There is a word being used right now to scare real estate professionals into surrendering their judgment and independence.
That word is private.
It’s being used like magicians use abracadabra, hoping nobody notices what the other hand is doing. We’re told private listings will harm consumers and undermine fair housing. That they are the “dark pools” of real estate.
It sounds serious. But it’s a sham.
While you’re looking at the word “private,” the other hand is quietly transferring control of an entire profession from the people who do the work and the clients who pay the check, to a handful of institutions that own neither the homes nor the careers, but would very much like to keep telling both how to behave.
Strip away the rhetoric and this debate isn’t about hidden homes or consumers or fair housing. It is about who gets to decide how American homes are marketed. Two answers exist, and only two. Either the homeowner who paid for the house, and the local professional the homeowner trusts, get to decide. Or the MLSs, NAR, and the big home search portals get to decide.
It’s really that simple. Anyone telling you otherwise is pulling an abracadabra on you.
Nobody is hiding anything
I don’t know a single agent, broker, or company in this debate who wants to hide listings from buyers. Not one.
The fight isn’t about whether buyers learn about or have access to see a home. It’s about how, when and through what channels the home reaches them. That is a craft question, a judgment call that has belonged for 100 years to the seller and the local expert that seller hired. Calling that “private” is like calling a Ferrari launch “secretive” because the car isn’t parked at the corner gas station the day it’s announced.
The word they don’t want you to use
They want you focusing on the word “private.” They don’t want you realizing it’s actually “control.”
Already, the MLS dictates what must not appear in your photos (your face, your sign or anything identifying you as the agent), which photo must lead (the front exterior), what the description can’t do (identify you, point to a property website, or include a call to action) and what fields must be filled out.
It fines you if you don’t surrender the listing within one business day of any marketing activity. Now read that list back and tell me, with a straight face, that this debate isn’t really about control.
Who works for whom?
Here is a question every real estate professional in America should ask this week. Who pays the check that funds the industry?
The answer hasn’t changed in 100 years. The seller does. List side. Buy side. In most transactions, all of it comes out of the seller’s proceeds. Without the seller’s home and the listing agent’s work, the MLS, Zillow, Realtor.com and NAR don’t exist. They are vendors and trade groups. Useful ones, in some cases. But vendors all the same.
There is no other industry in America where the vendors get to dictate to the people who own the product, and to the professionals those owners hire, exactly how the product may be marketed. Imagine telling a homebuilder which brochures she may print. It would be absurd. Yet, in real estate we’ve quietly accepted exactly that arrangement, and we’re now told that questioning it makes us enemies of the consumer.
Rob Hahn was right
Rob Hahn made the most honest observation in this entire debate, and almost nobody on the other side wants to engage with it. If you really want to know what is best for consumers, take down the rules. All of them. Let agents and brokers experiment. Let some sell every home on every portal from minute one. Let others build private buyer networks and run a strategic launch. Let buyers and sellers vote with their wallets. Whichever approach wins, wins, because it actually delivered for the people paying the bill.
We already have oversight
Real estate professionals don’t need the MLS or Zillow or NAR to police them. We already have an authority for that, in every single state, the real estate licensing and oversight authority. All 50 states have one, and every one of them has, as its number one statutory mission, the protection of the public.
Agents who misrepresent properties, double-cross clients, discriminate or violate fiduciary duty get investigated, fined, suspended or stripped of their license. That is where professional accountability lives. With the government, where it belongs. Not with a vendor.
On fair housing
In addition to having personally listed and sold thousands of homes, I am a real estate attorney. I take fair housing seriously, and so does every reputable agent and broker I know.
Fair housing law prohibits discrimination based on race, color, religion, national origin, sex, disability and familial status. It does not require any specific marketing channel. It never has. Conflating a strategic marketing decision with a fair housing violation isn’t a legal argument. It’s a rhetorical bomb dropped to end conversations.
If a homeowner says, “Greg, I want you to list my home, but first offer it to my neighbors and a few people in my circle who I know would love it,” that is the homeowner’s right. No buyer in America has a moral, legal or constitutional claim on any particular house.
Only one side can win
This debate has only one ending. Either the institutions consolidate their grip and write the rules from here forward, in which case your judgment as a professional, and your client’s right to choose, become whatever they decide. Or the professionals and their clients reclaim that authority, and the institutions return to being what they were meant to be: useful tools, hired and fired at the discretion of the people they serve.
There is no version where both happen. The MLSs and portals aren’t asking for a seat at the table. They already have one. They are asking for the table itself.
Greg Hague is a 50-year real estate veteran and attorney. He is the founder of 72SOLD and was recently appointed Director of Home Sales Strategy for the Compass International Holdings family of real estate brands.
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of HousingWire’s editorial department and its owners.
To contact the editor responsible for this piece: tracey@hwmedia.com