4 ms·
Having just left a job in this exact field, maybe I can give you an insight I haven't seen on here yet: There's a huge monopoly present in real estate data rig
by meesles 9y ago
Having just left a job in this exact field, maybe I can give you an insight I haven't seen on here yet:
There's a huge monopoly present in real estate data right now. At a very high level: The NAR (National Association of Realtors) licenses real estate agents, they pretty much allow you to do business and you cannot sell houses in the US without their approval. MLSes (Multiple Listing Service) are organizations created for a region/state/city, depending on the size/market. These are exclusively permitted by the NAR. All realtors MUST put their house data on an MLS. These realtors are also forced to pay large amounts to access these feeds. All traditional real estate data only lives in these organizations, with high barriers to extracting and manipulating the data since they want to keep their monopoly.
Basically, the real estate world is very entrenched in these monopolistic practices, and we're only now seeing significant efforts to accumulate and dissipate the data in a way that makes it more accessible. Personally, I wouldn't expect any major overhaul as the NAR is a HUGE lobbying group and have gotten a good amount of legislation around real estate on their side.
Hope that helps!