Re/Max Site to Show All U.S. Listings
The implications of this are mind-boggling. Buying and selling real estate has always been based on local markets. This is the end of all that. Brave New World time.

The nation's second-largest real estate brokerage is expected to announce today a plan to pool all U.S. residential property listings on its website, a move that would create a formidable national competitor to industry-backed Realtor.com. The move by Re/Max International Inc. also could eventually help reduce consumers' costs of buying and selling homes, as competition with other Web-based brokerages heats up.Online real estate companies and consumer advocates have long complained about the real estate industry's efforts to limit access to property listings on the Internet. They see it as an attempt to thwart competition from Web-based upstarts, which typically charge lower commissions or charge referral fees. The issue has attracted the attention of federal antitrust officials, who have been investigating the online policy of the industry's powerful trade group, the National Assn. of Realtors, which gives its members the right to withhold their listings from online brokerages. But Re/Max, which has supported the trade group's policy, will announce today that it will compete head-on with online companies and create a national database that would include any property listing, whether it is a Re/Max listing or not.