According to their press release, they are now commingling MLS, FSBO and Foreclosure listings on one map... and this has me scratching my head!

Are they allowed to do this?   Isn't this type of commingling of listings against MLS rules?

redfin search in woodland hills

Notice the purple and pink icons... Those are REO (foreclosures) and FSBOs, respectively (green icons are MLS listings).

I have four ideas about how they are able to get away with this:

  1. They found a loophole in MLS agreements that let's them commingle listings (but I would find this hard to believe).
  2. They got buy-off from all their local MLS organizations (but I would find this hard to believe)
  3. They have reason to believe they can win this battle in the courts...  (maybe a DOJ brief in support of this or something similar?)
  4. They just don't care about the rules and believe that consumer support for this feature will be so great that they'll risk MLS fines.

None of these scenarios seem likely to me.  What am I missing?

With that said, I REALLY like how they are approaching the foreclosure data.   I've received a few press releases recently from real estate search sites that "announce" they are now publishing foreclosures on their site.   However, inevitably, when I tested out the feature,  the sites were just regurgitating RealtyTrac data that required consumers to pay a fee to get the actual address of the property.   Redfin is providing the address.

Also interesting, someone from Redfin let me know that they are going to phase in a flat-fee buying option in order to accommodate these new listings types.

I want to send my congrats out to the Redfin team for pushing the boundaries yet again.  Love 'em or hate 'em, they're working pretty darn hard to deliver features and tools that they think will do a better job serving their customers.