MLS® OTTAWA - Ottawa Multiple Listing System

The Ottawa Real Estate Board (OREB) is a trade association of over 2200 registered brokers and salespeople in the Ottawa area. Members of the Board are also members of the Ontario and Canadian Real Estate Associations and are well educated and trained to help consumers with all their real estate needs. MLS®® is a co-operative marketing system used by the Board's members to ensure maximum exposure of properties listed for sale, lease or rent on the Board's computer system.

A Multiple Listing Service (MLS®) (also Multiple Listing System or Multiple Listings Service) is a suite of services that :

• enables brokers to establish contractual offers of compensation;
• facilitates cooperation with other broker participants;
• accumulates and disseminates information to enable appraisals;
• is a facility for the orderly correlation and dissemination of listing information to better serve broker's clients, customers and the public.

A multiple listing service's database and software is used by real estate brokers representing sellers under a listing contract to widely share information about properties with real estate brokers who may represent potential buyers or wish to cooperate with a seller's broker in finding a buyer for the property. The listing data stored in a multiple listing service's database is the proprietary information of the broker who has obtained a listing agreement with a property's seller.

The benefit of the MLS® system is that an MLS® subscriber may search the MLS® system and retrieve information about all homes for sale by all participating brokers. MLS® systems contain hundreds of fields of information about the features of a property. These fields are determined by real estate professionals who are knowledgeable and experienced in that local marketplace. Whereas public real estate websites contain only a small subset of property data.

In North America, the MLS® systems are governed by private entities, and the rules are set by those entities with no state or federal oversight, beyond any individual state rules regarding real estate. MLS® systems set their own rules for membership, access, and sharing of information, but are subject to nationwide rules laid down by NAR or CREA. An MLS® may be owned and operated by a real estate company, a county or regional real estate board of REALTOR®s or association of REALTOR®s, or by a trade association. Membership of the MLS® is generally considered to be essential to the practice of real estate brokerage.