Real estate pros have let tech platforms and restrictive policies chip away at agent value for too long, coach Darryl Davis writes. Let the people who earn the listing own the lead.

This May marks Inman’s sixth annual Agent Appreciation Month. Look for profiles of top producers, opinions on the current state of the industry and tangible takeaways you can implement in your career today. Plus, the prestigious Future Leaders of Real Estate return this month, too.

For far too long, we’ve allowed one of the most essential rights in real estate to be quietly stripped away — the right of the listing agent to advertise their own listing.

The right to put your name, your phone number and your email address on your listing — the listing you earned through your relationships, hustle, and investment of time and money — is being blocked by outdated MLS rules that no longer serve today’s agents or today’s consumers.

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Attention listing agents: The listing is your product

In real estate, the hardest part of the job isn’t showing homes, it’s not paperwork, it’s not negotiating contracts. The hardest part of this business is getting the listing.

Getting a listing takes skill, marketing, trust-building, negotiation and follow-through. It’s where most of your time and energy is spent — and when you finally get that listing, it becomes your product to manage, market and move.

Crucially, it’s also how you grow your business. Every listing should be a springboard to new leads, referrals, open house visitors, social media exposure, neighborhood mailers and, yes, future listings.

Yet somehow, that listing of your product has been turned into a pipeline for Zillow’s business, not yours.

How did we get here?

That’s a good question, right? Somewhere along the way, we allowed MLSs to implement rules that forbid agents from putting their contact information in the listing photos — even in the very last photo. This is despite it being the one logical, unobtrusive spot where a consumer could simply see, “Hey, here’s the agent who’s actually representing this home.”

Instead, that same listing gets syndicated out to Zillow, Realtor.com and other portals where the listing agent’s contact information is either removed entirely or buried in small print. Yes, Zillow does include the listing agent’s info. But let’s be real, unless you know exactly where to look (or pay for a premium showcase spot), it’s easy to miss. Most consumers never find it.

Meanwhile, the top of the page? Reserved for agents who paid to be there — even if they’ve never seen the property, never met the seller and couldn’t pick the house out of a lineup. In essence, the lead generated by your listing is auctioned off to the highest bidder, while your role as the actual expert is minimized — if not erased altogether.

But it gets even worse. If you’ve ever clicked through a photo gallery on one of those sites, you’ve probably noticed that the last slide is often an ad. Not for the listing agent. Not even for a brokerage. But for a home inspector. Or a mortgage lender. Or a title company. In other words, a completely unrelated vendor who paid to be there.

So, let’s just break this down:

  • You hustle to get the listing
  • You upload the photos
  • You follow all the rules, and the MLS syndicates your listing
  • Zillow hides your name
  • Then, Zillow sells your leads from your listing to a competing agent.
  • Finally, it monetizes your listing with ads you didn’t approve, can’t control and don’t get paid for

Let that sink in. You’re not allowed to advertise yourself on your own listing … but Zillow can.

Now, should the listing agent get a cut of that ad revenue like YouTube does for its members? Maybe — but OK, we’ll acknowledge that could get messy. But at the very least, can we agree that the listing agent should be entitled to run one free ad for themselves, on their own listing?

It’s your listing. It’s your client. It should be your face on the final slide, not some random vendor’s. This isn’t just unfair. It’s absurd.

Let me know if you want that logic repeated in the call to action, too.

This hurts consumers, too

It’s not just agents who are harmed by this system. Let’s not forget the homeowners — the very people we serve.

When a potential buyer sees a home online and is funneled to a third-party agent who knows nothing about the property, who’s really being served? Is it the buyer who has to play telephone tag through a middleman? Is it the seller who loses out because an agent not familiar with their home is taking over the buyer lead?

No. The only one served in that equation is the portal profiting off the lead.

Consumers deserve transparency. They deserve to know who is actually representing the home — and to have the freedom to contact that agent directly. Anything less is deceptive by design.

Zillow can handle it

Let me be clear — I’m not here to be anti-Zillow. Of course, if you’ve followed me at all, you know I have strong opinions about Zillow. However, this article is less anti-Zillow and more pro-Realtor.

Would this strategy hurt Zillow? I think so, but honestly, it’ll be fine. We shouldn’t worry about Zillow. It has spent years acquiring vendor platforms in our industry, from ShowingTime to Follow Up Boss. It’s got the infrastructure, the money and the talent to adapt. It’ll be fine.

They can find another way to generate revenue that doesn’t involve hijacking the leads meant for the agent who did all the work.

A stronger industry

Beyond the individual agent and consumer, there’s a larger impact on the industry as a whole. There’s been a lot of noise lately — lawsuits, new rules, finger-pointing between brokerages — and underneath it all is one very real concern: How do we make this industry stronger, not weaker?

One could argue that our old model of advertising a buyer agent commission on the MLS propped up weaker agents. The idea that buyer agents didn’t need to negotiate or prove their value to earn a paycheck because the commission was already baked in when the listing agent took the listing. There was no performance pressure, no reason to sharpen skills or hustle harder.

But here’s the truth: The strongest agents in this industry are almost always the ones who list homes. Because that’s the hardest part of our industry. It’s the heavy lift. Building inventory, winning trust, marketing the property — that’s what separates most of the long-haulers from the rest.

Therefore, if more buyer calls went directly to listing agents — the agents who earned the listing — then more sales would naturally flow through the agents best equipped to handle them. That means higher standards, stronger service and, ultimately, a better experience for buyers and sellers alike.

Furthermore, it also cools down the constant infighting we’ve been seeing around the Clear Cooperation Policy (CCP) and office exclusives. Some pro-CCP voices argue that opponents are just trying to do more in-house deals to double-dip on commission. But if listing agents could freely advertise and directly receive buyer interest, without having to hide or delay the listing from the MLS, then in-house sales would increase organically, without breaking the rules or damaging public trust.

In short: Letting listing agents advertise themselves strengthens the entire system. It rewards skill. It supports transparency. It upholds fairness. And it moves us one step closer to rebuilding a fractured industry.

So, what can we do?

Given these significant issues and the potential for a stronger industry, it’s time for us — the professionals who built this industry — to stand up and push back.

Here’s what you can do right now:

  • Contact your MLS and demand that listing agents be allowed to include their name, phone and email in the final listing photo.
  • Talk about it on social; use your voice. Share your story. Let the public know how this impacts them, too.
  • Support your fellow agents: When you see someone bringing attention to this issue, amplify it. We need each other.

We’ve let tech platforms and restrictive policies chip away at our value for too long. It’s time to take back our industry. Let the people who earn the listing own the lead.

Darryl Davis is the CEO of Darryl Davis Seminars. Connect with him on Facebook or YouTube

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