Before your assistant gets an MLS login, somebody has to read the rules that come with it. Those rules differ from one MLS to the next, and so do the fines. The categories below are the ones most rulebooks cover, and your own rulebook has the exact wording.
Understanding MLS Compliance
MLS compliance means following the rules of the multiple listing service you belong to, and every MLS publishes its own. Those rules cover who may enter or change a listing, how fast changes must be reported, what a listing may and may not say, and what happens after a violation.
State licensing rules apply on top of the MLS's, so an assistant needs to satisfy both.
What is MLS Compliance?
An MLS is a shared database where brokers offer their listings to one another. A broker who joins agrees to the MLS's rules, and the agents and staff who work under that broker are expected to follow them.
Rules change. NAR's settlement practice changes, communicated for August 17, 2024, include a prohibition on publishing offers of compensation on an MLS. A rulebook read two years ago may be out of date.
Benefits of MLS Compliance
Following the rules protects your access, your money and your standing with the brokers who cooperate on your listings.
For Real Estate Professionals
The first benefit is keeping the login. An agent who loses MLS access cannot enter listings or pull comps, which makes it hard to work for as long as the access is gone.
The second is fewer corrections. A listing entered to the rules the first time usually needs no call from the MLS, no late fix and no apology to the seller. Compliance also keeps the broker's own review short, because a clean listing needs little checking.
For Consumers
Buyers and sellers rely on what an MLS listing says. Rules on accuracy, photos and remarks exist so that a buyer is not misled about the home and a seller is not exposed by a careless entry.
Fair housing law applies to listing text whether or not the rulebook mentions it. HUD's advertising rule covers any notice, statement or advertisement for the sale of a dwelling that indicates a preference, limitation or discrimination because of race, color, religion, sex, disability, familial status or national origin, and it applies to all written or oral statements by a person engaged in the sale.
MLS Compliance Guidelines
Most rulebooks sort their rules into a handful of groups. Your assistant needs a plain version of each group, with the section number beside it.
Key Rules and Regulations
- Access. Who may hold a login, what it costs and which agreement the user signs. Ask whether an assistant may enter or change listings, and under whose login. A login belongs to one person, so ask for one in the assistant's own name and keep yours private.
- Timing. How soon a listing must be entered after the agreement is signed or marketing begins, and how soon a price change, a status change or a sale must be reported. Each deadline is in the rulebook, and the assistant's calendar should match it.
- Content. Required fields, accuracy, and what may go in public remarks as opposed to agent-only remarks. Private details such as showing instructions and lockbox codes belong only in agent-only fields.
- Photos. Permission to use each image, the number and order of photos, any watermark rules, and whether altered or virtually staged images need a label.
- Data use. Limits on how a website may display MLS listings. If your assistant maintains your website, these rules apply to that work.
- Compensation. Since the 2024 settlement practice changes, an MLS may not publish offers of compensation, so check how yours treats the fields and the remarks.
While it is possible to hand off almost any listing task, you must make sure the MLS allows it. If the rulebook reserves changes to licensees, or the change touches price or compensation, the task may not be suitable for handing off.
Best Practices for Compliance
- Download the current rulebook and keep it in a shared folder with the date you saved it.
- Build a one-page cheat sheet for the assistant: every deadline, required field and banned item, each with its section number.
- Sign up for the MLS's rule notices and update the cheat sheet the week a notice arrives.
- Ask the MLS's support or compliance staff when a rule is unclear, and save the answer in writing. A question asked up front costs less than a correction later.
- Check a sample of finished listings against the cheat sheet each month.
- Give each person their own login.
Once the cheat sheet exists, the assistant sticks to it, and anything it does not cover goes to the agent.
Consequences of Non-Compliance
The agent and the broker answer for a violation, whoever typed the entry. Your rulebook lists what follows.
Potential Penalties and Repercussions
Penalties differ by MLS. The steps often run from a notice to a fine and, for repeat or serious violations, to loss of access, and the fine schedule is in your rulebook. A violation can also bring a complaint to the state real estate commission, which decides any action on a license. The MLS cannot suspend a license.
Ask your MLS whether it checks listings for rule violations after they go live and what it looks for, because that tells you which rules to check first.
Ensuring MLS Compliance
Compliance works best as a habit. A short routine run on every listing beats a long review once a year.
Tips for Staying Compliant
Put each deadline on a shared calendar the day a listing agreement is signed. When the assistant is unsure whether an entry follows a rule, the assistant holds it and asks the agent that day, since a short delay is easier to fix than a wrong entry.
Review the cheat sheet every quarter with your broker, and again whenever the MLS announces a change, so the assistant never works from an old version. Keep the old versions, so you can show which rule applied on which date.
Ask your MLS for its current rulebook and fine schedule this week, then build the one-page cheat sheet with the section number beside every line.