Four major residential brokerage groups are building their own national pipeline for listing data. AGNT Inc., the parent of eXp Realty and NextHome; HomeServices of America; Keller Williams Realty; and Real REMAX Group announced Open Real Estate on Oct. 26, 2026, describing it as “a national initiative to create a shared infrastructure for property listing data.”
The founders present the effort as a response to the growth of privately marketed homes. Open Real Estate will let participating brokerages and agents enter a listing once and send it on to multiple listing services (MLSs), real estate portals and other authorized recipients, according to the announcement. Every brokerage is invited to join as a free participating member.
What the Open Real Estate platform is meant to do
The announcement says the platform “is designed to streamline how property listings flow across brokerages, multiple listing services (MLSs), real estate portals, and other platforms.” The initiative’s FAQ describes three core pieces: a system for brokers to enter listings that meet minimum standardized fields, a national repository of listing data, and a way to distribute that data and “share its value with the people who create it.”
The founders stress that this is not a national MLS. The FAQ says Open Real Estate “will work in partnership with existing MLS systems” by distributing listing information to them, that it “does not set or change MLS rules,” and that local MLSs keep their own rules. The release calls MLSs essential to “establishing local listing rules and providing services to real estate professionals.”
No technology exists yet. The FAQ says the group is “currently working through the RFP process with several national technology vendors” for the design and launch of its platform and expects to finish that process during the first quarter of 2027. The organization’s other next steps, according to the FAQ, are to finalize governance, hire leadership and staff, roll the technology out to participating companies and engage the MLS community.
The rules taking shape
The draft rules show how the founders plan to handle the tension between private marketing and broad exposure. Under the FAQ, every listing must be entered into the Open Real Estate database “within one business day of the listing agreement” being signed, whether through its own tools or an existing MLS input.
From there, a seller’s home goes into one of two sections. In “participant view,” only agents at participating brokerages can see the property, and it “cannot be publicly marketed by anyone, including the listing agent and the listing brokerage.” In “market” view, all agents see it and it is marketed openly by the listing company and by MLS agents through IDX feeds, the data feeds that put listings on brokerage websites.
The non-binding letter of support posted on the Open Real Estate site adds that signers would “submit all public listings to ORE, regardless of where they originate,” and that a public listing that did not start in the system must be added within one business day. The site says participating brokerages and agents “will share in the value generated by the listing information they contribute,” but neither the site nor the release explains how that value will be measured or paid out.
The site also says participation “will never involve any agreement among companies about commissions, fees, pricing, services” or the customers and markets companies serve, and that signers will help shape governance and technology “over the next six months.”
Who is in
Beyond the four founders, the site lists Brown Harris Stevens, Lamacchia Realty, Samson Properties and Windermere Real Estate as initial participating members. Real REMAX Group, one of the founders, is itself a new combination: Real completed its takeover of RE/MAX in August.
Why private listings are the backdrop
In an open letter titled “Housing Markets Must Remain Open To All,” the founders wrote: “A healthy market is one where sellers can make truly informed decisions, buyers have access to the broadest possible inventory, and success is determined by those who create the most value—not those who control the most information.”
The FAQ is sharper. It says “large amounts of available inventory is being cloistered and marketed privately to a limited group of buyers,” which it warns risks “relegating the public marketplace to be forever known as the market of last resort.” The release adds that when listing information is fragmented, sellers “may have fewer opportunities to reach potential buyers, extending their time trying to sell, potentially impacting their value and equity.”
Neither the release nor the website names any competitor. But the announcement lands in the middle of the industry’s fight over private listings, in which six MLSs sued Compass to defend their cooperation rules and Compass rolled out its “See It First” program to share its brands’ listings with buyers working with any brokerage.
On our reading, Open Real Estate tries to occupy both sides of that debate. Its participant view creates a members-only tier, a form of private marketing, while its one-business-day input rule and its push to syndicate every public listing aim to keep inventory broadly visible. How those two tiers are governed, and who decides where listings flow, will matter more than the principles. The FAQ says Open Real Estate “has full discretion over where the database’s listings are syndicated”, and its governance structure has not been published.
Brokerages can sign the letter of support at openrealestate.com, and agents can sign up there for updates. More industry coverage is in RealtyWire’s Agents & Brokerages section.
