Good morning. Good morning. Here's the sick cycle the industry doesn't want you to understand—and sadly, most agents haven't realized they're perpetuating:
You hire an agent to sell your house. That agent pays the MLS to list your property. The MLS sells your data to Zillow. Zillow sells your interested buyers as leads to random agents. Those agents then demand commissions that inflate your asking price and use the buyer's money to pay for services the buyer never requested.
The system literally has you funding your own exploitation.
The Data Extraction Cycle
When you want to sell your house, you must hire a licensed real estate agent to access the Multiple Listing Service (MLS)—there's no other way to achieve full market visibility. Here's what happens next:
Your agent pays the MLS monthly fees to enter your property data into their platform. The MLS then turns around and sells your property data to third-party companies like Zillow, Redfin, and dozens of other real estate portals.
These platforms advertise your property using the data you paid to provide, then sell interested buyer information as "leads" back to agents who want to convert those buyers into clients. When those agents bring offers, fixed buyer agent commissions drive up transaction costs for everyone involved.
More simply: You pay for others to monetize your property data, then the system uses that monetization to inflate transaction costs for everyone involved.
The Uninformed Consent Problem
Agents rarely review MLS data-sharing permissions with sellers during listing appointments. While listing contracts mention MLS usage in standard legal language, they never disclose the monetization of your property data.
When agents enter your property into the MLS, they see options like "Do you want this listing to display on public websites?" The natural response is "yes"—thinking you're getting marketing reach.
What's never explained: You're consenting to a system that creates competing agents who will inflate your transaction costs. You think you're agreeing to "market visibility." You're actually funding a machine designed to extract maximum fees from buyers and sellers alike.
The consent process doesn't say "May we sell your property data to companies who will then sell your buyers to agents who will charge thousands in inflated commissions?" But that's exactly what happens.
Want more evidence of systematic control? MLSs maintain "Confidential Information" sections that only licensed members can access—information that could be crucial for buyers making informed decisions.
Meanwhile, property owners are left trying to find comprehensive information by clicking through dead-end sources with little helpful data about their property's value and comparable sales. Instead, they're steered to agents who have MLS access—forcing them to pay for access to the data they already paid to build.
It's a perfect gatekeeping strategy: Control the information, create artificial scarcity, extract maximum fees.