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New MLS Data: Private Listings -‘No Benefits to Sellers’
New MLS Data: Private Listings -‘No Benefits to Sellers’
Whenever you hear “it’s not about the money,” it’s always about the money!
Despite protestations by some of the RE industry’s biggest players, private listings primarily (allegedly) benefit only the listing agent and their broker.
“Ketchmark and Co.” is looking for its next big payday. This study will prove that withholding a listing from the market has no tangible benefit to the homeowner. Enjoy the post!
As the residential RE industry continues to debate the merits of private listings and who would be most impacted by the practice, a new report from Bright MLS offered insight into several themes often highlighted by brokerages that view office exclusives as a unique competitive opportunity.
The report’s conclusion? Bright MLS: “found no benefits to sellers whose brokers used office exclusive listings.”
The number of office exclusives is small, but growing:
The report found that historically, “private exclusives”—or pocket listings—were a relatively small percentage of overall listings.
But that number is growing.
Three to four years ago, private listings accounted for about 2% of the properties in the Bright MLS region. That share increased to nearly 8% in February 2025
The report noted that just three member brokerages held 10% or more of their inventory as private exclusives in the last six months, and two of the three “also had a relatively significant overall volume of listings” during that time.
Most office exclusives eventually land on the MLS:
While some brokerages pitch certain benefits of listing off the MLS, such as avoiding “negative insights” like price reductions and days on market, the report said most properties that start as private listings end up being marketed publicly anyway.
According to Sturtevant’s findings, nearly 9 in 10 homes that started as private listings were later marketed on the MLS — only 13% opened and closed as office exclusives.
Private exclusives also typically took longer to sell.
“Overall, the median time to contract for standard listings that closed over the past six months was 20 days.”
Sturtevant wrote. “By comparison, the median days to contract for listings that started as an office exclusive was 37 days — nearly three weeks longer.”
Private exclusives likely offer no price advantage:
One of the most fiercely debated private inventory topics is the financial benefit—or lack thereof—for sellers.
Many industry leaders, including executives & researchers at Zillow, have shared data suggesting sellers get the highest price when their home is listed on the MLS and widely marketed to the public.
What is Compass Waiting for? Tick- Tock- Tick -Tock
And Bright’s take on the benefits of pre-marketing? After adjusting for location and other property features to get an apples-to-apples comparison.
Sturtevant wrote that whether or not a home was pre-marketed ultimately had “no impact on the closing price” and was “an insignificant predictor of the home’s selling price.”
Based on her sales data analysis, Strutevant concluded that “office exclusives take longer to sell and offer no price advantages over immediately promoting a home through the MLS.
Meanwhile, the marketplace data strongly suggests that increasing office exclusive listings can potentially harm prospective buyers and sellers by limiting access to information and creating a fragmented inventory system.
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