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1 CEO Calls for MLS Freedom From Real Estate Agent Control

DeCatsye will be retiring on Dec. 31, 2026, but before she goes, she is making certain Canopy Real estate agent Association no longer manages Canopy MLS or relies on it economically.
- Increased examination of Real estate agent subscription requirements to access the MLS affected Canopy MLS's choice to welcome non-Realtors as subscribers last fall.
- DeCatsye believes NAR is moving liability to local MLSs - however says that's "fine" provided the legal threats of NAR's MLS policies and its handling of the commission claims.
In 2022, Anne Marie DeCatsye told her Real estate agent association she would only stay on for 5 more years and presented the management group with an idea experiment: If the association and its several listing service died in five years, why would it occur?

The team concluded that the MLS would stop working "due to the fact that of the legal landscape and the risk from bigger companies starting a nationwide MLS, or the syndication websites doing it," DeCatsye told Real Estate News in a special interview.

"Why [would] the association close its doors? Because the MLS went away. That's not good. There needs to be value in the association beyond the MLS, and we require to be able to articulate that worth."

That realization triggered Canopy Real estate agent Association's transformation: Unlike the huge bulk of its peers, the Charlotte, North Carolina-based association and its MLS would end up being independent of each other, and the MLS would invite non-Realtors.

Two companies, 2 CEOs

"We have functionally and financially separated the MLS from the association," DeCatsye stated. It's the kind of relocation some in the market have been advising in current years.

"Our association board of directors has absolutely nothing to do with MLS policy. The only thing they see are the minutes of the MLS board meetings and the financials as the parent company."

Completing that separation suggests that each company will get its own CEO when DeCatsye leaves at the end of next year.

The association will continue to own the MLS, which DeCatsye sees no problem with, but she highlights that Real estate agent associations must no longer manage or be financially based on an MLS.

"I'm astounded at how numerous [associations that own an MLS] not just are counting on funds returning to them from the MLS, but they likewise, one, think they are the MLS