I came across an interesting story from HousingWire about a company called Gitcha that is trying to reshape how the MLS works by focusing on buyers instead of just sellers. The founder, Dan Cooper, started thinking about this problem years ago when he was working in homebuilding and real estate. His inspiration came during the Great Recession when he struggled to sell his own home and realized sellers would benefit enormously from knowing exactly what buyers in their market were looking for.
Cooper's real breakthrough came in 2020 when he added a brokerage to his building company. He noticed his agents were using social media and informal conversations to share what their buyer clients needed, and he realized there was a huge gap in how the industry handled this kind of information. He and his son-in-law launched Gitcha in Bend, Oregon in 2023, creating a platform where agents could post buyer wants and needs so sellers and listing agents could find matches. They later expanded to Phoenix and built up over a thousand subscribers.
According to HousingWire, Cooper initially pursued deals directly with brokerages, but large national firms wanted exclusivity for Gitcha, which went against his vision of creating an industry standard. So he shifted strategy in early 2025 to partner with MLSs instead, and five MLS partnerships have already signed on. Different MLSs have different reasons for using it. One MLS in the Chicago area wants to use Gitcha to encourage sellers to enter the market by giving listing agents better intelligence about buyer demand, while another wants to strengthen agent collaboration.
Cooper sees Gitcha as the answer to a bigger industry problem. He believes the MLS was built around cooperation and multiple brokers, but some firms are now creating private listing networks to grab market share, which weakens that cooperative spirit. Meanwhile, buyers have more power in today's market than they've had in years, and he thinks putting buyer information into the MLS system could help balance what has traditionally been a seller-focused model.
What I am seeing locally in the Bay Area is that our market has definitely shifted, and tools that help sellers understand what buyers really want could make a real difference in our inventory crunch. Fremont and East Bay sellers especially need every advantage they can get to attract qualified buyers, and if a platform like Gitcha can bridge that gap between what people are looking for and what's actually on the market, that benefits everyone in our transaction.
