DOJ and NAR agree to settlement

On May 27th this year, the US Department of Justice and the National Association of REALTORS® finally reached a settlement. In the settlement, it was agreed that our MLS data could be released to the public by any member company under some very specific terms and conditions. Practically speaking, what it means is that nearly every single real estate website that offers an MLS or IDX link to real estate shoppers is no longer in material compliance with that settlement agreement, and continuing to offer listings to the public on a non-compliant website could result in serious sanctions and possibly the loss of access to the MLS.

All websites using MLS data must comply

So what does it take to be in compliance? Click to read the official policy. A website owner must install a registration gateway, and require any MLS/IDX user to register with a unique username and password. The user must also affirmatively consent to a very specific "Terms of Use" and "Privacy Policy" which must be included on the VOW website. Finally, the website owner is required to maintain all registration information, all user names, all passwords, and all contact information for each registered user for a period of not less than 180 days, and to provide for a complete audit trail to the Department of Justice upon request.

The Deadline is Nov. 27

The DOJ settlement requires that any website using MLS/IDX data begin making steps toward compliance within 90 days of the settlement (May 27, 2008) or in other words, in less than three months. Every website must be in full compliance no later than Thanksgiving Day 2008 or face the risk of serious sanctions, like losing the ability to use the data. Needless to say, there will be a lot of agents caught by this one. From our initial surveys, most agents are expecting their local MLS's to solve the problems for them, and they don't realize that it is the agent's responsibility to get their site into compliance.

FREE Compliance Gateway

My company, FavoriteAgent.com, has been licensing real estate technology for over 5 years to over 14,000 agents world-wide, and recently we decided to make our DOJ compliant gateway available to any agent free of charge. No strings attached. Why would we do that? Easy. Our company was founded on the principle of agents helping other agents. And since we have already developed this technology and have been using it for over 5 years, and over 5 million registered users, we thought we would share it with our fellow agents.

We also believe that once you get to know us, you'll like our company and our technology, so that when you need one of our other technologies, you'll consider us. Think of it like free Adobe Reader. One day you may need to create pdf documents, so you'll probably buy Adobe Acrobat. The Department of Justice has given us all until August 27th to begin implementation and until Thanksgiving Day to be fully compliant. That means that the clock is already ticking. Don't put this off until the last minute. Click on the link below today and get your free FavoriteAgent.com compliance gateway in less than five minutes. Oh, and one more thing — tell your fellow REALTORS® about it so they don't get caught out of compliance.