Data Cooperation

1. Purpose

Broker Union (“BU”, “we”) operates a federated platform for real-estate listings, transactions, and analytics. This Data Cooperation policy describes the terms under which producers publish data into the BU network and the terms under which consumers pull that data out. It complements — but does not replace — any individually-negotiated agreement between BU and a publisher, brokerage, MLS, or data broker.

2. Roles

• Producers. Portals, MLSs, and real-estate brokerages that publish records into the BU canonical schema. Active listings come from portals and MLSs; closed transactions come from brokerages.
• Network tenants. Brokerages and MLSs operating on the platform as first-class tenants. Tenants both produce data (their own activity) and consume data (the rest of the network).
• Consumers. Data brokers, search portals, valuation engines, lead-generation systems, and other third parties licensed to pull BU data via the public API.

3. Canonical schema and provenance

Every record in the BU network is written into a single canonical schema. Every record carries:

• Publisher slug — the identifier of the producer that wrote the record;
• Source MLS — when the record originated in an MLS, the MLS identifier travels with it;
• updatedAt — a monotonically increasing timestamp tracking the last canonical-field change;
• Permission flags — a structured record of what the producer has authorized: which audiences, which derived uses, which fields are redacted.

Consumers must preserve provenance fields on every downstream use. Black-box aggregation that strips publisher slugs or source-MLS identifiers is prohibited.

4. Producer rights and obligations

• You retain ownership of the data you publish. The license you grant the BU network is non-exclusive and limited to the audiences your permission flags specify.
• You may revoke a record at any time. Revocation propagates to consumers within twenty-four (24) hours; consumers must honor revocations and remove the record from search indexes, caches, and derived datasets within that window.
• You warrant that you have the right to publish the data — including, where applicable, the consent of the listing broker, the seller, or the cooperating MLS.
• You will not publish personally identifying information about consumers, buyers, or sellers beyond what is required to identify the transaction parties under your governing jurisdiction.

5. Consumer rights and obligations

• Access is granted via API key. Keys are scoped: read-only by default, sub-scoped to the audiences your contract permits.
• You will not re-publish raw producer records under your own name or attribution. Derived products (AVMs, comp engines, market analytics) are permitted, provided attribution and provenance are preserved at the record level.
• You will not attempt to re-identify, augment, or correlate records against outside datasets in ways that would identify private individuals beyond the transaction parties already present in the data.
• You will respond to producer revocations within twenty-four (24) hours.

6. Attribution

When records are surfaced to end users, you must display the publisher slug and, where applicable, the source MLS identifier — at minimum at the record or page level. “Powered by” attribution to Broker Union as the platform is requested but not required.

7. Pricing and metering

Data cooperation on the BU network prices on hosting and API calls — not on membership or seats. Specific rate cards are set in your individual contract. Sandbox / test access is free, rate-limited, and excludes any contractually restricted fields.

8. Security

• All API traffic uses TLS. Long-lived credentials are stored encrypted at rest.
• You will rotate API keys at least every twelve (12) months and immediately upon suspected compromise.
• You will report any suspected data incident affecting producer data to security@brokerunion.com within seventy-two (72) hours of discovery.

9. Removal and dispute

A producer or a third party with a credible claim of error or unauthorized publication may request removal of a record at any time. Send the record identifier and the basis for the request to legal@brokerunion.com. We honor unambiguous producer-initiated removals within twenty-four (24) hours. Contested removals are evaluated case-by-case.

10. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as the network grows and as our individually-negotiated agreements evolve. Material changes are announced via the publisher console at least thirty (30) days before they take effect. Continued use of the network after the effective date constitutes acceptance.

11. Contact

Policy questions: legal@brokerunion.com.
Security incidents: security@brokerunion.com.
General: hello@brokerunion.com.