Clear Un-Cooperation in Real Estate

Note: This Jeff’s Journal is about a major change announced by NAR. Last week’s article was titled I’m Not Giving It Away! When the day comes that you are going to sell, this change by NAR, I believe means you could be “giving it away”, if you are not careful. It’s a must read for homeowners….

The worst day I’ve ever traveled (I used to travel 35 weeks a year for a decade) was last summer when the Microsoft outages occurred. Once we got to Calgary, Neil Young, the last musician on my bucket list canceled. All that was just a warmup. The icing on the cake of the first half of the vacation from hell was being evacuated from the Jasper Canada wildfires. We were forced to drive far west from Alberta into British Columbia. After sleeping in the car, we traveled even further west. The cherry to top it all off was when we realized our Passports were left in the hotel. Now we had to circle all the way back around to Calgary. The next day in the middle of nowhere, we stopped at a Gas Station with the name “GAS”. Some people just are bad at business. The owner of the gas station was such a person. He had quite the issue with beef jerky and bathrooms. Generic Gas of Avola has a 2.2 Rating Review and here are a few samples.

*** The owner of this place is actually HORRIBLE, he wouldn’t stop staring at us and talking about how we “needed to buy something” before using the washroom. DO NOT stop here unless you really need gas.

*** The owner at this store kept pressuring us to buy his beef jerky when we wanted to use the washrooms. When we decided to leave because of his rude attitude he said, “you guys only came here for the washrooms? that’s too bad”.

*** Make sure you have a potty break before you hit the gas station. You have to buy something to use the bathroom. I did buy some trail mix which I found out a ways down the road was outdated a YEAR AND A HALF AGO!!!

*** Um yeah. NEVER going again.

Even if you didn’t read the reviews, it was self-evident that this beef jerky gas guy was a jerk.

Then you have deals that are hard to tell on the surface. One of those going on right now is in real estate. And if you are thinking of selling at some point in your life, you’ll want to pick up that coffee and read this.

If a real estate agent pitches you on keeping a listing private within their brokerage for a few weeks “Delayed Marketing Exempt Listings” — RUN! You’ll be pitched on a strategy of how days on the market won’t start up, photography isn’t necessary, and a million people won’t be trampling through your home. At the end of a few weeks, if it doesn’t sell, then the Realtor salesperson will put in on the open market. It might sound good in a carefully rehearsed pitch. Once you recognize it though… throw the Realtor out of the house.

NAR (National Association of Realtors) made a change recently to “Clear Cooperation”. Clear Cooperation means that an agent and brokerage working for you has to list the property in MLS within a day, and until now, let other brokerages and all agents show it. However, there is a new wrinkle in the recently published press release set out by NAR regarding Delayed Marketing.

CHICAGO (March 25, 2025) – Following its in-depth assessment of the Clear Cooperation Policy (CCP), the National Association of REALTORS® (NAR) today announced a new policy, “Multiple Listing Options for Sellers,” to complement its existing Multiple Listing Service (MLS) policies. “Multiple Listing Options for Sellers” will exist in conjunction with CCP and other MLS policies to provide sellers and their agents more options and choice when marketing a property, while also supporting fair housing by providing buyers and their agents with equal access to important MLS property information.

The policy – developed following many months of consultation with MLS and association leadership, brokerages, agents, multi-cultural organizations, and industry experts – introduces a new category of exempt listings called “delayed marketing exempt listings.” The exemption will allow a seller the option to instruct the listing agent to delay marketing a listing through Internet Data Exchange (IDX) and syndication for a period of time. Each MLS will have discretion to determine a delayed marketing period that is most suitable for their local marketplace.

During the delayed marketing period, the home seller and the listing agent can market the listing in a manner consistent with the seller’s needs and interests. At the same time, the delayed marketing exempt listing will still be available to other MLS Participants through the MLS Platform. Listing agents representing sellers who choose to delay the public marketing of their listing must secure from their seller a signed disclosure documenting the seller’s informed consent to waive the benefits of immediate public marketing through IDX and syndication. Seller disclosure is required for both delayed marketing exempt listings and office exclusive exempt listings.

You can read the entire press release here.

Bottom line, what the above means is that you can market your home privately and then only open it up on the MLS and all websites after the delayed marketing period. Doesn’t sound so bad? Read on and I’ll explain why you need to be aware of what can go wrong and why you’d be nuts to do this…..

Now there may be some instances where someone doesn’t want to be on the MLS and open it up for all to see. Maybe you are a Howard Hughes wealthy billionaire type and privacy matters over money. Although billionaire types got to be billionaire types by valuing money over privacy so probably not. Or maybe you are fleeing the country with unsavory underworld family types looking for whatever money you owe them. However, those types are quick and wise to what you might be up to – so I wouldn’t bet on that. Let me give you my take on the flip side……

From a seller’s perspective there are two giant negatives from Jeff’s take.

During the “Delayed Period”, you are shutting yourself out of at least 19 out of 20 potential buyers. The largest brokerage in the United States has a 5% market share. Often, even if a few agents are dominating an area, the buyer comes from outside that area. There are 27,000 real estate agents in Palm Beach County alone. If only 1,350 knew about it and the other 25,650 were not aware, do you think that might affect your price?

To think of it another way, if your neighbor told you that they would sell you their home for $100, would you rush to get the deal done or wait for others to find out? My guess is you’d hand them $100 cash on the spot and get the contract signed ASAP. For a buyer it would be like going to an auction with no one else bidding against you. So, even if as a Seller, if you go that route of checking it out – you really haven’t tested out the market at all.

*** Zillow and some major real estate brokerages have announced that if a Seller elects to go for “Delayed” Marketing, then they will not put the listing into their portal (No Zillow for you) once the “Delayed” Marketing period is over. That means after the “Delayed” period, you are now shut out of those market portals. And they are not the only one. You can read Zillow’s press release here.

Why In Jeff’s Opinion, a Brokerage Might Promote It?

*** So, why would a real estate agent and brokerage promote this?!? My take is one reason and one reason only. The “Double Dip”. If the brokerage gets both sides of the transaction and doesn’t have to share the compensation with another brokerage, then the brokerage and that agent gets more money.

In my third year of real estate, I was by myself, competing with maybe thirty agents who had the community office in the area I was doing business in. I started to pick up major traction. Most agents before I existed put the keys in a lock box and printed some bullet points on a cheap piece of paper. Pictures and write-ups were awful. I was offering much better marketing and was selling homes for a higher price. By my third year I had 46 sales. The major competing brokerage put out an internal letter and fined any agent in their office who did more than one deal with me and docked their commission. Pretty scary stuff for me with two little ones to feed. My clients though stuck with me and a funny thing occurred. I always looked at my job in getting the word out and showing the Seller the money by bringing them the best deal possible. I went from 46 sales with one double dip to twenty double dips in my fourth year. The Buyers figured out what was going on, saw my ads, and came to me direct. They also lost trust in my competition as honest agents. Shortly thereafter the ban was off.

When listing your home, it needs to be marketed to everyone with as big of a syphon as possible. It’s conceivable that we will be forced to offer this option to you. But if so, our disclaimer will come with a Surgeon General type warning in BOLD and Large FONT that this “Delayed” period might and could result in a lower price for you.

Wendy’s ran a famous commercial in the 1980’s. “Where’s this BEEF!” Any broker pitching you to opt out of not marketing your home in all portals is giving you old and stale jerky instead of beefy marketing reach. I see no way your home will ever achieve maximum price without every eyeball on. In my opinion, if a Realtor is pushing this on you, they are Jerks. But unlike the Jerk at the Generic Gas in Avola Canada selling Jerky, you could get stuck in a bad situation with very limited advertising exposure. Like the reviews said in the gas station, keep driving on.

The above article represents the views and opinions of the author and is based upon information available at the present time; the reader is urged to contact an attorney or real estate professional with any questions or concerns.