Where Real Estate Gets Its Dirt

Everybody’s fighting over supply

The Buyer Listing Service

Look at where all the energy is going right now. Private listings. Walled gardens. Google plugging into MLS supply. MLSs suing each other. Every fight in this business is a fight over the same thing, which is who controls the homes for sale.

So Dan Cooper and the Gitcha crew zigged. They built a listing type for the other side of the trade. Not the houses. The buyers.

They call it the Buyer Listing Service, and the core unit is a Want-Listing. Location, property type, budget, financing, timeline, buyer agreement status. Structured buyer demand, published into the MLS, visible to the whole network. Here’s their line:

It’s not a search. It’s a listing for buyers.

Dan and his team and Gitcha came back on my radar with a LinkedIn post on their “𝗔𝗰𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲-𝗕𝘂𝘆𝗲𝗿 𝗛𝗼𝘁 𝗦𝗵𝗲𝗲𝘁 𝗗𝗮𝘀𝗵𝗯𝗼𝗮𝗿𝗱 𝗪𝗶𝗱𝗴𝗲𝘁.” 

I’m here for it. While everyone else is busy hiding supply, Gitcha is publishing demand. A buyer listing is the structural twin of a pocket listing, and that’s the smart part. In a world where the supply side goes quiet, the leverage shifts to whoever knows the buyers. They’re building the answer to the problem the rest of the industry is busy creating.

The CMA angle is the one that got me, and this was my turf. Their pitch to listing agents is “walk into the listing appointment with data nobody else has.” Active buyer count, price clustering, demand trends. Their line: “CMA shows what sold. This shows who’s buying right now.” A CMA is a rearview mirror. This is the windshield. If it actually works, that’s a real reason to walk in the door.

It’s early. Three MLSs so far. Lubbock in April, MIBOR later that month, Momentum in western Arizona in June. The tell to watch is the vendor integration. Gitcha claims it’s already working with 4 of the top 5 MLS vendors to embed this natively. If that ships, this gets interesting fast. If it doesn’t, it’s another good idea on three dashboards.

You don’t change this industry from a breakout session. You change it by building the thing nobody asked for yet. And nobody ever wins big betting on the establishment.

Everybody’s building walls. Google bet on the open field.

Google Went National. Now Who Negotiates for the MLS?

For a year now the whole story has been the same. Compass, MRED, Howard Hanna, everybody racing to pull listings off the MLS and into a private network of their own. Build the wall, control the door, charge for the key.

Then the single biggest distribution player on the planet walked in and did the opposite. Per Darryl Davis at HousingWire, Google now shows MLS listings inside mobile search across all 50 states through Local Services Ads, with the data flowing in through HouseCanary’s ComeHome under MLS agreements. Davis reports three MLSs are live so far, CRMLS, San Diego MLS, and My State MLS, with the rollout going market by market through the summer.

Here’s the line that stuck with me, from Davis’s companion piece over at Inman:

“Google looked at every private network, every pre-market feed and every walled garden, and built its national home search on MLS data.”

Sit with that. Google had its pick. Every coming-soon feed, every pocket-listing club, every velvet rope in the business was available to it. And the company that knows more about how people actually search than anyone alive looked at all of it and bet on the open MLS. As Davis puts it, “the search bar chose the MLS.”

I’ve said where I stand on private listings more than once. I’m not a fan of hiding the ball, and the exposure data has never been a close call. So the question Google’s move quietly asks is the one nobody in the walled-garden camp wants on the table. If the biggest search engine on earth runs on MLS data and the data says full exposure is worth real money, what exactly is a Compass Private Exclusive worth when Google can’t see it?

Now, this is the same playbook we’ve watched before. And honestly I delayed writing about this because HouseCanary’s reputation in regard to listing data has been, how you say, sus. But HouseCanary holds brokerage status, which is how it gets the feed, the same move Zillow pulled to get at IDX years back. New player, old door (barn door?). And Davis notes that even this open pipe already has a private back channel, reporting that eXp sends its Coming Soon inventory straight to ComeHome, brokerage to platform, no MLS required. So nobody’s hands are clean here.

But here’s the part to keep an eye on. LSA is a paid product. Davis flags the obvious trap, that MLSs and brokers could end up paying Google to surface their own listings. We’ve seen that movie. It’s the portal era all over again, and the ending is you buying back your own demand.

Davis has high expectations for CMLS. CMLS Open House convenes at the end of September. His argument is that CMLS ought to be the one table where this gets negotiated, before 484 MLSs cut deals one at a time and get picked off individually. But what he and others don’t understand is that this isn’t a thing CMLS can do.

Still, his point is valid. The biggest distributor on earth just told you what your MLS data is worth. Don’t sell it back to them a county at a time.

Listen to the Aussie

Damian Eales: Private listings are a ‘right side of history’ test

“It’s almost incomprehensible that the market is moving towards a position where information is not shared, where it’s asymmetrical information, where only some have the information required to properly value that asset.”

You know where I stand on private listings. Not a fan. And stripping out days on market and price changes? Those are facts. Hiding them doesn’t protect the consumer, it blindfolds them.

What makes Eales worth listening to is where he’s coming from. He’s Australian. He’s already lived in the version of this movie where listing agents pay to promote, sellers foot the advertising bill, and buyers don’t get the full picture. So when the guy who’s seen that ending calls the U.S. MLS system “genuinely unique” and lines it up next to the NYSE, that should land.

Call it “seller choice” if you want. It’s really just hiding the ball.

Pick a side.

Should Sellers Pick Pocket Listings?

The Industry Relations Podcast is now available on your favorite podcast player!

Overview

This week, Rob and Greg are joined by Professor Darren Hayunga of the University of Georgia to discuss his research on pocket listings and private sales. Using 20 years of Dallas-Fort Worth MLS data, Darren explains why his findings challenge conventional wisdom about off-market transactions, how Clear Cooperation Policy impacted pocket sales, and why sellers may not be sacrificing value by avoiding the open market. The conversation explores market efficiency, buyer and seller behavior, luxury listings, and the broader implications for the ongoing industry debate around private listing networks and consumer choice. 

Key Takeaways

  • Professor Darren Hayunga’s study found that pocket sales in Dallas-Fort Worth generated an average premium of roughly 1.7%, with luxury properties showing significantly higher premiums. 
  • The research suggests sellers may benefit from avoiding what Darren calls the “negotiation tax” associated with traditional MLS listing strategies. 
  • Clear Cooperation Policy largely eliminated the pricing advantage of pocket sales, but did not eliminate their use. 
  • Pocket listings became more common over time, growing substantially after the early 2010s despite industry efforts to curb them. 
  • The discussion highlights the challenges of measuring off-market transactions and the importance of comparing truly comparable properties when conducting housing research. 
  • Rob and Greg debate whether the continued popularity of private sales reflects consumer preference, brokerage incentives, or broader market efficiencies.

Links

Contact Professor Hayunga

Pocket Sales in the Housing Market: Selection, Outcomes and Policy

Connect with Rob and Greg

Rob’s Website 

Greg’s Website 

Watch us on YouTube

Our Sponsors:

Cotality 

Notorious VIP

The Giant Steps Job Board 

Production and Editing Services by Sunbound Studios

ICE [Sponsor]

Doubletake: It’s time to take another look at Paragon Connect

If you haven’t taken a serious look at Paragon Connect lately, you’re making a decision based on outdated information. And in an industry where we love to complain about vendors not keeping up, we should probably hold ourselves to the same standard.

So let’s do a doubletake.

What’s actually changed?

Paragon Connect has become a full-featured, browser-based platform built for how agents actually work today — on any device, without the headaches of legacy desktop installs.

The transition is real — but worth it

Getting agents to update their habits is basically an Olympic sport. But the MLSs that have gone through it will tell you the same thing: the preparation matters more than the platform. Back-end system evaluation, solid documentation, cross-MLS help guides, accreditation-aligned training — do the work upfront and the landing is worth the effort.

The bottom line

Platforms matter. User experience matters. And sticking with “good enough” because the alternative feels risky is how you end up behind the curve.

Paragon Connect has put in the reps. It deserves a fresh set of eyes.

Go take another look. You might surprise yourself.

A field guide to the private listings laws

Anthony Mannino wrote a tidy little explainer over at HousingWire, and if you’ve been trying to keep the state-by-state private listings rules straight, this is the one to bookmark. The laws are piling up. Connecticut just passed one. New York’s bill is almost across the line. Wisconsin and Washington already did it. Hawaii and Illinois are loading up for January.

Mannino sorts the whole mess into three buckets, and the buckets are the useful part.

Washington went with the mandate. List it publicly, period, unless there’s a real safety or privacy reason not to. No form, no signature, no disclosure to bury. Public exposure is just the default.

Connecticut and New York went with the opt-out, with the legislature writing the warning right into the statute. Here’s a taste of Connecticut’s language:

“The Seller understands that foregoing public marketing may reduce competition for the property, may result in fewer offers to purchase the Seller’s property and may adversely impact the final sale price and terms of the sale of the Seller’s property.”

Wisconsin and Illinois also went opt-out, but punted the actual wording to the associations and agencies. Mannino’s point on this is the sharp one. A warning written into law is hard to change. A form drafted by an agency is easy to change, which means it’s also easy to lobby.

And then he asks the question I’ve been asking. Do these opt-out forms actually stop anybody?

“…opt-out forms may prove to be more of a liability protection for brokerages than an impediment to executing a private listing strategy.”

There it is. He calls it “warning fatigue,” and anybody who’s sat at a closing table knows exactly what he means. You hand a seller a stack of agency agreements, consumer notices, and affiliated business disclosures, then slip in one more “the government makes me tell you this” page, and it gets signed with everything else. It doesn’t change behavior. It just protects the brokerage when the seller complains later.

Which is why Washington’s model is the honest one. If you actually believe public marketing is better for sellers, you make it the default and let people opt out for cause. You don’t make sellers initial a warning nobody reads and call it informed consent.

A form you can ignore isn’t a guardrail. It’s a receipt.

Is the MLS Industry Finally Playing Offense on AI?

NorthstarMLS and REcore Introduce Project NexusRE, Giving MLSs and Brokers More Visibility and Control over Listing Data in the AI Era

“The use and misuse by machine based learning platforms is something MLSs have no exposure to.” — Art Carter, CEO of REcore”

For two years the listing data fight has been about distribution. Who gets the feed, who gets cut off, whose listings show up on Zillow. All of it about where the data goes.

Project NexusRE is about what happens after it gets there. Your data leaves the building, disappears into a dozen LLMs, and the MLS has zero visibility into which ones, under what terms, or for whose benefit. NexusRE is pitched as the layer in between. Permissions, usage metering, compliance screening, applied once and enforced everywhere. A toll booth and a security camera for MLS data in the AI era.

I know, “in active development”, is code for “there is still a lot of work to be done”. But I’ve seen some of the tech and excited to see how testing goes this summer.

But here’s the part I’m here for. NorthstarMLS holds the patent. REcore, the company commercializing it, and where I serve as a board member, “can only be owned by brokers and MLS investment.” In a year when Stone Point owns the brokerage, the MLS software, and the transaction stack all at once, that’s not a small detail. This piece can’t get flipped to private equity later.

Everybody else is arguing about who owns the listing. NorthstarMLS and REcore are the first to ask who’s watching what the machines do with it.

About time.

NAR Midyear Toothpaste

The Industry Relations Podcast is now available on your favorite podcast player!

Overview

Rob and Greg recap the 2026 NAR Midyear meetings in Washington, D.C., discussing the changing role of NAR in MLS policy, the ongoing debate around private listings and exclusive inventory, and the varying reactions from MLS leaders across the country. They also examine how brokers, MLSs, and portals are redefining their relationships as the industry continues to grapple with cooperation, consumer access, and listing distribution. Later, they discuss Mike DelPrete’s recent industry webinar and dive into a broader philosophical debate about whether the MLS should function primarily as a professional cooperation platform or a consumer-facing marketing tool.

Key Takeaways

  • Greg shares observations from NAR Midyear, including conversations with MLS leaders about private listings, office exclusives, and broker cooperation.
  • Many MLSs outside major markets are not experiencing the same level of disruption from private listing strategies seen in places like Southern California.
  • Rob and Greg discuss whether MLSs should create listing statuses or tools to accommodate exclusive inventory while preserving cooperation.
  • The conversation explores Zillow’s growing influence in listing policy following NAR’s reduced role in MLS governance.
  • Mike DelPrete’s webinar sparks discussion about the industry’s biggest unresolved questions around private listings and MLS purpose.
  • Rob argues that the MLS should primarily serve as a business-to-business cooperation platform, while Greg challenges that view by emphasizing the MLS’s longstanding consumer-facing role.
  • The episode examines how internet distribution, IDX, and syndication transformed listing marketing and agent behavior over the past two decades.

Connect with Rob and Greg

Rob’s Website 

Greg’s Website 

Watch us on YouTube

Our Sponsors:

Cotality 

Notorious VIP

The Giant Steps Job Board 

Production and Editing Services by Sunbound Studios

Brad

Brad Inman on LinkedIn yesterday…

“After decades on stage, I’m hanging up my public speaking spurs.

It started badly. On a panel in my 20s, I was a nervous California journalist completely outshone by a Sacramento Bee reporter who owned the room.
So I spent the years that followed studying how to do it better — determined never to feel that way again.
I didn’t and I had a lot of fun doing it and teaching others to do it well.

But this cowboy is done.”

The “Latte Vision.” Interviewing Rupert Murdoch, sparring with Gary Keller, and trading quips with Barbara Corcoran. Brad taking the stage to a roar of applause the year a snowstorm (2015?) almost cancelled ICNY.

We made it to New York because, Mother Nature or not, that’s where we wanted to be!

There are certain songs that have been the soundtrack of my life. Brad’s keynotes, interviews, and articles have been the soundtrack of my career. The optimism, the vision, the insights, the prodding for all of us to aim high, try harder, and be good to each other. That’s the soundtrack that keeps rolling in my head.

I started in this industry in the mid-nineties, and I had a front-row seat to watch Brad build one of the most inclusive and incredible communities any business has ever seen. His friendship and mentorship won’t be forgotten, and they continue.

It’s strange he won’t be up on that stage this July. But here’s the thing about a great soundtrack, once it’s in your head, it never really stops playing. Love you pal!

National MLS?

Cameron Paine calls bullshit…

Don’t believe the hype: There is no ‘national MLS’

“If we accept that the role of the MLS is to facilitate a collaborative marketplace of timely, accurate, comprehensive and transparent listing data, how can an MLS legitimately claim to be “national” if it lacks both accuracy (i.e., significant gaps in listing coverage) and comprehensiveness, (i.e., no national listing coverage)? 

Maintaining a high level of data quality and interconnectivity plays a critical role in both data compliance and the contextual placement of listings within the marketplace. The ability of the MLS to understand local market trends and generate accurate market insights, CMAs and statistical data is what makes it far more valuable than a simple ad on a marketing platform. “

Louder, so the people in the back can hear!

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