The real barrier to an individual representing themselves in a Realestate transaction has little to do with the MLS. Listings are available for most areas on sites like Zillow. Redfin, or trurila. The pain comes when it is time to write the offer contract. Standard real estate contracts and the software (zip forms) that fills in the forms is controlled by the realtor associations thought a company owned by the California realtors association. A non realtor can't get access to the standard contracts unless they get their realty license and join their sate association.
MLS is absolutely huge in most of the non-dense U.S. It's not that much of a hindrance for people to self list on Zillow if you live in California where tons of people use Zillow. It's more of a hindrance in rural areas where you'll get far less eyes on your listing if you're only on Zillow than if you were in MLS. The power of MLS comes from the fact that it's aggregated everywhere for you and it's what agents use for their buyers. Also, it's still extremely popular for house buyers to utilize agents, because it seems like it's just a free service and buyers don't need to do any legwork at all. Agents will arrange times for you to visit a property, will make phones calls for you,
As far as contracts, I'm certain a Google search for "Purchase Agreement" will get you a boilerplate contract for free or for just a few bucks. The bulk of the paperwork in a real estate transaction happens with the title and mortgage, which a title company or attorney will handle for you. I'm not going to go out of my way to insult real-estate agents, but they aren't attorneys and aren't doing any legal work on behalf of anyone. They are just presenting or filling out boilerplate contracts or forwarding stuff from the state/title company/underwriter/etc.
Are you speaking from experience because I am. I was talking about from the perspective of a buyer but, on the side of the seller you can easily list your home in the MLS without an agent using a flat fee listing service. It's only like 300 bucks.
If you google for the standard contract you will find results but they are often not the latest and if it isn't specific to the state you risk leaving off clauses required by the law like lead paint disclosures etc... who's inclusion is property dependent. The initial contract is filled out buy the buyer not the title agent.
I've purchased a house with no agents involved and I've sold a house using flat-fee listings with no seller agent, but with a buyer agent.
When I purchased the house, I paid a lawyer $50 to give me a fill-in-the-blank purchase agreement, review it with me, and make a few small edits. Real estate transactions are very standardized and you can go to any local lawyer and figure out the paperwork with fees that don't come close to what an agent will take. If you're a buyer and you're taking out a mortgage to buy the property, then the bank is going to force you to follow a prescribed set of guidelines and will line up all the legal stuff for you for closing, and will at least tell you what paperwork they need from you before they can begin the closing process, including stuff like lead paint disclosure.
Legal documents definitely are copyrightable, and you'll occasionally see enforcement actions. I worked at a firm that represented a major insurance company in a IP/copyright action against another insurance company, claiming that the defendant blatantly copied several of its contracts. (I think our client prevailed.)
That being said, it's often difficult to get past the merger doctrine in copyright claims over legal doctrines. There are only so many ways to express a warranty clause or choice of law provision, so it's usually a strong defense.
Well they are updated yearly so even if someone leaked the form at one point there is no guarantee that it isn't missing some required legal provision in the most current versions. There are also various addendum that you may or may not have to include which complicate things.
