One of the nation’s largest brokerages called on its hometown multiple listing service to join other large MLSs and allow agents to pre-market listings with coming-soon status.
Most of the nation’s largest multiple listing services allow coming soon pre-marketing. But two exceptions include Seattle-based Northwest MLS and Utah Real Estate.
That should change, Joe Rath, head of industry relations at Rocket, said in an op-ed on Thursday specifically targeting NWMLS.
“Redfin supports a seller’s choice in how their property is marketed, including premarketing to test pricing and demand,” Rath wrote. “But home sellers in Seattle don’t have this choice because Northwest MLS (NWMLS), the region’s multiple listing service, currently prohibits all premarketing.”
Rath called on NWMLS to change its policy and allow agents to pre-market properties.
The call to action strikes at the heart of a roiling debate, involving some of the largest companies in real estate, over how properties are marketed.
That debate boiled over when Compass and Rocket, which owns Redfin, announced a partnership. The partnership will see Compass coming-soon listings prominently displayed on Redfin’s platform. Redfin agents also market their coming-soon listings on the platform in markets allowing that status.
That partnership provided Compass agents with an option to move forward pre-marketing listings despite the threat of being banned from view on Zillow, the nation’s largest real estate search portal.
Within weeks, Zillow, Realtor.com and Homes.com each rolled out partnerships of their own that involved pre-marketing listings.
Meanwhile, various states are passing new laws that require broad public marketing of real estate listings. Washington recently enacted its own law, which takes effect June 1.
Rath wrote that Redfin believes the platform’s policy complies with the new law because coming soon listings on the site are available to the tens of millions of consumers viewing the platform each month.
“At Redfin, we believe the law clearly supports premarketing as long as the listing is publicly marketed and the seller consents. That means a home can be shared on a publicly available platform, like Redfin.com, where any buyer or agent can view it freely.”
That leaves NWMLS as the remaining impediment blocking agents in that region from pre-marketing listings in a coming-soon status.
NWMLS declined to comment for this story. But NWMLS CEO Justin Haag laid out his views in a recent interview with Inman.
“We don’t have a coming-soon status — we never have,” Haag told Inman in a recent interview. “Coming soon is arguably a misrepresentation because you’re telling consumers that this house is coming soon to the market when really you can buy it today, which is arguably a misrepresentation. So it’s not coming soon, it’s already for sale.”
“When all the listings are in one place, you can look at all the comps, you can look at all the prior sales, you can look at all the current listings, and the professional can provide advice on how to price that property with a complete database,” Haag added. “That’s the best way to do it.”
NWMLS is an outlier
Inman tapped Claude AI to scan through the policies of MLSs serving over 1 million real estate professionals in the U.S.
The findings show that most MLSs allow some sort of a coming-soon status. Each MLS sets its own policies covering whether agents can show homes, length of time the listing can stay in that status, whether public marketing is allowed and more.
UtahRealEstate.com, the MLS covering most of Utah outside of Park City, has had an active no-show status that allows properties to be marketed for a day before being added to the MLS. But the MLS told Inman that it will soon roll out a new coming-soon status for agents.
“Our new Coming Soon status will not show DOM until the listing becomes active and ready for showings,” Dallon Holloway, UtahRealEstate’s chief marketing officer, told Inman.
After that change takes effect, that will leave NWMLS on a lonely island.
