Ta da! The final principle!

6. MLS Boards of Directors should include broker owners with appropriate regional representation.

We believe that broker involvement in MLS governance is critical. The MLS is the single most important business tool in the real estate industry and as such the provision of MLS services should be accountable to all participants. We believe it is imperative that brokers from both large and small firms be given representation on MLS Boards.

Well, they don't get any better, do they? The finale is hardly set with streamers and confetti.  So what's it mean? The implication is that those poor brokers were barred from involvement in the operation of MLS governance--not sure when or where that happened. Most brokers don't want to sit on boards, attend endless meetings and play politics--all those activities having little to do with profitability or delivery of quality service by the firms they own. I would argue that the single most important business tool in the industry is actually the real estate agent. It is certainly easier to control an MLS system, but the public depends on agents much more than the MLS. 

I love the part about "provision of MLS services should be accountable to all participants". Exactly what the Old Statewide MLS effort lacked. Over $4M allocated, most spent and no one is talking about what went wrong, who made bad decisions, what the plan is to fix it or much of anything else. Familiar faces will represent the state association on the merged governance board--same political appointment strategy--sacrifice success to stay true to the political imperative. How Groupthink does it get? 

The breakdown of small and large broker firm representation is a ruse. All those on the Board are part of the faithful Kool Aid Krowd. They don't actually represent large or small firms, they represent the statewide association volunteer leadership establishment--first and foremost. Incidentally, the board structure was largely pulled from Connecticut's statewide MLS governance plan--an odd twist because Connecticut and California have little in common other than initial characters in their names. It was probably easier that way and considering the board composition the governance plan is immaterial. 

Regardless of the board, who actually makes the decisions (and not too well thus far)? Don't know. Won't know. When additional funds are offered without any accountability requirement by the state board of directors, what can we expect? A vague, "trust us, it will get better" is all it takes. There is seldom an alternative to the party line even offered, or if it is, that carefully crafted alternative is so distasteful the directors gasp at the mere thought of the dire consequences! Oh, there is always an urgency involved, thrusting lots of partial information out there with a tight timeline leading to a drop dead decision point. It's a predictable pattern, and it works. 

That's it--finis! What have I learned going through the Six Principles again, knowing what I know now? I'm less impressed than ever at the writing, but the authors knew quality didn't matter. No thorough scrutiny was likely. If you keep sending the same message, even if it is flawed, people who don't care enough to analyze the contents, will come to believe the message. That certainly happened here. Five years later the Principles are still used to rationalize a series of sweeping changes in the fabric of residential real estate. In reality, the Principles don't rationalize anything, certainly not a statewide MLS. 

You've heard this before, but what if the public were to look carefully at the 6 Principles and ponder how they might benefit from their application to the real world real estate market? Would those principles increase the likelihood of Buyers finding the RIGHT HOUSE or Sellers finding the RIGHT BUYER? 

Members of the public are the ONLY life blood of this industry. As a group, they are smarter, more creative and exhibit significantly more diligence than real estate professionals. If the industry spent as much energy and intellectual capital seeking to improve the public's real estate experience as it does pandering to hackneyed political imperatives and plotting internal power plays, the distant horizon might assume a golden glow presently lacking in the darkness before the dawn.