The industry held its breath when Zillow, in partnership with Keller Williams, RE/MAX, HomeServices of America, United Real Estate, and Side, announced a preview program that would soon allow listings before entering MLS. A responsible version of pre-marketing, the idea continued. Open to all buyers. MLS compliant. It’s not a private club.
I understand the feeling of relief. However, Zillow Preview is not a solution to the private listing problem. A more comfortable entrance to the same destination.
2 models, 1 direction
Two weeks earlier, Compass and Redfin announced a unique partnership. Compass was listed on Redfin before the MLS, stripped of listing date data and built around a single brokerage ecosystem. The industry criticized it as a two-tier system, with the right intermediaries getting access first and everyone else picking up the rest.
Zillow Preview is structurally different. Your listing is visible to all buyers, MLS compliant, and your listing agent retains your brand. A real difference. But what both models have in common is that MLS is no longer the starting point.
If the MLS is the second stop instead of the first, it doesn’t matter how open or closed the first stop is. The damage is the same.
Normalization issues
Zillow Preview sends two messages. First, let’s examine Compass’ claims that Zillow has been fighting all along. Second, buyers will be informed that Zillow has inventory that is not available on the MLS. The agent learns that previews generate priorities, or rewards that the MLS does not provide.
Over time, sellers request a pre-market phase, agents perform it by default, and the MLS becomes the place where listings quietly happen after the actual action.
This is not a hypothesis. According to the nation’s largest brokerage firm’s fourth-quarter 2024 SEC earnings report, 55% of new listings were private listings or began soon in February 2025, without reaching the MLS on the first day. Zillow Preview will accelerate that normalization.
important distinction
I’ve always been in favor of private listings. If a homeowner wants privacy or wants to work exclusively with a listing agent, that is their right. I support it.
What I disagree with is that 55% of new listings that start privately are not the seller’s choice. Informed sellers who understand that MLS exposure creates more competition and higher offers will not choose to limit their buyer pool to such numbers.
According to Zillow’s own research, sellers who list privately sell for 1.5 percent less nationally, and in states like California and New York, that difference widens to 3.7 percent, or more than $30,000 per home. The positive MLS data confirms that there is no price advantage and it takes longer to sell.
What we are seeing are developments designed to benefit brokerages (two-sided commissions, agent recruitment tools, proprietary inventory) disguised as consumer empowerment. That’s what I’m against. This is not a private listing. Bringing up seller choice as a shield while withholding one fact that most sellers need to hear is that choosing to go private likely means choosing a lower sales price.
Is the seller aware of this and asking for privacy? I will fight for their rights. The seller gave me the form, but never said, “You can sell it for less.” The seller was given a script, not a choice.
Zillow Preview is better than the Compass-Redfin model: it’s more open, more compliant, and more transparent. But better is not the same thing as being good for the market in the long run.
what we should do instead
This problem can be solved without legislation or banning private listings. Here is my three-part framework for maintaining the MLS and serving buyers and sellers fairly.
First, all portals (Zillow, Redfin, Realtor.com, all of them) must remove date on market and price adjustment history from all listing displays. This is the single most powerful step the industry can take right now, and it doesn’t require passing a single piece of legislation.
Fear of days on market piling up and a bias against measurable price declines are two of the most common arguments used by listing agents to entice sellers into the private stage. Removing these data points from public view undermines the main rationale for keeping them private.
Sellers who no longer fear falling prices on Zillow have far less reason to hide their listings in brokerage silos. This change alone would put a significant portion of that 55% back into the public market.
Second, the MLS should officially allow private listings, but require that all listings, including private listings, be entered into the MLS and tagged accordingly.
Here’s what it actually looks like: Seller chooses to list privately. Their agent enters it into the MLS with a private designation. Although this listing is visible to all MLS participants (all brokers, all agents), it is tagged as private, meaning showings are managed exclusively through the listing agent.
If a cooperating agent at another company has a buyer who would be a very good fit for that property, you can contact that listing agent and request a co-brokerage arrangement with that particular buyer for that particular property. There is no obligation. Full cooperation is not required.
But the listing agent will almost certainly say yes, as they respect their fiduciary responsibility to offer the seller the best possible price. Because turning away qualified buyers doesn’t help sellers. We are engaged in intermediary business.
With this model, buyers and their agents continue to have a complete picture of available inventory. Your listing will never disappear into a private portal visible only to customers of one brokerage firm. Private tags are a display setting, not a wall of inventory.
Third: The portal must route all leads on the listing directly to the listing agent. You should route to the listing agent, not to competing agents, portal referral networks, or whoever pays the most referral fees. The listing agent acquired the business. They have earned the right to be the first point of contact for all buyers interested in the seller’s property.
This is not a radical idea. That’s the way the industry should be. Enforcing this universally would remove one of the hidden economic incentives that made private intermediary networks attractive in the first place.
These three changes make public markets more attractive than closed markets. There are no intermediaries that gain inventory advantages over smaller competitors. Buyers are never locked out. MLS remains, not as a mandate, but as the obvious best option for everyone at the table.
I’ve been speaking with real estate professionals from all over the world for over 30 years. MLS is more than just a database. It is the most sophisticated, consumer-protective, and competitively fair listing system ever built, and is the envy of every real estate market I’ve visited around the world.
In other countries, agents are fighting over listing data like personal property, and buyers have no reliable way to know what’s up for sale. I’m back from my trip and grateful for what we’ve built here.
The question is whether we will dismantle that system piece by piece, dressing it up in the language of our choice and innovative language until we no longer realize what we have lost. I’m not going to let it go without saying anything. And after reading this, I hope you don’t either.
