MLS: what is it about?

If you have any experience with buying or selling a property, MLS is not an unknown term to you.Being a realtor in Toronto gives me plenty of opportunity to work with MLS every day. Let’s have a look what this short abbrev stands for.

The principles of MLS

MLS – Multiply Listing System is simply a big database of property for sale in the given area (city, county, province). Its whole purpose is to pair the seller and the buyer, or their respective realtors.It comprise of all the information of the property the owner wished to make public, like address, size, location, number of rooms, and much more. Usually the local area and its services are covered too, with plenty of photos.

The main difference between this database of property and lets say property listing in your local paper is quite crucial.MLS has never been fully available to the public, because it has been created by the realtors and for the realtors.The information on the available property on various real estate blogs are not complete. You might get an idea about the property, but will always have to contact the realtor for more information in the end.

A bit of history

It all started some 50 years ago. Back then, the MLS system comprised of simple sheets in ringed binders, listing all the property for sale in a certain city or area, updated bi-weekly.Real bound MLS books followed soon after.Only realtors paying the membership fees were entitled to the information in the system.The 70s finally ended the age of printed books and brought up the computer database. It was still quite different to what we know today since the database was only accessible through so called dumb terminals and phone lines.The use of PCs and Internet was the next logical step forward. So far last upgrade happened in the 90s and the system stabilized on web-based regional databases of today.

MLS 5.0

Some people think that it’s about time to upgrade the system once more.Mainly in the USA some realtors feel that the current system is no longer enough and needs similar upgrade to MLS 5.0 just like the internet recently underwent the upgrade to ‘web 2.0′.The new version should provide information on all the properties nationwide, not just those currently on the market (parcel based) and should be to some degree accessible also for customers, vendors and developers.But Canada has yet to think of such an upgrade, so let’s stick to the MLS of today.

So what does MLS have for you?

75% of property on sale are sold with the use of MLS.If you’re selling a property, you need plenty of coverage for it. Without MLS you never get as much of it as you need.The buyers benefit as well – because of MLS, their broker have a complete information about the current supply on the real estate market.Thereby always make sure your realtor is a member of the local board of realtors and have the proper access to MLS where you intend to buy a property.