Remembering the first Multiple Listing Services
SEPTEMBER 2007 - The MLS, so important to many in real estate, is a concept that predates the National Association of REALTORS®. In 1887 brokers in San Diego incorporated the San Diego Real Estate Exchange, the earliest known form of a multiple listing system. Members were required to take listings only as exclusive agent on a standard form. The entire commission was collected by the first member to make the sale.
Twenty years later the "Interchange Bureau" was set up by the Cincinnati Real Estate Exchange. Each week a broker would send the Interchange commissioner "all properties placed with him under contract since his last report." Each broker knew about properties under contract with others in the bureau. Unlike the San Diego model, sales or rental commissions were divided equally between two brokers, with the bureau collecting a percentage "for its maintenance."
In 1926 New York REALTOR® William A. Keadin recalled, "I had the honor of originating that (multiple listing) system in Cincinnati, Ohio, in October 1907, and...the system proved quite a success." When he entered the real estate business that year "the business was not looked upon very favorably for a beginning in life for an ambitious young man, and the brokers and agents were inclined to play fast and loose with prices, terms, commissions, etc., while the courts looked upon a real estate commission with prejudice."
Keadin added, "I conceived the idea of establishing more friendly and honorable methods in the business between brokers by interchanging their listings through a central bureau, or clearing house, thereby creating more confidence between owners, agents, as well as the courts."
