South Florida MLSs and real estate associations are becoming more unified.

Last week, Miami Realtors + RWorld merged with Martin County Realtors of the Treasure Coast, expanding the organization to approximately 94,000 members across Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, Martin and St. Lucie counties.

The combined association now spans a 120-mile real estate corridor and strengthens its position as the nation’s third-largest MLS — with the latest merger coming after April’s joining of Miami Realtors and RWorld.

Dionna Hall — co-CEO of the merged organization who will take the solo helm in 2027 — sat down with HousingWire to discuss the value of MLS consolidation, what’s next for BeachesMLS and MIAMI MLS and how agents can demonstrate their expertise in South Florida’s highly competitive landscape.

Editor’s note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Jonathan Delozier: With more competition than ever for the MLS — from portals, private listing networks and AI tools — what’s the strongest value proposition for the MLS today, and what should agencies expect the MLS to be delivering five years from now?

Dionna Hall: The real value proposition for the MLS is to keep our competitive brokers together at a level that consumers need, really in order to buy, sell or invest in real property. There’s so many different levels of property that the MLS really needs to have to meaningfully make sure that we are serving our brokers and our Realtor members. In Southeast Florida, one of the really amazing things that we have, besides obviously servicing this consolidated residential marketplace, is we also have our own commercial MLS. So that’s why I go back to saying it really is real property that we support — residential and commercial and investment properties, all those things together.

You have these brokers who are competing every day, and to have this central source of truth of a property where they can come and make sure that, hopefully, they’re seeing every property on the market for sale to better serve their client, is the essence of the MLS. I think that still holds true today. Yes, AI is important, and the newest technology tools and ways to slice and dice that. But a lot of MLS subscribers don’t even access a majority of the products that MLSs sometimes offer. What they do want to access is that full, complete picture of information.

Jonathan Delozier: With BeachesMLS and MIAMI MLS set to be combined next year, what will that process look like?

Dionna Hall: [The combined MLS] will be BeachesMLS. We have already taken the complete data set from both MLSs and put them together into a single IDX feed so that our brokers and agents can be served immediately. They have that complete data set now, and they’re able to power all of their tools and back offices with that complete data set. We were able to do that probably a week after the merger. That was one of the single most important benefits to the total membership — having that complete data set and being able to use it in all the products, no matter which ones they chose, whether they were through the MLS or through their own brokerage. That is what our brokers are going to notice, not only first but also as the most important benefit.

We are now looking at the different products that each MLS is utilizing and making sure that we’re both able to carry them into each other’s systems and that they still make sense for us to continue to support. Even more important than the products, we have a rules and regulations task force that’s meeting right now, and we’re comparing the different rules between the two MLSs and making sure that we come up with one unified set of rules and regulations going forward. Our brokers have told us that is the next most meaningful thing that we can give them with this merger — to operate under one set of rules instead of having to figure out which rules or regulations they fall under depending on who has the listing and what MLS.

We’re excited. We should probably finish that up in the next month. Once we have the rules and regs together, we will start looking at how we come together as a complete MLS board.

Jonathan Delozier: How can agents better use MLS data and market intelligence to demonstrate their expertise and show people why professional representation still matters with all the technology today?

Dionna Hall: With having the tools to support your niche market, a lot of it still comes down to really good customer service and the touch points of making sure that you don’t just have a client for that transaction. You’re making that person into a client for a lifetime. Whatever tools and products and services support that mindset and that niche market that you decided best suits your business needs is the right track for that agent.

Since we obviously can’t say that one product or tool is great for every single agent, because it depends on how they differentiated themselves in their marketplace, we are trying to give them the best of the best in all different areas so they can make that decision themselves.

Jonathan Delozier: With the growth of Miami Realtors and how much of Florida’s housing wealth is concentrated in South Florida, could that ever change the business relationship between Miami Realtors and Florida Realtors?

Dionna Hall: We have a lot of our members, actually, in the current executive leadership team for Florida Realtors. We very much support Florida Realtors and the National Association of Realtors. Actually, one of our members is going to be the president of the National Association of Realtors next year, and the treasurer for the National Association of Realtors comes from our association as well. We are very big on supporting the National Association of Realtors and Florida Realtors.

One of the biggest benefits in leveraging this three-way agreement is the legislative advocacy side of it. We know that the National Association of Realtors has these amazing contacts that are so important at the federal level, for us to be able to benefit at the local level.

The same thing comes from the Florida Realtors. I actually had my start as a local government affairs director, so I’m well aware of how different but important the politics are at the local, state and national level. A lot of times your politicians at the local level are graduating up to be your next state representative or your next federal representative. Keeping that intact and making sure that we’re all concentrating on being as strong as possible advocacy-wise in our local marketplaces is the way for all of us to go.