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As the debate over the National Association of Realtors’ Clear Cooperation Policy rages, one of its supporters, Zillow, has released a report detailing the money private market homesellers have left on the table over the past two years.
Homesellers who privately listed their homes have collectively lost $1 billion since 2023, as these listings typically sold for 1.5 percent less than homes listed on the MLS. That 1.5 percent difference shakes out to an average loss of $4,975. The sales price gap is even wider for minority homesellers, Zillow said.
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Homesellers in majority-minority neighborhoods lost an average of 3.2 percent ($9,851), while homesellers in majority-Black neighborhoods lost an average of 3.1 percent ($5,576). Homesellers in majority-Hispanic neighborhoods experienced the heaviest losses, with the typical privately-listed home selling for 4.0 percent ($13,728) less than the typical on-MLS listing.
Meanwhile, homesellers in majority-white non-Hispanic neighborhoods experienced the smallest gap, with their homes selling 1.2 percent — or $3,694 — less than homes listed on the MLS.
The report is based on 2.72 million transactions in 2023 and 2024, with privately listed sales categorized as homes that were on the MLS for at most one day before being reported pending or closed and had the same agent or agents within the same office representing the buyers and sellers. The report also includes off-MLS listings, which were never published to a public MLS after being privately listed but that had a previous sale logged in an MLS to verify property details.
New construction homes, foreclosure sales, auction sales, non-arms-length transactions, bank/corporate/government acquisitions, invalid quitclaims, and outlier sale prices (below $10,000 or above $10 million) were excluded from the analysis.
“Zillow survey data shows that Hispanic and Black homesellers are more often guided toward listing their homes privately by agents,” the report states. “Among home sellers who worked with an agent to list their home, 74 percent of Hispanic sellers and 73 percent of Black sellers said their agent recommended listing on a private listing network, compared to just 24 percent of white sellers.”
“These trends underscore how selling off the MLS can cause sellers to miss out on the full potential of their housing wealth, particularly in communities of color,” it continued. “These communities may also miss out on opportunities for homeownership when homes for sale are only available to a select group rather than publicly available to all potential buyers. It is especially critical that buyers see all homes for sale in an inventory-constrained market like today’s, where there are 26 percent fewer homes for sale than before the pandemic.”
Zillow has been one of CCP’s strongest proponents, with leaders at the portal upholding the policy’s value to fair housing law. Former Zillow President Susan Daimler and Zillow Chief Industry Development Officer Errol Samuelson both told Inman that CCP is key to creating a more equitable housing market for homesellers and homebuyers of color, who don’t experience the same outcomes as their white counterparts in the private market.
“What this comes down to fundamentally is doing right by both sellers and buyers,” Samuelson told Inman in November. “There’s pretty clear evidence and lots of research that demonstrates that when sellers have the most exposure for their listings, they achieve the two main goals that sellers have, which is number one, get the best price. And number two, sell within their desired timeframe. When you restrict the audience and the competition for your listing, it’s harder to do those two things.”
“When you put a listing into a private network, sellers get hurt. Private networks, or ‘pocket listings,’ are also bad for buyers. We’ve always believed in transparency at Zillow, and when listings sit behind a velvet rope in a private network, the only way that a buyer can get access to those listings is by being forced to work with the brokerages operating that network,” he added. “It reduces that buyer’s choice. They may have an agent they’ve known for a long time, an agent they enjoy working with, who they click with and now they can’t work with that agent if they aren’t at the brokerage that operates the private network.”
Although many brokerage and portal leaders have sided with Zillow, there’s an equally vocal faction of industry members who say CCP is anti-competitive and restricts homesellers’ ability to choose how they want to sell their homes. Compass Co-founder and CEO Robert Reffkin has been the loudest opponent of the rule and argued that CCP forces agents to put listings on the MLS where so-called negative insights — such as days on market and price drops — can be tracked and distributed to portal sites. Buyers who frequent those sites, he said, could be led to submit lower offers based on those metrics.
“These data points impact how buyers perceive the negotiating position of the seller, and this risk should be disclosed in detail,” Reffkin said in an October 2024 Inman op-ed. “It is well known that if a property is on the market too long or experiences multiple price reductions, buyers may assume something is wrong with the home or that the seller is desperate. This can ultimately result in a lower sale price of the home.”
“…Current MLS rules don’t allow agents to provide homeowners the needed flexibility to test price privately,” he added. “This risk and loss of seller choice should be fully disclosed.”
The battle over CCP has escalated in recent weeks as NAR announced it would come to a final decision on the policy in March.
Michael Ketchmark of Ketchmark & McCreight, the attorney behind the Sitzer | Burnett and ongoing Gibson buyer-broker commission cases, said he’s watching NAR’s decision on CCP, which he said stifles the free market. Ketchmark denied rumors he’d sue NAR over CCP, noting the Association has “upheld their end of the bargain.” However, he said he’d pursue depositions against brokers who vote to keep CCP with “anti-competitive goals in mind.”
Ketchmark’s statement seemed to shift the tides in favor of CCP’s opponents; however, the US Department of Justice’s statement on CCP within a footnote in the Nosalek case has given supporters a second wind. The DOJ said the policy isn’t anticompetitive by itself, but in specific scenarios, such as on non-NAR governed MLSs that still allow cooperative compensation on the MLS, the DOJ might view CCP in a less favorable light.
“And that would make logical sense because the policy in itself is designed to protect sellers and buyers from behaviors that could potentially harm them,” NextHome CEO James Dwiggins told Inman of the DOJ statement.
“It protects sellers from not being on the greatest marketplace in the world that helps them get the highest price, and it protects buyers from fair housing issues,” Dwiggins added. “That’s fundamentally what CCP is about. So I’m very, very happy that the DOJ put this statement out. It changes the narrative very quickly here.”
