DeCatsye will be retiring on Dec. 31, 2026, however before she goes, she is making sure Canopy Real estate agent Association no longer manages Canopy MLS or relies on it financially.
- Increased analysis of Real estate agent membership requirements to access the MLS affected Canopy MLS's choice to invite non-Realtors as subscribers last fall.
- DeCatsye thinks NAR is shifting liability to regional MLSs - however states that's "fine" provided the legal dangers of NAR's MLS policies and its handling of the commission claims.
In 2022, Anne Marie DeCatsye informed her Real estate agent association she would only remain on for five more years and provided the management group with an idea experiment: If the association and its multiple listing service passed away in five years, why would it happen?

The group concluded that the MLS would fail "since of the legal landscape and the danger from bigger firms starting a nationwide MLS, or the syndication websites doing it," DeCatsye told Real Estate News in an unique interview.

"Why [would] the association close its doors? Because the MLS disappeared. That's bad. There needs to be worth in the association beyond the MLS, and we need to be able to articulate that worth."

That awareness sparked Canopy Real estate agent Association's change: Unlike the vast majority of its peers, the Charlotte, North Carolina-based association and its MLS would end up being independent of each other, and the MLS would welcome non-Realtors.

Two companies, two CEOs

"We have functionally and economically separated the MLS from the association," DeCatsye said. It's the type of move some in the market have been advising in current years.

"Our association board of directors has absolutely nothing to do with MLS policy. The only thing they see are the minutes of the MLS board conferences and the financials as the parent organization."

Completing that separation suggests that each organization will get its own CEO when DeCatsye leaves at the end of next year.

The association will continue to own the MLS, which DeCatsye sees no issue with, but she highlights that Real estate agent associations must no longer control or be economically depending on an MLS.

"I'm surprised at the number of [associations that own an MLS] not just are depending on funds coming back to them from the MLS, but they also, one, think they are the MLS