columbusbestblog.com

or is it? Tim Eby used it on Twitter:

I had to go look SCOTUS up. Do you know what SCOTUS is? If so you are probably more political than me. I googled “SCOTUS”… I was scared I had missed a lawsuit by someone against an MLS (I assumed MLS was for multiple listing service not Major League Soccer… I’m just not a big sports fan…) I was scared it was the CBR MLS being sued by something called SCOTUS because frankly that is really the only MLS that I care that much about. Yeah I care about the idea of MLS in Cinci, Cleveland, Michigan cities…. and various markets in other states and that some states have or will have a statewide MLS…. but I care or understand only so much… real estate is local.

I replied:

Turns out Tim meant the DOJ, not SCOTUS…

Why yes I have… written about the DOJ + NAR but I don’t know that it tells you anything.

I first wrote about the DOJ + NAR here on ColumbusBestBlog.com yesterday on National Association of Realtors (the NAR part of DOJ + NAR.) I wrote basically the same article on my Discover Columbus blog as well. Of course neither really says anything. I have not anaylzed anything… or told you my opinion, just that there is a settlement.

I also wrote about DOJ + NAR on ActiveRain a real estate network I wrote:

Do you mean Columbus + NEAR? …based on googling “Columbus + NAR ” the conversation on my ActiveRain post descended into girl talk on Nair (a hair removal product), legs clothes… and “who wears short shorts?”

SCOTUS - Supreme Court of the United States

MLS - Major League Soccer or Multiple Listing Service?

NAR - National Association of Realtors

I don’t know if I am ready to discuss DOJ + NAR other than to say, they settled, the DOJ (the Department of Justice) and the NAR (National Association of Realtors.) There is no fine. We’ll know what they settled 60 days after it goes to court.

Here’s some other acronyms that we’d all need to be able to understand before we can intelligently talk about it locally.

CBR- Columbus Board of Realtors

IDX- Internet Data eXhange

VOW - Virtual Office Website

Lots of conversations about it within the industry become confusing because of lawsuits (or are those something other than lawsuits?) by the FTC against various MLSs… or are those, were those not against the MLS but against the local or state boards…

Oh dear more acronyms. Our state board (a trade organization) is OAR and the FTC is the Federal Trade Commission.