For prospective homebuyers looking to picture themselves in a residence before committing to a property visit, Hive Multiple Listing Service’s public-facing website now has advanced tools to virtually customize interiors.

Consumers can digitally repaint or add paneling to walls, audition flooring and countertops and experiment with various popular furniture styles.

But while HiveMLS.com aims to be state-of-the-art, the empowerment that the MLS provides behind the scenes is even more impressive, said Hive CEO Daniel Jones.

“We’re trying to give control back to the broker,” Jones said of the Wilmington-headquartered company’s business approach. “We wanted to be able to syndicate what the brokers want online, the way they want it.”

Hive is a “wholesale cooperative,” serving as a parent MLS to realty associations and smaller MLS structures.

Jones said Hive has improved the traditional MLS model of a private, cooperative database by ensuring that brokerage associations don’t have to water down their individual efforts to become part of a single powerful data stream. Hive is a syndicator, just as Realtor.com is. But participants keep their own branding, voice and local governance, according to Jones.

To give some idea as to what brokers are up against, the powerful Zillow is also a brokerage on paper. The company charges real estate agents and brokers to connect with potential buyers and sellers. They are but one of many potential competitors, Jones said.

For Hive MLS associates, tech stacked in the background helps them avoid bowing to Zillow as often, he said. Software companies that Hive partners with help keep the data as up to date as possible, while also offering greater control, Jones said.

“‘Their listings, their leads’ is our motto,” Jones said.

Hive is constantly working to make it hard for third-party platforms to snag potential buyer leads from the agent or broker who secured the listing. They recently integrated SourceRE forensic tracking technology to catch violators and better secure data flow.

Hive’s proprietary MLS data exchange is another selling point. It allows agents to use their preferred front-end software to manage listings, so they can interoperate without retraining on a new system.

In North Carolina, the popular MLS platform is Flex, Jones said. In Georgia, it’s Matrix. Hive incorporates them.
“So when we ‘buy in bulk,’ we do what we can to give the association the lowest price possible, depending on the suite of tools that they can offer to their brokerages,” Jones said.

Ultimately, an MLS service is about facilitating transactions.

Hive officials have said Hive’s curated tools improve data quality and lead generation, while the ad hoc training it offers subscribers keeps them on their A-game. The company has achieved regional penetration in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Virginia, Tennessee and Alabama.

“We were 6,000 subscribers six years ago. Now we’re 20,000.” Jones said. “This growth hasn’t really been by knocking on doors – it’s been by people saying they want to be part of this.”

As the network expands geographically, the complexity of managing listing data will continue to multiply. That is where Hive increasingly sees its competitive advantage. According to Jones, the organization now provides brokers with integrated public records, AI-generated reports, flood-zone analysis tools, internet infrastructure data and property analytics layered onto its MLS platform, among other vital intel.

“We give them public records that have been curated through a clean system where they can just go to one place, get everything,” Jones said.

The company is currently developing an AI-assisted support platform that helps agents troubleshoot MLS issues after hours and escalates unresolved problems to human staff. Hive is also working on a voice-enabled home search application compatible with Amazon’s Alexa, designed in part to improve accessibility for visually impaired users, he said.

Even with AI advances, the company has continued to scale its workforce. Hive had only two employees when Jones became CEO in 2019. Today, it employs 15 people spanning compliance, support, training, marketing and operations, Jones said.

Jones sings the praises of his team. Hires such as COO Paula Nash, for example, made direct subscriber support possible, he said.

Jones’ own background mirrors the hybrid nature of the business he now runs. Trained in both computer science and business management at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, he worked in brokerage technology, IT consulting and MLS data management before leading Hive’s transformation from what was once North Carolina Regional MLS into a multi-state operation.

“I got to see MLS evolve from several different platforms,” he said, having started with scanning data on paper that would then be transmitted via dial-up modem. “You could hear the screeching in the background.”