The Northwest Multiple Listing Service plans to introduce new guidelines later this week which will allow homeowners to decide whether to allow blog posts and automated home valuations (like those from Zillow.com) next to online real estate listings, reports Kirsten Grind from the Puget Sound Business Journal. Grind notes that if an agent breaks the rules -- and writes a nasty comment or offers an unflattering opinion of a home -- they could be fined thousands of dollars.

The NWMLS also is allowing homeowners to choose whether to have the home valuations attached to online property information. Real estate blogger Marlow Harris says that's a good idea, and also notes that Redfin may be prevented from including the Zillow home valuations next to listings that come via the NWMLS. We asked Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman what he thinks.

Interestingly, the new rules come a little more than two years after Redfin -- a Seattle online real estate brokerage -- ran afoul of NWMLS policies related to blogging. As a result, Redfin was forced to alter its "Sweet Digs" property blog.

Here's what Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman told me about NWMLS' policy at the time.

Glenn Kelman

"You really need an eyewitness perspective on a property," he said. "And having an army of people out there doing that, in a way that our customers loved, was very successful for us. Having to take this down is just another way that listing services are trying to control the discussion about real estate."

It's been more than two years since those remarks, so I checked back in with Kelman today to get a fresh perspective on the NWMLS blogging rules. Here's what he had to say:

As for the NWMLS rule, I think it’s better than the alternative, which is not to allow linking or blogging of any kind. In other words, we’d rather see a policy of constructive engagement, where the choice to join the Internet fray is up to the seller, than a flat refusal on the part of the industry to participate in the era of social media. If listing brokers make it a standard part of their listing agreement to reject any type of social content or links from other sites, their listings will suffer as Google and all the other websites people use to find information turn a blind eye to their home. Today, more than 80% of consumers start their home search online. More broadly, if that phenomenon becomes widespread, the covenant between brokers that underpins the whole MLS will break up, as some brokers opt out of the system so they build more socially engaged websites.

(Harris posts details from the NWMLS' bulletin here).