Multiple Listing Service (MLS)
Categories: Real Estate
Craigslist for homes.
The MLS is usually the first place that realtors list a given home that they're recently bound to sell. The MLS is a giant database which holds everything from the address of the home, its square footage, lot size, previous transaction price when it was last sold, tax info, school zone, contact info for sale and, well...everything else needed for that realtor to get paid a commission.
The MLS used to be a monopoly that sat above everything real estate. But the industry grew conservative, and it was generally filled with low-tech. Too many non-pros...too many housewives just selling homes as a hobby between beauty shop appointments. So the industry was caught asleep when Zillow happened. It leveraged better customer experience tech and a bunch of other things to become the de facto go-to-place today for the buying and selling of homes.
The MLS still exists, and "handshakes" data with Zillow, but its once great power is a sad shadow of its former monopoly status today.