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As the real estate industry continues to grapple with how to handle private listings, a pair of documents Inman has obtained reveals that Anywhere is pushing for changes that would loosen NAR’s Clear Cooperation Policy.
Meanwhile, Compass on Thursday reiterated its own call for change and promised to help multiple listing services that don’t enforce the rule.
The Anywhere documents include a letter and email, containing mostly the same text, from Caitlin McCrory, the company’s vice president and head of industry relations. In the documents, McCrory states that “NAR should have fewer mandatory rules and loosen restrictions on MLSs and industry participants.” She also states that Clear Cooperation “can be unduly restrictive.”
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McCrory ultimately goes on to ask that the National Association of Realtors consider two things: First, the elimination “of restrictions on co-mingling of MLS and non-MLS listings, even as an optional rule”; and second, the scaling back of “the Clear Cooperation Rule so that sellers, agents, and alternative providers have a broader range of marketing and service options.”
NAR adopted Clear Cooperation in 2019 in an effort to crack down on “pocket listings,” or listings that aren’t advertised or available to the general public. The rule requires agents to upload listings to their NAR-affiliated MLS within one day of marketing those listings.
However, McCrory argues in the Anywhere documents in favor of replacing the one-day requirement with a longer time period “that extends for at least a few weeks.” She also floats, among other proposals, the idea of “lessening the requirement that 100 percent of listings be entered into the MLS.”
Anywhere declined to comment on the documents when reached Thursday by Inman. The email is dated Sept. 17, 2024. The letter does not include a date.
In pushing for change, the company joins other entities such as Compass and The Agency which are also putting pressure on NAR over Clear Cooperation. Both Compass CEO Robert Reffkin and The Agency CEO Mauricio Umansky have called for an end to the rule. Anywhere doesn’t go so far, asking NAR instead to loosen the policy and give industry members more flexibility.
However, the complaint that Clear Cooperation is overly restrictive and that there should be greater “consumer choice”— a term McCrory uses in her letter — generally underlies calls for NAR to take action on the issue.
Reffkin, in particular, has been vocal about Clear Cooperation and on Thursday reiterated a call for change via an Instagram post. Among other things, he argued in the post that with “Clear Cooperation removed, MLSs will need to earn” the business of agents and consumers.
“This will result in MLSs needing to ask agents and homeowners what they can do to make the MLS a better place to list,” Reffkin continued. “Homeowners will ask for options to reduce the risk of MLS exposure — no days on market, no price drop history, no price, no address, no syndication to aggregators that divert buyer inquiries away from their listing agents — all features that Compass Private Exclusives offer based on homeowner feedback.”
Reffkin also promised in the Instagram post to support MLSs that don’t enforce Clear Cooperation. That support will include a data feed of Compass listings, he said, as well as requests to other brokerages that they provide similar data feeds. Compass will also help multiple listing services “expand to other markets where MLSs are enforcing Clear Cooperation.”
Asked Thursday about Anywhere’s proposal to modify Clear Cooperation, Reffkin said that “although I would prefer a policy that replaces the one-day listing requirement with 60 days as the DOJ has publicly asked NAR to do, I support Anywhere’s recommendation to move it to ‘at least a few weeks.’”
Reffkin’s mention of the DOJ refers to a July 29, 2020, letter from a U.S. Department of Justice attorney to a lawyer representing NAR. In the letter, the DOJ attorney proposes two modifications to the Clear Cooperation rule: extending “from one business day to sixty days the time by which listing brokers must submit listings to the MLS”; and eliminating “the exception to the Clear Cooperation Policy for ‘office exclusives.’”
Reffkin also told Inman that he applauds “Anywhere for advocating for homeowner rights.”
Clear Cooperation has lately become one of the real estate industry’s most-debated issues. Earlier this month, NAR’s MLS Technology and Emerging Issues Advisory Board took the rule under consideration during a meeting.
McCrory’s letter outlining Anywhere’s views on Clear Cooperation is addressed to members of that same board.
In an email to Inman Wednesday, NAR said board members at the meeting “weighed a wide range of perspectives including buyers, sellers, and real estate professionals, as well as fair housing principles, as they considered how to best meet these evolving stakeholder needs.”
However, no action has yet been taken.
It remains to be seen what NAR might do. But it is clear already that exclusive listings are increasingly becoming a battleground in real estate. Earlier this week, for example, Side announced that it is debuting its own private listing network. Compass, too, has long touted listings that are only available via its “Private Exclusives” program.
Other companies, including Howard Hanna, Opendoor and more, also have programs that offer exclusive listings only available via their agents or sites. Such networks avoid running afoul of Clear Cooperation by making listings “office exclusives,” or listings that are only promoted internally at real estate companies — which is allowed under the rule. But the proliferation of such networks suggests a growing interest in some parts of the industry in leveraging listings that are not available via MLSs.