Dishin' Dirt on How Private Listing Networks Caused a Crazy Week in Real Estate

In this episode of Dishin' Dirt, I discuss the recent controversies surrounding Private Listing Networks (PLNs) in the real estate industry. I examine the negative implications of PLNs on market transparency and consumer choice, while showing how the PLN primarily serve brokerage interests rather than those of sellers. 

Plus, breaking bad news from Britian that needs addressing immediately. 

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Gary

* Gary serves on the South Carolina Real Estate Commission as a Commissioner. The opinions expressed herein are his opinions and are not necessarily the opinions of the SC Real Estate Commission. This podcast is not to be considered legal advice. Please consult an attorney in your area.    

Transcript

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This is Dish and Dirt with Gary Pickering, South Carolina's only podcast dedicated to the real estate agent craft. And now the host of Dish and Dirt, Gary Pickering. And great, welcome back, everyone, to another episode of Dish and Dirt. I'm your often opinionated, rarely wrong host, Gary Pickering, coming to you from the beautiful downtown Columbia, South Carolina offices of Blair, Keto, Pickering, Cashellon, this, the fourth week of April 2025. I hope everybody enjoyed your Easter last week and had a safe and fun time with your family. And do appreciate your indulgence of me not having an episode last week, but we are back at it again this week with another great episode of Dish and Dirt. Before I start, I do want to give a shout out to my real good realtor friend named Tim down in Hilton Head. He hosted me and my son Benjamin at the Heritage on Friday. We had a wonderful time, enjoyed the Heritage, wonderful golf term, and they did an excellent job down in Hilton Head. Andy Novick, who is a Waffle graduate, where I obviously went to school, lost in a playoff to Justin Thomas. Don't fret, he still received over$2 million in the payout for coming in second place. So not a bad second place to win if you don't win first place there. Now, most of y'all probably missed it. Last week in real estate was one of the craziest and most eventful weeks in real estate since Sensor Burnett. It was an absolute crazy week. We had all kinds of stuff going on. Lines were drawn in the sand. Big names were coming out against other big names in the industry, making all kinds of comments. We even had an MLS cut off the IDX feed for one of the biggest, if not the biggest, brokerage in the country. Things got really, really nasty. So today, what we're going to do, we're going to talk about this, and it all relates to these private listing networks, also known as PLNs. It's kind of a workaround to the clear cooperation policy, and it got real nasty. So we're going to talk about what happened with Zillow, Redfin, and a lot of others. There's a lot to go over there. But before we start that topic, there was some real disturbing news that came out of Britain yesterday. And I do want to talk about this. This is what the headline says: no Gary's left in Britain by 2050. Apparently, it appears the name Gary, which, by the way, in the 1940s and 1950s in the United States, was a top 10 name for baby boys. Kid you not. According to this article, there are no Britons named Gary since 1992. Now, apparently that article overstated this tremendous problem. There were actually 28 Gary's in 2013, and 19 babies last year in the UK were named Gary as well. But the big problem is in the United States, as big as a country as this is, there was only 450 babies named Gary in 2013. So this is a definite bad, scary trend that's happening for sure. Now, obviously, as you would expect, the outcry on Instagram was instant and huge. One commenter said the name of the next royal family member should be Gary. Think about this. Prince Gary, King Gary III. I couldn't agree more. One person said, I would only have a child simply to name it Gary, boy or girl. Another good comment. Don't say that. I simply can't cope without another Gary. My personal favorite was make Gary Great Again. Now, some people are blaming Spongebob SquarePants. Apparently they have a character on there named Gary. He's not a good character. Other people in Britain were saying it's really Gary Glitter. That's the 70s disco-esque type singer who had that rock song called Rock and Roll Parts 1 and 2. You hear it all the basketball arenas, it goes dun-da-dun-un, hey, da-da-da. That's the song. But he got arrested a couple years ago for child porn. So that kind of soured the name Gary in Britain for a couple years. Regardless, the name Gary, as y'all probably already know this, is English Germanic, means bold spear, means sharp-witted. I think they really meant smart ass. But why should you consider in 2025 naming your child Gary to stop this terrible trend? Well, you've got to look at the greatest Gary's of all time. You've got Gary Player, who won all four majors in golf. Gary Payton, famous NBA basketball player. Of course, what you're talking about, Willis, you've got Gary Coleman. Who could ever forget Gary Coleman? Gary Boosie or Bussey, however you want to pronounce his name, the psycho, you know, the guy who's an actor. Gary Sinise, Lieutenant Diane from Forrest Gump, also very big supporter of the military. But my personal favorite, Gary Cole. Sole reason you should name your child Gary, Gary Cole. He played Ricky Bobby's dad in Talladega Nights, but most importantly, his name was Bill Lumberg in office base. That's the guy that would walk up and go, yeah, um, Peter, I'm gonna have to ask you to come in this weekend. Bill Lumberg, one of the greatest character actors of all time. So if that's not reason enough to name Gary, I don't know what it is. So if you are considering a child's name in 2025 or 2026, save the Gary. Personally, I name my child Benjamin. All right, now let's talk about our topic. After we had this huge fight over the last couple of months about CCP, we thought it was all settled when NAR came out with their new policy. But after that, and even before that, several brokers started rolling out this program called the Private Listing Network, the PLN. It was basically marketing the properties in-house to themselves, to their own agents, so they could keep the listings in-house and get both sides of the product of the transaction. PLNs are basically the same old trick of trying to get both sides. That's all it is. But they're trying to do it now under the guise of quote unquote consumer choice. Make no mistake about it, guys. The real reason for a PLN is not consumer choice. Nothing to do with that. Not to ensure compliance with your fiduciary duties that you owe your clients or your sellers. It's not about getting the best deal you possibly can for your clients. It's not about getting the most money for your seller. It's a brazen money grab by your brokerage to try to get both sides of the transaction. It is what it is. Call spade is fake. That's exactly what it is. I've said it before, I will say it again, I will say it forever. Your business model requires you to create PLNs or JVs or ancillary programs to survive. You've got a bad business model. And unfortunately, it seems more and more what we're seeing in real estate bad business models. But today the issue is the PLN. It's just like JVs, just like ancillary services. There's going to be some broker out there that says, hey, please don't say anything about it. We have a PLN. It's kind of embarrassing when you talk about it. My question is, are we not supposed to notice what you're doing? And that's what it seems to me is don't call the spade a spade. Don't notice what we're doing. Just let us do it and don't call us out on it. I don't like it any more than you do. I want to be clear, I'm not calling any brand out specifically. I'm not talking about you specifically. I'm complaining about what certain companies are doing that are bad for consumers against their fiduciary duty to their consumer. My question for you is instead of complaining to me and asking me not to say anything about it because you're embarrassed you have one, how about come on here and try to defend the position? Because the question is very simple. Here is the question I want every one of you to think about this. Is there ever a situation where only a select group of buyers should have access to the property? Let that sink in. Is there ever a situation where only one select group of buyers should have access to the property? And if so, how do you get to decide who those select buyers are? I'm sorry, but there simply is never a situation where only a select group of buyers should have access. And it is beyond disingenuous for somebody to try to claim that it's about consumer choice. It is not about consumer choice. Show me the consumer out there that's not interested in making the most money for the seller of their home. Show me the seller, the consumer out there who would say, I'll take 16% less on the sell of my house so I don't have to put on the MLS. Now, 16% is a big number, but when you take 16% of three, four, five hundred thousand dollars, it gets to be a massive number. Again, considering most people don't have 16% equity in their house. It's almost all of their equity, if not more. In fact, I would like to see the agent who would sell their house without trying to get it in front of the most people by putting on the MLS. Who sells their house privately? Who tries to do that to make less money? The reality is brokerages create PLNs, exclusive listings, all these little fancy names you want to come up with for one reason and one reason only. And so they can get both sides of the transaction. To try to claim otherwise is a farce. Again, your inability to run a profitable business shouldn't be done on the back of your consumer, particularly your sellers. Do you believe you have a fiduciary duty to your seller client or not? That's it. Is it your job to do what's in the best interest of your client or do what's in the best interest of your brokerage? We have this test called the giggle test in the legal world. If you can say it without giggling, we'll listen to you. I can't see how anybody can possibly say with a straight face without giggling that having office exclusives, PLNs, is consumer choice and is the best for the consumer. It simply is absurd. It's not in the best interest of the seller to limit the number of eyes on the house. It is in the best interest of the seller to shop it to the most eyes, the most number of people in the market, and not to limit that. So what happened last week with the PLNs? It's like, all right, we've been kind of talking about CCP for a long time. What are PLNs and why all of a sudden are we talking about? Well, first salvo happened last week between COMPASS and Northwest MLS. According to MN News, the conflict began last March when Compass CEO Robert Refkin criticized the NW MLS. He described it on Instagram as uniquely restrictive. Now, this is the same Compass who fought to try to eliminate clear cooperation under the guise of consumer choice because, you know, all consumers are more interested in the Compass agents getting both sides of the transaction than they are on getting the most money of the house. But what the Washington-based Northwest MLS did in response was they shut down Compass's IDX feed over this conflict with the PLNs. Now, it has been restored as of last Thursday. In a statement to Emmanuel on Thursday, the NW MLS indicated the suspension was absolutely intentional, and it was in direct response to Compass's use of privately marketed listings. The MLS disallows these, but they say it is a core part of COMPASS's current marketing strategy. The suspension was a result of Compass's failure to input numerous of its own listings and to share those listings with other members, real estate firms, and clients, in accordance with the MLS rules. Compass says, of course, this is consumer choice. So what is this private exclusive program of COMPASS? And we can talk later about this in another podcast. It is a three-phase marketing strategy. The first part was private exclusives. They market it internally only to themselves and their own brokerage. Then after that, they will move it to a coming soon status. And then after that, they'll market it on the MLS. For weeks, it limits the number of buyers that can see the property, view the property, and put offers in the property. I may wind up having to do a whole episode on private exclusives, but according to a limited study, Bright's MLS conducted its own. And it said that in the mid-Atlantic market, also office exclusives showed no clear advantage when it comes to selling quickly or at a higher price. In fact, in 2021, they found that houses marketed on the MLS sold for an average of 16.98% higher than those that were not. But that's where we are now because nearly 10,000 compass listings are in pre-marketing now. They're being advertised as coming soon or as private exclusive. That's according to Business Insider. Brian Donalin of Bright MLS said the data shows time and time again when properties aren't marketed openly, sellers typically leave money on the table, buyers lose access, and the market as a whole becomes less transparent. Hiding listings isn't innovation, it's a step backwards. I see a huge problem with this, but some people apparently do not. I can tell you one company that did see a problem with this, and that's Zillow. So what did Zillow do? Before I talk about what Zillow did, I want to be sure everybody understands I'm not naive enough not to recognize the self-interest of Zillow in this. But two things can be true at exactly the same time. One thing can be true is that Zillow is trying to protect its own interests as a portal because Zillow recognizes if things don't go in the MLS, it hurts their business model. No doubt about it. That is 100% could be true. But also what can be true is in protecting their position, it is good for the consumer as well, where brokerage is trying to create PLNs is not good for the consumer. Zillow is the country's largest real estate portal, and it is moving to permanently prohibit listings that fail to be added to the MLS within 24 hours of being publicly marketed. This will start in May. It's going to be applied to Zillow and Trulia, and a listing marketed to any buyer must be available to every buyer. That should be literally the new saying of the Realtors Association, quite frankly. A listing marketed to any buyer must be available to every buyer. I don't know how anybody can argue against that concept. Some people have. They tried. This Thad Wong at Christie's International Real Estate, he gets it both right and wrong. He says Zillow has no altruistic motivation behind its policy. Okay, sure. I agree with you. I don't really care whether they do or not. And I also don't disagree when he says Zillow intends to try to drive leads to their platform so they can sell those for profit. Yeah, that's probably true as well. But then he wrongfully says every seller should have the right and choice to market their home in the manner they and their advisor, if they're working with one, seees fit. That's simply not true. It's not true at all. You can't market your house in a discriminatory nature. You can't falsely market. There are limitations on how a consumer can market their homes. There are limitations, and there are limitations out there for public policy reasons. So when did when you are trying to determine the public policy here, is does the seller's rights exceed the rights of someone else? And the answer in this situation, in my opinion, is no. The seller's right to sell and market the house the way they want should not include their right to hide it from certain people and only shop it to people they want to shop it to. That interferes with fair housing. So their right to choose the market to market their home the way they want to with their advisor is simply not true. Here's where it really kind of goes off the rails. There are many effective seller strategies that are taken off the table when listings hit the public market. Can someone please explain to me an effective seller strategy where a seller strategy could possibly lie that would include not telling people about your house being for sale? That makes no sense. And then he adds, and there are many sellers who are very happy to market and to sell their home through private channels for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is to avoid having a computer and accurately rate the value of their home and location. What does that have to do with listing your houses and having them on IDX fee with Zillow? You control the price. Zillow has nothing to do with the pricing of the house. You set the price of the house. This argument is a red herring. It means nothing. It has one has nothing to do with the other. But I would love to hear this man explain to me these effective strategies on limiting the number of people who can see the house and how that's going to be beneficial to the seller. But not to be outdone, Compass came out and said Zillow's ultimatum to remove homeowner choice goes the other way. Blocking listings that homeowners won't publicly marketed because Zillow wants the listing first doesn't serve consumers. What are they talking about? This is exactly what they're trying to do. They're trying to keep the house listed first internally before it gets to Zillow. Zillow wants to make it available to everyone. It's Compass that wants to limit who can see the houses. So I don't understand what the whole point of it is. Maybe the best comment is this guy who said the quiet part out loud. This is Steve Katz of Hilton and Highland. He's in the luxury world apparently. And he just says the private part out loud. He's not supposed to. In the luxury world, confidentiality isn't a loophole, it's a service. Well, everybody has confidentiality, but that doesn't mean hiding houses from the industry. It says we hope the industry continues to support marketing strategies that reflects the diverse need of clients rather than applying one-size-fits-all solutions. You know what this is called? The one percenter problem. He's talking about luxury problem properties, which don't make up even 1% of the market, but he does want a one-size fits-all for everybody. So his 0.1% of people, he doesn't want letting rift raft walk around the house and wants privacy. He wants the rest of us to have to deal with that and not have access to every house. But they already have solutions for this. They can qualify buyers before they let them in the home. So what he's arguing makes absolutely no sense. As Zillow's chief industry development officer, Errol Semmelson, says the idea is buyer and sellers benefit when they have unfettered access to all the information about the market. You're going to need to make a choice in how you want to market a listing. They're platform guys, they can do what they want to. You don't have to be on Zillow. You don't want to be on Zillow, don't be on Zillow. But if you're going to be on there, you have to play by their rules. But guess what? Your clients want to be on Zillow. The company further specified that social media blasts, emails, yard signs, all of that is considered public marketing, as it is under South Carolina state law. Zillow said coming soon, office exclusives, delayed marketing exempt listings, allowed within the listing access standard as long as it adheres to NAR guidelines. I think it shouldn't even include that. I think this coming soon, and these delayed marketing exemptions are crazy. The only time I think you should be able to have it is like we do here in the CMLS, where if you want to go ahead and sign agency so that you can advise a client they're not marketing the property at all to the public, internally or externally, and they're doing work on the house. That's fine. Other than that, I don't think this should be allowed. But the big question is how do you argue against this? And I don't see how you do. The good news is we've had a lot of great brokerages come out in support of this. EXP, of course, you knew Leo Perea was going to come out. He said EXP will always take the position that protects the consumer first. That is non-negotiable. We are deeply committed to giving our clients the most transparent, comprehensive access to property listings in the market. Our new agreement ensures that every EXP listing has maximum visibility, creating a more efficient, trustworthy, and open marketplace. James Dwiggins at NextHome, he said Nexthome fully supports Zillow's decision. A listing marketed to any buyer must now be available to every buyer to avoid fair housing issues and provide sellers the benefit of the entire marketplace for the highest sales price possible. I was happy to see that Remax got in on it as well. They said Remax is champions transparency and fairness in the industry and that a consumer-first approach aligns with our core values. Brown hair Stevenson, CEO of Bess Friedman, said, so wake-up call to brokerages pushing a private network agenda. They keep harping on the idea of seller choice, but sellers do have a choice to list on or off the market or to forego using a real estate agent entirely. And lastly, we have the consumer advocates in real estate American real estate called CARE, Douglas Miller. He's a lawyer who filed the lawsuit morale. He says the new rule helps thwart private listing networks, which the paper defines as properties marketed internally by a brokerage or to limited groups of agents. It contends that it serves to consolidate power within large brokerages by increasing the likelihood of double-ended deals, in part by steering and pressuring buyers to hire in-house agents on the promise that those agents have access to off-MLS listings. PLNs fragment the marketplace, reduce transparency, allows dominant brokers to manipulate inventory, control who gets access to listings and when. This undermines the integrity of the entire system. When inventory is withheld for the benefit of internal agents or affiliated relationships, the consumer loses. Couldn't have said it better myself. So what did Redfin do in response? Well, it joined Zillow. On April 14th, Redfin joined Zillow and created a policy that bans listings if they aren't added to the multiple listing service within 24 hours of publicly marketing. So there you have it. Zillow Redfin's two of the biggest real estate uh search portals in the entire world. If you market the property, you better have it on the MLS within 20 hours. So the big question then became legally can Zillow and Redfin do this? Well, according to Ed Zorn, and he is a California regional MLS VP and general counsel, he told Edmund News that it was well within their rights to ban listings on Zillow and truly that don't follow listing standards. He says, quote, there seems to be a misunderstanding that if you take an IDX exchange fee, that you're required to display all of the listings. In fact, NAR's statement 7.58 states the exact opposite principle. What it says is participants may select the IDX listing they choose to display based on only objective criteria, including but not limited to factors such as geography, location, list price, type of property, or type of listing. So they absolutely can do what they want. EXP then followed suit right after that on Wednesday, and they rolled out their own new document called the Seller Advisory Form. And in this form, which is available to the public, you can use it yourself. I think they call it open source form, meaning you can use it in your brokerage as well. It warns homeowners that marketing a property privately without listing it on the multiple listing service can significantly limit visibility and reduce buyer competition and may negatively impact your final sales price and terms. Ultimately, Leo says the final choice of marketing direction of your house is at your discretion, but you have to acknowledge the EXP Realty Agent has explained your options. So that is what has happened this last week. CCP seemed to have in things, private listing networks came out. Compass gets into a fight with the Northwest MLS, who cuts off their IDX feed. They wind up putting it back in on Thursday. All of this over these private listing networks. Zillow comes out, Redfin comes out and says, you don't market the property publicly without putting on the MLS within 24 hours. If you do that, then we'll never put your listing on our website. As a result of that, then you got EXP coming out with this seller advisory form. So a lot of craziness happening last week. For me, it's real simple. Clear cooperation is absolute necessity, the transparency in the operation of our market. Private listing networks do nothing but to erode that transparency and that confidence in our marketplace. Brokerages should not be marketing property internally to try to get both sides of the transaction. That is not carrying out the fiduci duty of your client. The fiduary duty you owe to your client is to get the best deal for your client, even if it's at a disadvantage for you. And that's what we got to understand. Our job in real estate is to do what's in the best interest of our client, not what's in the best interest of our pocketbook or our broker's pocketbook. That's the bottom line. Before we end this week, I would like to talk about last week or week before last, I was honored to be able to speak at the Central Carolina Realtors Association broker round table. Wonderful thing they do for all the brokers in the association. And before I spoke, Nick Chromitis from SCR spoke. And one of the topics that both he and I talked about was how SER has a seat at the table when it comes to the Real Estate Commission. We may not always agree. We may not always vote on the lines of which they would like us to, but we do have a lot of things in common as where we believe this industry should go and overall support each other. And I really am proud of how SER and the Real Estate Commission have been able to work together over the last four or five years. And I think it's been very good for the industry. If you've ever listened to my Dish and Dirt podcast, if this isn't the first time you've listened to me, you've known that I have said both positive things about NAR and some negative things. In fact, I did a podcast that was called 10 Ways That NAR Could Suck Less. If you want to go back and listen, it's a really good podcast. But as I was listening to Nick present, I started thinking about some of the brokers and agents before and since then who have constantly told me, well, I don't see any value in being a realtor, or they screwed this whole thing up with NAR and I'm really mad about it. And my response to them has been this is that, hey, I get that NAR may not have done the best job with this lawsuit. I certainly understand that. Personally, I think a lot of the changes that have come out of this NAR lawsuit have actually been for the better. I think the whole compensation issue of having buyers and sellers agree to compensation is much better than the system that we had in the past. But here's really what I want to say. If you don't like the realtor association and don't find there's value in it, then my response to you would be quit freeloading off of it then. Just stop. I mean, if you think that the realtor association is a waste of time and a waste of money, then don't freeload. Don't use their contracts, because CCRA and SER both have the predominant contracts in our marketplace, but you don't see any value in the realtors. So if you don't see any value in the realtors, you shouldn't see any value in using their documents. Quit using them. Don't use their contracts. Don't use their repair addendum forms. Don't use their exclusive right to buy or their listing agreement forms. Don't use any of them because there's no value in the realtors. Because only the realtors associations were the ones who came up with the contracts and the listing agreements and the buyer representation agreements and the addendums and all that other stuff. So you don't like them? Don't freeload off of them. Don't use their forms. Don't complain when groups like NV Realty come in and start doing 40-year listing agreements and recording those at the courthouse, screwing your deals up. It was SER who was fighting at the state house trying to get that outlawed, which we were able to get done with the real estate commission's help as well. Don't complain about wholesaling anymore. If you don't like wholesaling, you should have just kept your mouth shut. It's because the Realtor Association with the Real Estate Commission went over there and got wholesaling stopped. In fact, why don't you go petition the legislature about fingerprinting how we were able to stop convicted rapists and child molesters from getting licensed to be real estate agents because SER was at the table getting that done as well. Look, I get everybody's upset about things and want to complain and moan and groan. I like to complain and moan and groan. That's really why I do this podcast. It's basically therapy for me to bitch about all the things I don't like in the industry. But the reality of it is, time and time again, SER, the Realtors Association, has saved your ass on many occasions, whether it's the envy reality, wholesaling, or a number of other issues that constantly come up at the real estate commission. They're at the forefront, they're at the real estate house, arguing and petitioning and lobbying to get laws changed for you. So you can moan and groan all you want, but if you don't see the value in the Realtors Association, just quit freeloading off of them then. Don't use their forms, don't use their contracts. Stop. It's that simple. All right? Draft your own listing, draft your own contract, draft your own documents. Let's see how that works for you. That's my show for today. Y'all come back again for another episode of Dish and Dirt. Don't forget to like it, subscribe, and share this. Take care.