What is the MLS?
Whether you're looking to sell or buy a home, you will encounter the multiple listing service, or MLS.  This is the lifeblood of the real estate business.  Home sellers can't post their home directly to the MLS, because access to this database is limited to licensed agents and brokers who pay for membership.  The benefits of the MLS systems is that an MLS subscriber may search an MLS and retrieve information about all homes for sale by participating brokers.  MLS systems contain hundreds of fields of information about the features of a property, whereas public real estate websites contain only a small subset of property data.  Real Estate agents send their clients homes that are listed on the MLS that match the criteria of what they are looking for.  The MLS also populates the listing for your home to all of the national real estate websites such as Zillow, Trulia, Realtor, etc.  Plain and simple, you get much more exposure while selling your home, when it is listed on your local MLS.