Control through cooperation: Data standards, marketization, and the multiple listing service

Keywords: multiple listing service, housing, data, realtors, cooperation, digital geographies
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract

Abstract

This paper examines the U.S. multiple listing service (MLS) to analyze the relationship between market-making and data standardization. Devised in the late nineteenth century, the MLS allows Realtors from the same local board to sell property listed by another agent. In order to effectively facilitate this arrangement, local boards needed to gather and disseminate real estate data, which also meant Realtors had to be disciplined as data collectors. In part due to its opacity—access to MLS data has always been delimited by professional membership and geographic location—the MLS remains largely unexamined in geographic literature compared to other engagements with historical forms of geospatial data management (e.g., HOLC maps, Sanborn atlases). Drawing on a combination of (1) archival materials from the National Association of Realtors’ library and (2) interviews with modern users and designers of the MLS, I argue that the cooperative nature of the MLS has driven adoption of data standards, significantly shaping the geography of housing markets and the real estate industry over the last century. I conceptualize the MLS as a market-making device and evaluate its durable impacts on the characteristics and form of real estate data standards in subsequent years, particularly with regards to computerization and modern API design. As property brokerage becomes increasingly contiguous with data brokerage, historical transformations in the MLS—and the numerous attempts at computerizing it over the years—provide invaluable context for how data (standards) come to shape power over space in modern housing markets.