Realtors take a huge commission (~6% of sales price) for the work that they do, and one of the pillars of this enterprise is exclusive, monopolistic access to MLS.
If you're selling, there's an enormous pressure to get listed on MLS to get picked up. And then you're opted into paying middlemen.
Realtors will pressure sales, sometimes against buyers' or sellers' interests.
Realtors earn more in areas of higher home prices -- sometimes 2-5 times more -- , despite the workload being fungible across the state in which they practice.
Realtors are like travel agents, except extremely expensive, and a near market monopoly.
> We pay for their existence as realtors
Oh, you're a realtor!
> I can’t begin to imagine why you think Zillow is being held back by listing services or why you would hold Redfin up as some kind of model.
What do you think would happen if Zillow and Redfin could scrape MLS without restriction? Recent data -- not the days to months of stale info that is par for the course with MLS.
What if they could use this MLS data and also allow for sellers to post on their platforms without a realtor representative?
Because that's what should happen. That's an efficient market.