In the MLSs you add your listing within a certain timeframe, depending on the MLS rules. Once the listing is added every member of the MLS has access to it. This means the good and the ‘less’ good agents!

When I take a listing I promise my client a list of things I will do, and how I will do it … in Belgium we take a listing and we sell the listing … we have full control over the complete transaction. Sometimes I have a cooperation with a colleague I trust and respect, this is very important because of the promises I made to my client, to safeguard the quality I don’t want just anybody involved in the transaction.

In the States once you’re in the MLS you have to work with anyone who’s a member of that MLS … the good and the bad. One of the biggest threats of the value of the real-estate industry in the States is the knowledge level of some agents … there is a lot more to selling a house that just showing the house.

‘Pocket Listings’ are the response of agents that don’t want to work with just anyone.

Forcing everybody to work with anybody is … not done! Imagine Facebook or LinkedIn when you would have to share everything with everyone? When you force people to do something, they’ll always find a way to get around it. When you force people, you have to use force (sanctions) and build a force group to impose the rules and regulations, imagine building your group of friends this way.

Okay, the challenge here is to create a new way of connecting. What groups are most productive? Groups with the same ethics, vision and standards… How can such groups be created? Simple, let them choose each other, thus creating their own cluster.

Professor Michael Porter claims that clusters have the potential to affect competition in three ways: by increasing the productivity of the companies in the cluster, by driving innovation in the field, and by stimulating new businesses in the field.

In this way this Global MLS will become a viral organic network that gains widespread impact derived from local knowledge.

If local and global real estate can be rearranged this way, we are safeguarding our value to the customers that rely on our knowledge, experience and our connections. As a bonus, a viral system that’s made of inter human connections can never be copied by a clever software platform that wants to eliminate real estate professionals.