eXp Realty’s Coming Soon listings are coming to RealScout, the collaborative home search platform that agreed six weeks ago to carry Zillow Preview listings.
RealScout announced the integration Tuesday in a release shared exclusively with Inman. Once it’s live, buyers working with an agent on RealScout will see eXp’s Coming Soon listings in the search and collaboration tools they already use together.
The companies say the integration should launch later this year but haven’t given a date. RealScout says more than 100,000 real estate professionals have access to its platform.
The deal adds RealScout to a short list of platforms offering both approaches to pre-market listings. Zillow launched Preview in March with Keller Williams, United Real Estate, Side, HomeServices of America and REMAX, initially keeping participating brokerages’ Coming Soon listings on Zillow and Trulia before extending them to Realtor.com in May.
Zillow Preview listings will come to RealScout later this year, letting buyers who work with agents on the co-shopping platform see pre-market homes inside the same search they already use, without switching agents or brokerages.
The listings will be labeled within the agent-client relationship and replaced by the active MLS listing once the preview period ends, building on RealScout’s existing integration with Zillow’s Follow Up Boss CRM.
eXp Realty announced in March that, starting April 15, its agents could send Coming Soon listings to Homes.com, Realtor.com and ComeHome.com through Zenlist, subject to local MLS rules, on a non-exclusive basis that lets any portal receive them on equal terms.
The deal came a day after Zillow launched Preview and followed Compass’ Coming Soon partnership with Redfin in late February, part of a broader pre-marketing and private listing push that also includes Howard Hanna’s HannaList.
“A seller’s home deserves every buyer it can reach. Not some. Every one,” said Leo Pareja, CEO of AGNT, in a statement. “Bringing our Coming Soon listings to RealScout puts them right inside the conversation between agents and their clients, earlier in the search. More eyes, sooner, means more fair outcomes for our sellers.”
Andrew Flachner
RealScout is pitching itself as the place where that scattered inventory comes back together.
“As more homes become available to buyers through different channels and at different stages, our job is to help bring that market together,” said Andrew Flachner, co-founder and CEO of RealScout. “Every new source we connect should make the search simpler for agents and their clients. Bringing eXp’s Coming Soon listings into RealScout is another step in that direction.”
The release doesn’t say how many eXp Coming Soon listings will flow into RealScout, or how many RealScout users are eXp agents. eXp now operates under parent company AGNT Inc. (Nasdaq: AGNT), following its May acquisition of NextHome.
‘Alongside the MLS, not instead of it’
Flachner told Inman on Tuesday that the eXp deal shouldn’t be confused with private-listing networks MLS advocates have criticized.
“These aren’t off-MLS listings. eXp’s Coming Soon still go into the MLS,” Flachner said. “But not every MLS is set up to share Coming Soon listings with platforms like ours, so many buyers never see them until they go active. Partnering directly with eXp closes that gap. Our strategy hasn’t changed: give agents and their clients access to as much of the market as possible, alongside the MLS, not instead of it.”
When a buyer finds an eXp Coming Soon in RealScout, they flag interest from the listing, and their agent handles the rest.
“Showings and offers on Coming Soon homes follow local MLS rules, which vary by market, so the agent guides their client through when and how a home can be seen,” Flachner said. “That’s by design: the agent stays at the center of the relationship.”
Flachner wouldn’t put a number on how many eXp listings will show up in RealScout, calling it too early. He also didn’t give a firm launch date for either the eXp or the Zillow Preview integration. He said only that both are still coming and are part of the same push to show buyers more of the market through the agent they already work with.
‘Several housing markets instead of 1’
The deal lands amid a fight over who controls pre-market inventory. Compass’s arrangement with Rocket puts its Coming Soon listings on Redfin under terms reported as mutually exclusive, and those listings don’t have to follow MLS rules there.
Brokerages in Zillow Preview agreed not to send their Coming Soon listings to other portals, though Zillow itself has since syndicated Preview to Realtor.com and now RealScout. eXp has positioned itself as the open alternative, saying any portal can take its Coming Soons on equal terms. RealScout now has a pipe into two of those camps. Flachner says that’s the point.
“The risk is that we end up with several housing markets instead of one,” he said. “A buyer misses the right home because it was only shown inside a network their agent isn’t part of. A seller gets less because fewer buyers saw the home. And agents spend their time chasing inventory instead of serving their clients.”
He said no single platform can fix that. It depends on brokerages and MLSs choosing to cooperate, and “this week shows more of them are.”
“Our job,” Flachner told Inman, “is to make sure that when they do, those listings show up in the one place agents and their clients already search together.”
