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Former President of Arizona Regional MLS, was around when there was an initiative for an MLS convergence to create a statewide MLS in Arizona by merging with the Arizona Association of Realtors. This convergence can reduce overhead, optimize resources and be a great asset to the brokers and agents within them, but overall the industry has been slow to adopt similar strategies. Conversely the divide between some MLS’s, Associations and Brokerage’s continues to widen. Find out more about what the future holds and if you have a role or a say in the destiny of your MLS.
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Your post above credits Bob Bemis with creating an Arizona statewide MLS. I am surprised your information both so out of date and innacurate. The move to engineer a sale by the four shareholder Associations of ARMLS to the Arizona Association of REALTORS began with an initiative spearheaded by the then President of AAR, Duane Fouts, and its CEO, Thomas Farley.
Although Mr. Bemis sat on a the workgroup at AAR, neither he nor any of the staff of ARMLS ultimately had any say in the deal whatsoever.
The sale would have required unanimous consent of the four local shareholder Associations, which came very close, but was never actually reached. Later, one of the shareholders spearheaded a move to resurrect the idea, but again, they just couldn’t get the unanimous vote.
As of today, near the end of July, 2012, most everyone has pronounced the sale of ARMLS dead in the water.
Although at the time when it looked like there was a done deal, all across the Internet people were blogging about the sale creating a Statewide MLS in Arizona, that is also innacurate. The sale would have simply transferred ownership of ARMLS the to the state Association. However, there are about 15 other MLSs throughout the state, and most of them had not yet committed to joining, although a few had expressed interest.
We all think Mr. Bemis did some interesting things at ARMLS, but to be accurate, he was not the driving force behind the sale to AAR, nor what would have been the subsequent plans to parlay build upon AAR’s ownership into an eventual state-wide MLS.
If anything, that credit belongs to Mr. Farley and Mr. Fouts.
Thank you very much for the clarification. I stand corrected.