Homeowners listing their property for sale may be offered an exclusive listing by their agent or agent’s brokerage, implying their property will get special treatment, and in some ways it will.
Exclusive listings, or office listings, come with a dedicated broker and more personalized representation. They give sellers more control, and may increase the broker’s motivation to sell the home.
But exclusive listings also limit exposure. There is no requirement for those properties to be publicly listed on the multiple listing service, where other agents representing homebuyers, or buyers doing their own research, will see them. Exclusives are instead intended for the listing agent and fellow agents at that brokerage.
“So depending on the size of your brokerage, that’s really how many agents you have looking at it. You want so many eyeballs on it. You want it marketed in every which way, because you want to pull buyers in,” said Sherry Rahnama, broker/owner of RE/Max Executives in Fairfax, Virginia, who is an outspoken proponent of full transparency in residential listings.
Exclusive listings don’t necessarily have any benefit for sellers. Listing service Bright MLS, which collects fees from brokerages for hosting their listings, conducted its own research it said shows 90% of exclusive listings end up on the standard MLS before selling anyway. Further, it said exclusives take longer to sell and have no price advantage.
Exclusives can be marketed by their representatives through other tools, such as mail and targeted advertising.
Last year’s nationwide class action lawsuit settlement with the National Association of Realtors addressed issues such as commission transparency, but did not limit exclusive listings or other nontraditional listings, such as “coming soon” listings.
“Which notifies everyone that, hey, this property is going to be listed as of such-and-such date. We may not have a price yet. Some may have pictures. Some don’t. We could be working toward listing that property, but at least it gets the word out there and gets your property exposure,” Rahnama said.
Coming soon listings may be a good choice for sellers who still have repairs to make to their home before listing, or are timing their sale based on upcoming job, family or relocation situations. And they can be helpful for buyers, especially considering the ongoing inventory shortage in the D.C.-area housing market and nationwide.
“When I pull up a listing and I see it is coming soon, at least I can notify my buyer and say 123 Main Street is going to come on the market in two weeks and it looks like what you’re looking for. Let’s look at this one when it comes on the market,” Rahnama said.
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