A Web site that once contained a protest against the online public display of real estate listings data is now an advertisement for an obesity treatment center.

The Web site, KeepItOff.com, belonged to Tom Callahan, a Realtor with RE/MAX Beach Cities. The site was his now-aborted attempt to start an online campaign to block a local Realtor association from posting listings on the Internet for the general public to view.

The South Bay Association of Realtors in Torrance, Calif., south of Los Angeles, last year put up an MLS-laden public-access Web site at RealtyLife.com. But the Web site was deactivated due to pressure from association members and now is a blank white page.

Meanwhile, the competition over who controls online property listings has become so cutthroat in the South Bay that brokers have begun hiding online listings from one another and the public.

At the eye of the storm is Hermosa Beach, Calif.-based Catalist Homes, which opened for business in April 2001. The company represents only sellers, charges a 3 percent commission to sell a home and offers cooperating agents a fifty-fifty split of that 3 percent through the local MLS.

Catalist EVP Michael Davin claims the company was the first in the region to put the local MLS online via an Internet data exchange (IDX) Web site.

IDX is a National Association of Realtors' mandate that MLSs must allow and enable brokers to display one another's listings on their own Web sites to the extent that those brokers agree to participate in the listings exchange system. Brokers who decline to share their own listings data aren't permitted to display the participating brokers' listings data. IDX has sparked a lot of controversy and a number of fierce debates about online displays of listings data.

Davin said Catalist's early IDX entry triggered a flood of complaints to the local South Bay Association of Realtors.

"We downloaded the entire MLS online and the board immediately began getting complaints about what we were doing," he said.

Catalist pointed to online brokerage eRealty's legal victories in Texas to demonstrate that Catalist's own IDX Web site was legal. Davin said NAR's IDX mandate was in place at the time, but the Greater South Bay MLS wasn't in compliance with the policies.

"They were trying to enforce illegal rules. We hired an attorney, drafted a very elaborate response and (the matter) was dropped," he said.

Catalist well may have been the first IDX Web site in the South Bay. But Davin said it's still short about 40 percent of the local listings. That's because two of the largest local brokerages—Shorewood Realtors and RE/MAX Beach Cities—opted out of IDX.

Catalist responded to Shorewood's and RE/MAX Beach Cities' withdrawal from IDX by posting a tirade, "Public Access to MLS Data: Shorewood Opts out of National Association of Realtors Broker Reciprocity Agreement" on its own Web site. The document urges consumers to get involved in the brokerage industry's dispute.

Davin said airing the dirty laundry in public is his way of "broadcasting the battle for the public, so they can make a clear distinction between who is good and who is not."

"As the public gets it," he added, "they will choose us."

The South Bay Association of Realtors declined to comment on the situation. Shorewood General Manager Mike Collins and Callahan did not return telephone calls seeking comment.

A defiant Davin now is looking to create a virtual office Web site (VOW). A VOW would circumvent the entire IDX issue by allowing Catalist to post on its Web site every home for sale in the MLS—even those listings of brokers who have opted out of IDX.

But Davin isn't enthralled with the idea of requiring visitors to register before they can access the VOW. He said most brokers give out the same data every day to customers who aren't pre-qualified to buy a home.

Still, with the stakes as high as they are in the South Bay area, where the average home price is about $750,000, Davin said, Catalist will continue to feed the listing information to its customers online—even if that means creating a VOW.

But he believes brokers in the area will continue resisting Catalist's efforts.

"The stakes are high here, where the average transaction represents about $35,000 in commissions," said Davin. "These people are going to fight to the bitter end to get us out of business."