By Jeff McKinney
Enquirer staff writer

The Greater Cincinnati Multiple Listing Service, which attracts an average of 30,000 hits a day from people looking at houses for sale in the region, might disappear from the Internet by November.

OTHER RESOURCES

Other than CincyMLS.com, there are several real estate Web sites that consumers can visit to get information on home sales in the Greater Cincinnati area, including: National sites such as: • Realtor.com • Homestore.com • Homes.com In addition, at HamiltonCountyAuditor.org, users can find past sale prices of a house and other neighborhood data. They also can visit local real estate companies' individual Web sites.

The board of the Cincinnati Area Board of Realtors, which operates the site, has voted to suspend CincyMLS.com on Oct. 31 unless it receives a proposal for an alternative plan for a Web presence before then.

The Web site acts as a clearinghouse for houses listed by Realtors for sale in the area, allowing viewers to see what's for sale in different neighborhoods and what different real estate companies are listing, compare prices, check the condition of a home and make other home-buying decisions.

Dropping the Web site "would be a big blow to consumers looking to buy a home," said Norman Miller, director of the Real Estate Center at the University of Cincinnati.

The CincyMLS Web site was created eight years ago when many local real estate firms did not have their own Web sites.

They did not display competing broker listings until about four years ago, when broker reciprocity allowed Realtors to share Internet data.

But now, 97.5 percent of local listings appear on the site.

"It raises the questions (of whether) the MLS is competing for the consumer with brokers who own the listings," said Sandra Butler, president of the Cincinnati Area Board of Realtors.

She said the board of the operations committee of the MLS must now determine whether there could be alternative uses for the site.

It costs the group about $43,000 a year to maintain.

The issue has been a hot topic among members of the Cincinnati Area Board of Realtors, one of the area's largest trade groups with more than 5,000 members.

The Northern Kentucky Association of Realtors could not be reached for comment on whether they were considering a similar move.

Some Realtors question whether the board's decision was prompted by larger real estate firms wanting to block Internet access of listings to smaller companies.

Others say the larger residential firms are being forced to spend thousands of dollars to upgrade their Internet sites and in some cases offer features CincyMLS.com doesn't and also share the MLS listings with smaller firms not making those investments.

Miller said the loss of the MLS site could put pressure on the smaller firms. "My guess is that the larger firms would do fine, but the small firms would struggle," he said.

But Butler said all real estate firms would continue to make as many listings available as they could.

"It's not an attempt to squeeze anybody out," she said.

Still, Eileen Vogel, broker and owner of Advantage One Realtors in Hamilton, said the loss of the MLS site would be difficult.

It also might reduce broker reciprocity among real estate firms, which now share information on each other's sites, she said.

"It would force me to spend more money to attract people to my Web site as opposed to sharing that expense with a group," she said.

E-mail jmckinney@enquirer.com