What is the Orange County MLS in NY?

What is the Orange County MLS and how can I list my property on the MLS for a flat fee? How do I list my home For Sale By Owner in Orange County, NY?

The Orange County MLS in New York is the OneKey MLS, which is the result of the combination of the Hudson Gateway MLS and the Long Island MLS in 2020.

Prior to the merger, the primary Multiple Listing Service in the Hudson Valley would have been the Hudson Gateway MLS, which was operated and wholly owned by the Hudson Gateway Association of Realtors.

Within the Hudson Valley, the primary jurisdictions that the OneKey MLS inherited are Orange, Putnam, Rockland and Westchester Counties.

Almost every listing in these four counties will be listed on the OneKey MLS. In fact, the OneKey MLS requires MLS participants to upload every listing located in their core jurisdictions of Orange, Putnam, Rockland and Westchester Counties.

Therefore, it’s important to realize that there is not a separate, independent Orange County MLS in existence.*

*Going forward, when we mention the Orange County MLS in New York, please understand that it is synonymous with the OneKey MLS.

What kind of listings does the Orange County MLS in NY accept?

Can I sell my home through a flat fee listing on the Orange County MLS in NY?

What kind of fines can the Orange County MLS impose on New York Realtors?

Listing agents must be available to show a listing that’s in the MLS

What’s not allowed on the Orange County MLS in New York

Fines for copyright violations in the HGMLS

The Orange County MLS only accepts Exclusive Right to Sell or Exclusive Agency Listing Agreements. Open listings or listings without a written agreement are definitely not allowed.

Although the OneKey MLS offers a template Exclusive Right to Sell Listing Agreement, Realtors are free to use an agreement of their own choosing.

The staff at the MLS simply want to ensure that Realtors actually have a right to list a property and that they are offering some form of compensation to fellow Realtors.

Yes, it’s entirely possible to list your home on the Orange County MLS for a flat fee. HGAR management is very professional in never discussing commission rates with members and in re-iterating that there is no standard commission rate or a specific commission rate that owners must pay.

With that said, you do need to offer some form of commission for your listing to be entered into the MLS, even if it is a very small amount.

Interestingly enough, the OneKey MLS has three required fields for commission information: Seller/Sub Agent Comp, Buyer Agent Comp and Broker Agent Comp. Fortunately, listing agents are only required to put in a non zero figure in at least one of the fields. So traditionally, most listing agents only put an offer of commission to buyers’ agents in “Buyer Agent Comp” and put zeroes in the other two fields.

The ramifications of this are pretty important. This means that there is no way for other agents to determine what a listing agent is being paid.

Even though a listing agreement must be uploaded, the document is set to private and only able to be viewed by the MLS staff.

Here are a few of the more arcane listing details required by the OneKey MLS and what they mean:

HERS Index Score – this is a measure of how energy efficient and “green” a home is.

PUD – planned unit development.

Here are some modifications and exclusions that listing agents can check off. This is only visible to other agents:

M1 Buyer Exclusions – certain buyer names are excluded per the request of the seller and specified in the listing agreement.

M2 Agent Exclusions – the owner doesn’t want certain agents or firms to show their property and these names are specified in the listing agreement.

M3 IAW Compensation If and When – a very important if and when clause which clarifies that the seller will not pay commission until the property closes. This is important because many New York listing agreements simply state that a commission is due when a ready, willing and able buyer is found.

M4 Commission Modification – if the listing agreement states that the commission owed varies based on the selling price.

M6 Disclosure of Ownership Interest – if the listing agent has an ownership interest in the listed property. This may apply to Realtors selling their own home.

M7 Insufficiency of Funds – a disclosure that the seller may not have the funds to pay a commission because they’re in poor financial health. This may result in buyers’ agents steering their clients away from a listing that has this checked.

M8 Short Sale Notification – listing agents should disclose to other HGMLS members that a property is a short sale, even if the owner does not want it to be advertised as such on public websites.

The Orange County MLS imposes some hefty fines on its participants if certain rules are not followed.

These fines are automatic in some cases. For example, listing agreements must be uploaded within 24 hours of “all necessary signatures being obtained,” or subject to an automatic fine. Weekends and holidays do not matter, Realtors literally have 24 hours to upload the listing agreement after they’ve posted an exclusive sale listing!

Furthermore, at least one photograph must be uploaded onto a listing within 72 hours. You can upload up to 30 photographs onto a OneKey MLS listing, but they require at least one photo or the listing Realtor will be fined.

Violation fines begin at $25 for missing photos, and up to $5,000 for other violations.

The Orange County MLS actually has a system that scans all listings automatically and daily to see if any information doesn’t look right and for inappropriate language. Unfortunately, it’s very easy and common for Realtors to tattle on each other to the MLS staff. As a result, the OneKey MLS relies on Realtors to police each other’s listings.

The Board of Directors of the Hudson Gateway Association of Realtors voted on and created the following fine chart for HGMLS violations which are still applicable:

• Failure to input a listing: $50 per day up to $5,000

• Failure to submit photo: $25, $50 (after 7 days), $100 after 30 days

• Failure to make a price or status change: $500

• Failure to submit listing agreement: $15, $50 (7 days), $100 (30 days)

• Failure to submit listing extension agreement: $15, $50 (7 days), $100 (30 days)

• Use of another participant’s photos without authorization: $50 per day

Note: This chart is not meant to be comprehensive, but rather it is presented for illustrative purposes. OneKey MLS members have access to the comprehensive Rules and Regulations through their member portal.

Essentially, if a listing is marked as active and the listing Realtor keeps refusing to show it after multiple requests by a buyer’s agent, the buyer’s agent can go ahead and report the listing broker to be fined!

If a listing broker is having trouble getting access to the property they’ve advertised, they can either fill out an Owner’s Instruction to Discontinue Showings form or just list the property as Temporarily Off Market.

If a listing broker legitimately can’t get access to their own listing for a day or two, that’s acceptable. However, if the seller will be going on vacation for a week, then the listing’s Realtor should set the listing to Temporarily Off Market.

Self-promotional material or branding of any type is prohibited on OneKey MLS listings. That means the listing description, photos or virtual tours cannot have any phone numbers, email addresses, names, websites or logos of any type. Even open house information is not allowed in the property description of MLS listings.

The fine for putting self-promotional material or branding on a MLS listing is $500 for the first violation, and up to $5,000.

When listing photographs are uploaded into the Orange County MLS, the copyright for the photographs automatically go to the listing Realtor’s brokerage. The brokerage owns any photographs that have been listed by its agents.

Therefore, owners must be very careful about giving property photographs to their listing broker to use. Have you ever given these same photos to another agent to use? If so, then it’s very likely that you can’t use them if they’ve already been uploaded before into the MLS!

Realtors can be fined $50 a day for the use of another MLS participant’s photographs without express written consent.

If you’ve purchased a flat fee MLS listing that means this and any other fines levied by the MLS will be passed directly onto you! Please take this lesson to heart and do not give our partner brokers photographs which you do not solely have ownership rights to.