Areas Consolidated to Township Level in the BLC®
After thorough discussion on the topic with our BLC® Policy and Technology committees to determine the best course of action, in 2024 the MSC Board of Directors voted to consolidate the areas to the county/township level in the BLC®, removing all non-conforming areas. All Areas in the BLC® will now follow the County -> Township format.
Nationwide we have begun to see MLSs remove the Area field due to concerns of unintentional bias as a result of using an Area to set a buyer's search criteria.
This concern comes from the similarities between Areas and the mid-20th century practice of redlining, a discriminatory method of sectioning off counties for lending purposes. Over time, Area numbers became a method of indexing reference in printed MLS books, and today you may use it as shorthand in searches, however there is still potential for adverse effects on your buyers.
Through decades of technology advancements that have made Area codes obsolete, new entrants to the business have not adopted the use of Area numbers when creating listings in the same way, creating unintended discrepancies in search results. Research in our system prior to making this update showed that searches in the non-conforming areas could miss up to 10% of the listings available in the intended search location because of inconsistently applied area numbers at the time the listings were entered.
To help navigate the updated areas, prompts have been added to the dropdown menu and a hint has been provided for additional information.
If you have historically used Areas to search, don't worry, there are still plenty of ways you can conduct searches by location in the BLC®. Learn how to use map layering in the BLC® here.