What is the MLS When Selling or Buying a House?
The MLS is a crucial tool for anyone who wants to buy or sell a home. Learn what a real estate Multiple Listing Service is and how to use it effectively.
Chances are, if you’re buying or selling a house, you’ve heard of the MLS or multiple listing service. You may already know listing on the MLS gives you an advantage when it comes time to broadcast your home sale to the world. But you’re probably still left wondering, “What is the MLS, and how does it work?”
We connected with top-selling real estate agents and MLS experts to track down the answers. Here’s what you need to know about the MLS before you buy or sell a house.
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What is a multiple listing service (MLS)?
The multiple listing service (MLS) is a marketplace of home listings that a group of real estate agents or brokers compile. As Andrea Swetland, a top-selling San Francisco real estate agent with 32 years of home-selling experience, explains, the MLS lays out available listings for both buyer’s agents and seller’s agents — making it easier to pick out the right property for their clients.
“The MLS is a marketplace that enables buyers to look for the listings available on the market, and it allows for sellers, through their agents, to announce listings to the market and to other agents,” she says. “It’s a platform that allows agents to do deals together with separate representation for buyers and sellers.”
Although most agents will refer to “the MLS” as if it’s a single system, there are actually many MLS databases scattered across different regions. Even though a city or region may run its own MLS, real estate agents can often access multiple MLS systems at a time.
“I think every city area has their own way of doing things, but, for example, I belong to the San Francisco Association of Realtors’ MLS. Through them, because of the partnerships that they have with the other MLS systems, I can basically look up properties all the way from Sacramento to, let’s just say, the Monterey area. Even though I don’t belong to all of the other MLSs, we provide an informational portal search together.”
How does the MLS work for home sellers?
For home sellers, listing your property on the MLS will let you send the details of your home sale to as many potential buyers as possible. But if you think you can just pop onto the MLS on your own and post your listing, you may be disappointed. In order to post on an MLS, you need to be a member of that MLS’s organization.
“You have to be a member of the MLS,” explains Swetland. “You have to be an agent because you’re going to be posting the listing that you’re bringing onto the market.”
Unless you’re a real estate agent yourself, you have a few options if you want to list your home on the MLS:
1. Work with a real estate agent: The easiest way to access the MLS is to hire a real estate agent. Real estate agents generally have access to the MLS. That means they can easily add your property listing to the MLS.
2. Pay for a flat-fee MLS service: For “for sale by owner” (FSBO) sales, home sellers can also pay a fee to have a third-party company list their home on the MLS. These flat-fee MLS listings cost anywhere from around $100 to $1,300. Just keep in mind that these services often don’t include the extra perks of a full-service agent.