Clarifying The Clear Cooperation Policy
As I’m sure you all know, after months of fierce and heated debates, NAR announced changes to the Clear Cooperation Policy on the 25th of March.
Industry leaders locked horns and took the discussion into the public space.
I’m not going to reiterate all the arguments here, but you can read more about Robert Reffkin’s arguments, as he is the main protagonist of scraping the CCP. On the other side of the ring was James Dwiggins. You can follow him as he is one of the most vocal supporters of the CCP.
I’m not going to take any sides here, but I will try to explain the motivation for both sides of the argument and share somewhat of a unique perspective.
I come from Europe, where we don’t have a Clear Cooperation Policy and we don’t have MLS.
As a person who bought and sold a couple of houses, I would like to share what it looks and feels like to buy a house without having access to all listings.
You start an online search on local marketplaces (portals). Some properties are featured on multiple portals, others are exclusive to a specific portal. So the problem is that there’s not a single resource that has all available properties presented to you in one place.
Once you start calling properties to schedule appointments, you realize that most of them aren’t actually serious sellers. Owners simply list properties for fun to see how many calls they will get. Other properties were sold a long time ago, but the owner couldn’t be bothered to remove the listing.
When I finally found the property was actually for sale, I was hesitant to make an offer, constantly thinking “what if there is another property out there that is a better fit, but I simply haven’t searched well enough to find it.”
Working with real estate agents doesn’t change much; they also search multiple platforms, much like I do, but less diligently. They are not interested in finding my dream home, they simply want to sell me one of their listings.
For selling my experience was pretty similar. I hired an agent, she marketed my property, we got an offer, and we sold. I will NEVER find out if she marketed my property well, if I got maximum exposure possible, if I got the best price I could. I will never know that because there is no transparency in the market.
I try to be as unbiased as possible, but I just want you to take a second to appreciate the efficiencies that are created by having a consolidated listings directory.
Let’s look at the other side.
If you ask yourself, who is the type of seller that INTENTIONALLY doesn’t want the maximum exposure for their listing?
Tom Ferry said it best: “People who want to be on the market, but not be on the market, are probably owners of super high-end properties.”
For these types of properties, privacy is a top priority, so they don’t want any publicity, any open houses, or anybody just showing up to their house.
And they should absolutely have the right to do so.
It’s their property. They own it. They can burn it down if they want to. And they should have the right to decide how their property is marketed.
Selling Houses vs. Selling High-End Properties
It all comes down to the fact that the way you sell houses is very different from how you sell super high-end properties.
One regulation could not facilitate two different business practices.
This is the cornerstone of the whole battle.
Compass challenged the existing regulation to facilitate their core business - Private Exclusives.
If you’re not dealing with ultra high-end properties (96%)
Nothing changes for you, except there’s now one more form to sign. The CCP's core requirement—that listings be submitted to the MLS within one business day of public marketing—remains unchanged.
If you are dealing with ultra high-end properties (4%)
The new policy introduces "delayed marketing exempt listings," allowing sellers to instruct their agents to postpone public marketing through Internet Data Exchange (IDX) and syndication for a specified period. The duration of this delay is determined by each Multiple Listing Service (MLS) based on local market conditions. During this period, the property remains accessible to other MLS participants but is not displayed on public platforms like Zillow or Realtor.com.
Hope I was able to bring some clarity to the Clear Cooperation Policy.
Make sure you educate your agents about this. At Agently, we have created a ready-made course to help you seamlessly do that. Learn more about how to keep your agents up-to-date with all the regulatory changes and effectively deliver training and coaching at agently.com
I love how simply someone from outside our market and outside our country states our current confusing situation. Sometimes it takes fresh eyes to see a situation clearly. Thanks for the article. I see you are in the US now, but your perspective still has varied origins.