MLS Updates from Bay East: Private Photos, CDOM and Free Floor Plans

Roya Chaudhry will tell you she was never a data person. Now she wakes up at night with ideas for the MLS and writes them down before she forgets. On September 24 the Chief MLS Officer at the Bay East Association of REALTORS® brought the Tri-Cities Marketing Council up to date: what has changed in the MLS, which tools your membership already pays for, and the rules agents still trip over. She asked the room to stop her with questions any time, and it did.

Keep a client's photos off the internet

Bay East gets five to ten emails a day asking it to delete listing photos, Roya said, usually from buyer's agents whose clients have just closed. The MLS cannot delete them: California law, not an MLS rule, requires an MLS to keep listing information for at least three years.

What it can do is keep them private. The photo upload screen now has two buttons, Private and Public. Photos are public by default and go wherever the listing syndicates. Mark some or all of them private and they stay in the MLS, where agents and Bay East's data-share partners still see them, but the public no longer does. A photo that already went out is pulled back within 48 to 72 hours, and a pink ribbon marks each private photo. Most agents, she said, leave the main photo public and mark the rest private.

Only the listing side can make the change. Before the home sells, the listing agent can do it; after it is marked sold, an email from the listing agent or broker is enough for Bay East to do it. The VOW opt-out is something else: it keeps a listing off virtual office websites (brokerages without a brick-and-mortar office, such as Redfin and eXp) and has nothing to do with photos. Portals and IDX sites must refresh their data within hours under their data access agreement, or face warnings, fines and a shut-off feed.

Small changes members asked for

• Driving directions now take 100 characters, up from 50.
• Public remarks take 2,500 characters, up from 1,500.
• Listing photos: up to 99, up from 60.
• Sold Off MLS is a new status for a sale that was never marketed, usually at the seller's request, entered after it closes with the real list, pending and sold dates. Until now these went in as plain Sold.
• Lease rentals lost the input fields members no longer use in August, and a closed rental is now Leased instead of Sold. Residential is next.

More changes have been approved by the MLS committee and are with the vendor, likely around December if they go through. The task forces meet project by project; to have a say in what comes next, email Roya.

Where did CDOM go?

Days on market (DOM) counts from the day a listing is entered. Cumulative days on market (CDOM) keeps counting each time a home is relisted, unless it has been off the market for 30 days. Love it or hate it depends on which side you are on, Roya said, and agents asked to move it. Bay East kept it, because a true picture is one of the MLS's core jobs, but moved it: DOM stays in your listing reports, and CDOM now sits under the History button, among the colored buttons below the listing photo that she calls the Skittles.

Tools your membership already includes

All of these are under the Resources tab in the MLS. Bay East reviews each product every year against how many members use it, since the cost comes out of dues, so the tools you use are the ones that stay.

• RealReports, a Carfax for homes. The RR button under a listing opens a report on the home and the area that you can share with a client, and its built-in AI, Aiden, answers questions about trends, recent sales or the coffee shops nearby. Roya once used it to write a two-minute video script about a listing for agents who dreaded the camera. Listing agents get a report by email when a listing goes in: that email is legitimate, so keep it.
• CubiCasa, free floor plans. Download the app, choose Bay East as your MLS, sign in with your MLS user ID and walk the home with your phone. You can hide the measurements (some agents do, for liability) and add the plan to your listing photos. Free up to 5,000 square feet.
• RentSpree, online tenant screening and rent payment, offered when you enter a lease listing.
• Collaboration Center, the better way to send clients automatic listing emails. Clients see public data only and can save favorites and change their searches, and you see all of it, like the client who said Fremont but keeps looking in Union City.
• Paragon Connect, the next version of the MLS, behind the Connect button. Roya admits her first look at it was rough, but after years of back and forth with the vendor and a task force retest a couple of months ago, she wants everyone using it now. The vendor can retire the old system at any time, and your listings and contacts sync between the two. If something does not work for you, tell her: she takes it to the vendor.

Members also have RPR, by far the most used, and Homes.com Pro, and Bay East is looking at adding another app.

The speed round

• Active Contingent is only for an accepted offer contingent on the sale of the buyer's other property. Nothing else.
• Withdrawn Temporarily is now called Hold. Nothing else changed.
• Every listing entered in the MLS needs its own listing agreement. Relist five times, and you need five.
• Coming Soon stays inside the MLS unless you answer yes to the Internet sites field (switch it to yes when you go active). It lasts 30 days, then becomes Coming Soon Cancelled unless you change it to New or Active. And if you market a coming soon publicly, on a sign, on your website or in a room like ours, it must go into the MLS within one business day.
• Credits and concessions can go in the public or confidential remarks, but without a dollar amount or a percentage: "seller will give credit to fix the roof" works, "$5,000 credit" does not. Compensation is different. Since the lawsuit, buyer broker compensation is not allowed anywhere in the MLS, in any form, and the fines are big.

Watch it

This opens where Susan Munkner introduces Roya.

Guest speaker · September 24, 2026What's new in the MLS0:0035:05PhotosChangesToolsSpeed round 35:05Pop outThe council recorded the meeting. This opens where Susan Munkner introduces Roya, and runs through the speed round at the end of her talk. watch it on YouTube.

The rest of the morning

First-timers included Yujie Peng of KW Advisors, who taught homeschool for about seven years; Lys, whose name means light in Norwegian; and Sachin, an agent and broker building software for real estate workflows. Chuck Edell reaches 50 years in real estate this December, and Anthony has promised a party. Luchie Grissom walked through the 2026 sponsorships, all on the sponsorship page.

One home was on the Super Tour: Charles Baldwin presented 5528 Maravilla Way at Marabel, Robson Homes' Newark neighborhood, with four bedrooms and three and a half baths facing the community park. The drawing paid out last week's $100.

Announcements. Dianna Novela of Novella Real Estate, the incoming 2027 president-elect of the Women's Council of REALTORS® Alameda County, invited everyone to Wine, Chocolate and Friends at 3 Steves Winery in Livermore on October 14. Nominations for Bay East's 2026 awards (REALTOR® of the Year, Rookie of the Year, Affiliate of the Year and Good Neighbor of the Year) close October 26: nominate someone.

Thank you

Thank you to Roya Chaudhry for a clear, practical update and for taking every question the room had. Next week, October 1: Phong La, Alameda County Assessor. We meet Thursday mornings from 8:45 in Fremont, guests are welcome, and the speaker calendar has who is coming next.

Photographs and words by Harv Balu. The meeting was recorded by Tom Bigley, who runs the camera every week.