This is the #1 reason I went to Compass, and I didn’t really feel like I had a choice.
When realtors get disrupted, this is the way the big brokerages can survive while the little guys die.
Hoard the listings in-house as ‘private exclusives’, like they do in the commercial real estate. The practice is legal (per the Clear Cooperation Policy) and is a choice for home sellers to make.
The big benefit for sellers is that they don’t get penalized by the days-on-market statistic, which buyers normally consider as the best way to know if the price is wrong after the first week on the market.
Compass has this option available for sellers, as do all the other brokerages, but nobody in management is pushing it around here. It’s used more like a Coming-Soon feature while homes are being prepared for open-market exposure. But there are deals being made.
If there was an organized, committed effort to use it as a survival tool, then I could see 30% of our sales happening off-market. But we’re not there yet.
Maybe next year?
