In the next four months, CMLS leadership has the opportunity to convene the MLS-controlled national alliance the industry needs. The 2026 Board of Directors is in place under Chair Nicole Jensen of realMLS and Vice Chair Justin Haag of Northwest MLS, taking the helm at what WAV Group described as one of the most consequential periods in its history. The forum already exists. The members are already paying dues. The math, as you will see, is already on your side. What is missing is the decision to act.
What happened in the last six weeks
Here’s what’s been happening lately: between April 24 and May 13, 2026, four of the largest regional MLSs in the country signed deals with Compass. MRED in Chicago, Realtracs in Nashville, the MLS/CLAW in Los Angeles, and Bright MLS across the Mid-Atlantic.
So, what does that mean, exactly? Well, each one of these brokerages made the decision to open up their MLS for nationwide membership, and each brokerage has agreed to carry Compass listings in their MLSs. They all have even accepted Compass’s offer to pay part of the membership fees for the first 100,000 Compass agents who sign up.
MLSs have long been locally based, and cooperative in nature, and the point of them was never to be competitive. But, on the Compass Q1 2026 earnings call on May 5, CEO Robert Reffkin said it himself. “It is not that I want to create a national MLS to replace local MLSs. I want to create a national MLS to compete against local MLSs.”
Well, only seven days later, Zillow filed a federal antitrust lawsuit against Compass and MRED in the Northern District of Illinois in response to MRED cutting off their listings feed to Zillow.
This is all being framed as healthy competition, not replacement. But, when one brokerage brings 340,000 affiliated agents and four major MLS partnerships into the fight in a mere six weeks, “compete” and “replace” start to look like the same thing when you look five years into the future. That is the situation CMLS leadership is being asked to respond to.
The math strongly favors the alliance
Here is what the math actually looks like. Compass and its affiliates have about 340,000 agents worldwide, including franchise brands like Coldwell Banker, Century 21 and Sotheby’s. CMLS represents 231 member MLSs with over 1.8 million combined subscribers. That is roughly five times more agents inside the CMLS member network than Compass has anywhere on the planet.
The math says CMLS does not have to win the argument, they just have to get serious about organizing what they already have in place. The members are there, and the structure to convene them already exists. This is not a new organization that needs to be founded. This is an existing organization that needs to take action.
The 5 rules that have to be in the founding agreement
CMLS holds the Open House conference every September, and what’s needed is a rock-solid alliance. A real alliance has to be more than a press release, and the way I see it, there are five rules that must be non-negotiable. They need to be in the founding agreement of the CMLS MLS-controlled alliance and signed by every member MLS that joins.
- One MLS, one vote. Every member MLS, regardless of subscriber count, has equal voting power on alliance rules. The 5,000-member MLS in Boise and the 80,000-member MLS in California vote with the same weight.
- No brokerage holds a controlling stake in the alliance or any of its member MLSs. This is the same idea bank holding company rules use. If you operate a brokerage, you cannot also own the marketplace your competitors are required to use.
- A hard rule against selling member data outside the alliance. Not to Wall Street. Not to hedge funds. Not to AVM trainers. Not to AI model developers. The data members create stays inside the system members built.
- Same IDX feed and same IDX rules for every member broker, regardless of size. No premium tiers. No preferred portal partnerships that hand one company a competitive edge.
- Local control of business rules. The alliance sets shared data standards, single sign-on for agents across member MLSs, and search across member markets. Each member MLS continues to set its own rules on showings, disclosures, and commission practices.
What CMLS has to deliver in the first year
If this is going to work, CMLS has to take full ownership of what they have. Real things. Not establish a working group. Not conduct a study. Not write a position paper.
They need to outline year one deliverables as the bare minimum. RESO data standards should be required across every member MLS, with a published timeline. One sign-on for any agent licensed in multiple member-MLS markets, funded by alliance dues. A unified consumer-facing search experience that pulls inventory from every member MLS, owned by the alliance, with no data resale to outside parties. A signed public agreement that bans selling member data to anyone outside the alliance.
This is not technically hard. RESO already has the data standards. Single sign-on is solved with technology. Consumer search across member MLSs is exactly what Compass is paying to build inside its own system. CMLS can build the same thing much faster with the inventory of every member MLS, and without handing one publicly traded brokerage the keys.
The MLSs that are already ready
Some CMLS member MLSs have already shown what willing leadership looks like. CRMLS terminated its HouseCanary data license earlier this year after alleged license agreement violations, sending a clear message that member-MLS data does not get used for unauthorized consumer-facing distribution. CRMLS also returned listing data revenue to its brokerage community in April, expanded Coming Soon syndication through IDX in March, and has CEO Art Carter sitting on the CMLS board itself. Northwest MLS has long held strict rules against pre-market private listings. Stellar MLS in Florida, under outgoing CEO Merri Jo Cowen, has championed cooperative data standards and broker-first practices.
There are dozens more like them who understand that the beating heart of this whole industry are buyers and sellers.
These MLSs are not waiting to be asked, they’re waiting to be organized into a high-functioning solution. CMLS is the body that can do that.
The forum and the deadline
CMLS Open House 2026 runs from September 29 through October 1. Every member MLS executive in the country who matters will be in the same room. If the alliance is going to launch with credibility, it needs to launch there, with public commitments from founding member MLSs and a signed founding agreement.
That gives CMLS leadership roughly four months to get the founding documents drafted, the technical roadmap agreed and the founding members aligned. It is doable. It is also the last clean window before the next round of Compass partnership announcements lands.
If CMLS Open House 2026 happens without a launched alliance, the next 12 months will be a story about which CMLS members joined Compass instead. The conversation we should be having is about which CMLS members signed the founding agreement, and what the alliance is going to create in the first six months.
To CMLS leadership
To Nicole Jensen, Justin Haag, Art Carter, and every CMLS board member reading this. The MLS system in this country was built by brokers and the associations they belong to, for the agents and clients they serve. Your members built it. Your boards governed it. Your staffs ran it. You are the trade body for the people who own it. You have the structure. You have the membership. You have the forum. You have the math.
Build the alliance. Build it now. Build it before September. Build it before the next Compass partnership announcement. Use the Open House conference for the launch. Get the founding agreement signed by the time the gavel comes down on October 1. The CMLS member MLSs who sign in 2026 will be the ones who shaped the rules. The ones who waited until 2027 will be living under whatever the leaders decided.
Brokers are better together. So are MLSs. That is what CMLS exists to make true. NOW is YOUR moment.
Darryl Davis, CSP, has spoken to, trained, and coached more than 600,000 real estate professionals around the globe. He is a bestselling author for McGraw-Hill Publishing, and his book, How to Become a Power Agent in Real Estate, tops Amazon’s charts for most sold book to real estate agents.
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of HousingWire’s editorial department and its owners.
To contact the editor responsible for this piece: tracey@hwmedia.com
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