the time the gavel comes down on October 1, 2026. 

The CMLS member MLSs who sign in 2026 will be the ones who shaped the rules of the next era of American real estate. The ones who waited will be living under whatever the leaders decided. The history of the MLS industry will be written by either the people who built the alliance or the people who let Compass build the alternative. There is no third version. 

Brokers are better together. So are MLSs. That is what CMLS exists to make true. 

Now is your moment. Take it. 

For Agents and Brokers Reading This 

If you are an agent or a broker, your job in this moment is not to wait for the MLS leadership to figure it out alone. Your job is to make sure they hear from you that you expect them to lead. Call your local MLS. Email the CEO. Show up at the board meetings. Ask one question. “Is our MLS pushing CMLS to launch the MLS-controlled alliance at Open House 2026?” 

Then call your state association. Same question. Same pressure. One letter from one agent moves little. Ten thousand letters from ten thousand agents move the room. 

If you want the full research file behind this article, including the source documents on every Compass partnership, the Reffkin earnings call transcript, the Zillow antitrust complaint, and the broader analysis of where this is heading, head over to www.privatelistingsdebate.darrylspeaks.com. I have been building this resource hub for months specifically to help agents and brokers stay ahead of this fight. 

And if you want help building a business that thrives no matter which way this resolves, that is exactly what the POWER AGENT® Coaching Program is built for. We are training agents right now on how to win listings, serve buyers, and grow market share through whatever comes next. 

This is not the end of the conversation. It is the beginning. And whether your name shows up in the room when these decisions get made depends on whether you speak up. 

A national MLS is coming. The only question is whose. Make sure the people who represent you are answering that out loud. 

Learn more about the POWER AGENT® PROGRAM 

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