Early in my career, I lost a listing to an agent who said three words, “World Wide Web,” as a marketing pitch. The seller was smitten with the words.
I had 10 websites in my marketing plan. She had one. But the words echoed beyond the plan I had laid out. The house didn’t sell with that agent. The seller lost time and money.
Those three words have lived in my head for 27 years, because they proved something true then and urgent now: Words matter, and a seller deserves every possible buyer at their door.
Last week, the real estate industry had more movement than it has seen in years. Portals launched pre-market programs. Brokerages signed direct deals. Open letters named names. A major lawsuit was dropped.
And somewhere in the middle of all of it, the consumer got lost in the noise. Let me cut through it.
The MLS was built for the benefit of an open accessible marketplace. That idea is still right. But an idea only works if it is practiced.
What actually happened
Zillow launched Zillow Preview with Keller Williams, REMAX, HomeServices of America, Side and United Real Estate. Coming Soon listings are now publicly visible on Zillow and Trulia to 235 million monthly users.
Compass and Redfin had already announced a deal to display Compass Coming Soon listings on Redfin’s 50 million monthly users, bypassing the MLS entirely. Zillow then dropped its private listing ban. Compass dropped its lawsuit against Zillow the next day.
EXp Realty signed non-exclusive agreements with Realtor.com, Homes.com, and ComeHome.com powered by Google to syndicate Coming Soon listings to all three portals beginning April 15. Non-exclusive. Because we believe the seller deserves every portal, not a favored one.
2 terms. 1 critical difference
A coming-soon listing is a property being prepared for market. The seller wants exposure. The listing is in the MLS, not yet active, not yet showing. When a seller chooses coming soon and wants broad internet visibility, that listing should appear on every public portal available. Not one. Not the portal that cut the best brokerage deal. Every portal.
A private exclusive is a fully informed seller decision to withhold a listing from public view entirely. This may be a public figure, an athlete, a judge: Someone whose safety or privacy requires it. A private exclusive is not a marketing strategy. It is a privacy decision. It is the seller’s right, made with full disclosure of what they are giving up.
These are not the same thing. Treating them as interchangeable is how consumers get confused and how agents get blamed for something they did not do.
Coming soon is about maximum exposure. Private exclusive is about maximum privacy. Both serve the seller. Neither should be exploited by a brokerage to control lead flow.
The ask is direct
To MLS executives and board leadership: Build a coming-soon IDX feed and distribute it to all portals. Less than half of MLSs in the United States do this today. That gap is exactly why brokerages are now building direct connections to Zillow, Redfin, Homes.com and Realtor.com.
You created the vacuum. You can close it. We have a fiduciary duty to our clients; you have a fiduciary duty to all your subscribers and participants. Please serve them all equally.
Enforce your rules equally, for every brokerage, every time. Selective enforcement is not neutral. It is a choice that rewards those who break the rules and penalizes those who follow them. That is how trust dies. And trust is easy to lose and nearly impossible to rebuild.
The MLSs doing this well already exist. They give sellers a genuine menu of choices, enforce the rules consistently and remain the authoritative center of listing data. That is the model every MLS should be moving toward.
The stakes
The United States has the most sophisticated real estate marketplace in the world. The MLS is a central reason for that. No other country has built a system that operates this effectively for the benefit of the buyer and seller. That is worth protecting.
But industry participants are solving the coming-soon problem without the MLS right now, today. Direct feeds are being built. Once they are infrastructure, they do not come back. The MLS that does not act loses relevance; it will not recover.
We are not asking the MLS to pick a side in a portal war. We are asking it to do its job. Open market. Consistent rules. Every listing in front of every qualified buyer.
Not one website. The whole World Wide Web.
Holly Mabery is the Chief Brokerage Officer of eXp Realty. You can connect with her on Instagram.
