New NTREIS CEO Has His Work Cut Out for Him

Over the summer, veteran industry executive Chris Carrillo became CEO of Dallas-based North Texas Real Estate Information Systems (NTREIS), the Dallas-area multiple listing service that underpins much of how homes are listed and transacted in North Texas.

Carrillo’s appointment, following former CEO John Holley’s planned retirement in January 2025, comes at a time when recent lawsuits have sparked national conversations about listing transparency, agent commissions, and the need for innovation in a sometimes slow-to-adapt industry.

“[The search committee] has a keen understanding of where the organization needs to go and the pivotal role the CEO must play in that growth,” Carrillo said in a statement. “I am truly honored to have been selected and excited for the opportunity to lead NTREIS through this dynamic period of change and opportunity.”

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Carrillo stepped into the role after serving 14 years as CEO of Metro MLS in Milwaukee. He also previously led Centralized Real Estate Information Services MLS in Akron, Ohio, and has been active in both state and national industry organizations.

As the sixth largest multiple listing service in the country, NTREIS provides listing data services to more than 40,000 Realtors across 15 associations in 44 North Texas counties. This shared database provides a regional system where brokers and agents can see each other’s listings and coordinate showings and other features. While there is no national MLS with every market’s listings in one database, agents often use Zillow and Realtor.com (the National Association of Realtors’ own site) as a de facto national listing service, CandysDirt.com contributor and national real estate consultant Jonathan Miller says.

Regionalized MLSs have long been the backbone of how agents share listing data, but the industry is in the middle of unprecedented change. Carrillo’s appointment comes at a time when MLS executives are under pressure to modernize systems, streamline access for agents, and respond to new rules such as Zillow’s Listing Access Standards, which set benchmarks for how listings are distributed and displayed. NTREIS has publicly signaled that innovation is central, saying the industry is in a “period of transformation and change.”

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NTREIS is the second-largest MLS in Texas, behind Houston’s HAR, which has long been regarded as one of the more tech-forward MLS organizations in Texas — specifically for its digital tools and responsiveness to market technology demands. HAR recently brought CommGate commercial listings into its fold of residential listings on MLS, a move that real estate consulting firm WAV Group said should be “the playbook for all MLSs.”

Nationally, the real estate industry is being jolted by legal changes to how commissions and listing transparency work. In 2023, a federal jury in Burnett v. National Association of Realtors found that NAR and major brokerages conspired to inflate commissions by requiring sellers to pay buyer-agent compensation. NAR eventually agreed to a $418 million settlement in 2024, eliminating rules that forced commissions to be predetermined in the MLS and paving the way for more negotiation.

As a result, MLSs are under pressure to update rules around how listings are published, how buyer-agent compensation is declared (or not), and how agents disclose their fees to clients. In 2019, the National Association of Realtors adopted the “Clear Cooperation” policy, which requires agents to submit a listing to their MLS within one business day of marketing it to the public — whether that’s through a yard sign, a brokerage website, or social media. In June 2025, Zillow rolled out its own listing access rule, stating that if a property is publicly marketed elsewhere for more than a day before appearing on Zillow, it may be excluded from Zillow’s platform. The policy directly challenges brokerages that use internal “exclusive” or “pocket” listings as part of their marketing strategy. That same month, Compass filed a federal antitrust lawsuit against Zillow, alleging that Zillow’s new policy unfairly punishes listings that aren’t first published through its platform.