MLSs race to set AI guardrails before data slips beyond their control

Real estate brokerage leaders currently share opposing views on a variety of issues in the real estate industry. One of the latest sources of dispute comes from how or if agents and other brokerages can use MLS listing data supplied by other brokers and agents in large language models (LLMs) and other AI tools. On the one side of the debate you have leaders like Holly Mabery, eXp’s Realty’s chief brokerage officer. “When we look long-term, MLSs need to provide us with Model Context Protocols (MCPs),” Mabery told HousingWire. “At this point, this is the minimum viable product. You need to move with the technology and package the data in such a way that people can consume it. We are not asking for another IDX feed. We’re asking for something that our agents can actually use in real time.” This is part of the reason why eXp Realty launched its MCP First, AI of Choice initiative, enabling agents to link a variety of tools provided by eXp and other vendors, as well as an agent’s or team’s listing data, to the LLM of their choosing. And while this is certainly helpful, economists note that in order to accurately predict trends or price homes, access to as complete of a data set as possib...