A fight between two providers of Colorado real estate data services is catching the Boulder Valley market in the middle, angering agents and reducing the ability of buyers and sellers to get the best deal in an already ultra-competitive market.
The kerfuffle came to a head last week when Greenwood Village-based REColorado, which covers metro Denver and Broomfield, announced that, beginning March 2, it would no longer share data with Loveland’s IRES, which serves Broomfield and Boulder counties and areas to the north as well.
IRES characterized the move as retaliatory after it declined an unsolicited buyout offer from REColorado, but REColorado said the end of the data share was already in the works and the failed acquisition was a last attempt at collaboration.
“It has become incredibly political,” said Carole Lees, a longtime Boulder County real estate agent. “Most realtors are pretty mad about it.”
IRES and REColorado are both multiple listing services, or MLSs. An MLS is a database of real estate listings and other data. Realtors and appraisers pay a monthly subscription fee to access the database.
There are 700 regional MLS in the U.S., according to the National Association of Realtors. Each one serves a specific geographic region.
IRES and REColorado together carve up the Front Range: the former’s 5,500 member agents work in northern Colorado, from Broomfield to Fort Collins, while the focus of the latter’s 20,000 subscribers lies south, mostly around the Denver metro.
But as tight inventory forces real estate professionals to expand their territory, the two firms have begun to overlap substantially in Broomfield, Boulder and Weld Counties.
“This is a huge area of crossover,” said Kelly Moye, a Westminster-based agent with Re/Max Alliance and president of the Boulder Area Realtors Association.
“Agents don’t stay in one particular area anymore.”
IRES agents have more market share in Boulder and Weld counties, while REColorado subscribers do the majority of the business in Broomfield.
For those agents, not being able to see the listings from the competing MLS reduces the service they can deliver to their clients.
Buyers’ agents will have fewer listings to show prospective shoppers. And sellers agents will get their clients’ listings in front of fewer eyes.
That might sound insignificant, said Greg Smith, broker owner of Re/Max Alliance, but it could be the difference between making a sale and not.
“In today’s market, a house that was listed at 1 p.m. the day before can already be gone,” he said. “If you have separate entities, consumers may not have a full picture of what’s happening in the market.”
Around 2003, IRES and REColorado worked out an arrangement in which agents subscribed to only one MLS but could see data from both, broadening their view of the increasingly fluid real estate market.
Now, the only option will be to pay to belong to both. It’s not the cost so much that’s the hassle, Smith said, but the time spent navigating both systems and the inefficiencies created by doing so.
“With the data sharing currently in place, you can gather all necessary information in one system. Now you’ll need to pull properties on one system, then another.”
That will lead to less accurate data, argues Lauren Hansen, CEO of IRES, in part because there will be no way to eliminate duplicate listings.
“By virtue of taking data sharing away, you have missed information, duplicated information or are forcing brokers or appraisers to join both systems,” Hansen said.
Kirby Slunaker, CEO REColorado, said the number of agents who already belong to both — about 1,000 — prove that data sharing is a failed experiment.
“We view that as pretty strong testimony that data share doesn’t work, and in fact impedes progress that we need to make,” he said.
Hansen said IRES would prefer a collaborative approach, such as a statewide MLS. But Slunaker said such a solution has been talked about for 15 years, with very little progress.
“What IRES wants to do now is talk more, and meanwhile the metro market continues to coalesce,” Slunaker said. “What works best for Denver and northern Colorado is consolidation.”
In the meantime, agents are stuck in the middle. But agents predict it won’t be for long.
Smith believes a merger is inevitable, the invisible hand of the free market forcing the feuding MLS companies together. Moye thinks a third party coup is more likely.
“There are all these solutions to this problem,” she said. “Someone’s going to figure it out; it’s just a matter of how quickly.”
Shay Castle: 303-473-1626, castles@dailycamera.com or twitter.com/shayshinecastle
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