Chicagoland’s multiple listing service, Midwest Real Estate Data, is teaming up with a multiple listing service that spans large swaths of Illinois and Iowa to create a single real estate data network, opening up access to more listing and sale data to brokers.
MRED and RMLS Alliance are entering into a data-sharing agreement to give real estate professionals access to nearly statewide data, which they said will benefit almost 50,000 agents and brokers in the region.
MRED includes data for much of northern Illinois, southern Wisconsin and northwest Indiana, with approximately 250,000 listings posted to the service annually. That’s helpful for Chicago brokers who do business outside of the city or just across state lines, but MRED’s push toward more data-sharing between service providers across the region is still a big win for agents and their clients, said Jason Merel of eXp Realty.
“I wish I had the entire state at my disposal,” Merel said. “You never know who you’re going to come across and what they’re looking for, so having access to everything is only beneficial.”
Merel recently had a client who was looking for homes in the broader North Shore area but was also interested in viewing some properties farther south, potentially straying outside of MRED’s coverage area.
Josh Black, Merel’s business partner and fellow eXp Realty broker, said clients already assume agents can see everything, and this move will bring that closer to reality.
RMLS Alliance serves 60 counties across Illinois and Iowa. Its service area spans from Cairo, Carbondale and Mount Vernon in southern Illinois, north through Springfield, Peoria and Galesburg, and then extends east to Quincy and the Quad Cities area.
The two companies are still working on technical integration between the two services, and they plan to roll out the expanded access later this year. MRED officials did not respond to requests for comment.
RMLS Alliance General Manager Cathy Wagner said transparency and access to data go a long way in ensuring a healthy and competitive real estate industry.
The move could empower real estate professionals to be more efficient and make it easier to do market research, MRED President and CEO Rebecca Jensen said.
This is not the first time MRED has taken a collaborative approach as an MLS provider. In 2020, MRED partnered with Rockford Area Realtors to give Rockford agents access to its listings and sale data as well as other products and services offered by the MLS, Chicago Agent Magazine reported.
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