The Compass CEO, Robert Reffkin, is a vocal opponent of the Clear Cooperation Policy. Those in the business call him names and say his only motivation for opposing the CCP is to promote in-house sales.
The point that gets trampled over is that consumers and agents should be free to choose how they want to market the properties for sale.
The CCP insists that listings go onto the MLS right away, and be subject to this nonsense:
They don’t name Zillow but obviously that’s the target.
As we saw yesterday, Zillow is not truthful. They don’t care about doing what’s best for sellers or agents. They only care about making money, and dominating the space.
Unfortunately, the NAR and others turned over the control of the marketing of our listings to Zillow, Homes.com, and Murdoch’s Realtor.com – which is the real disappointment! Realtors don’t own, and we don’t control realtor.com? What a travesty!
Compass is determined to take control of the marketing of our listings.
It starts with getting our listings onto the internet before the search portals. Having the consumers see our listings on our website, and thereby contacting the listing agents who know the most about the properties, is better for the consumer than being funneled to outside agents who are paying for leads:
I’ve been saying for a while that everything happening in residential real estate is heading towards single agency, and eliminating the buyer-agents. Homes.com is directing consumers to the listing agent, and spending millions on advertising to make a point of it.
We’re in the transition phase, and I’ll predict the future.
Compass will quit NAR and the MLS, and go it alone.
If you ask me, we’re already big enough to do it now. I have encouraged Robert to do it, but it’s too early.
But it’s coming.
We will still be happy to cooperate with outside agents – they will just have to find our listings on our website, instead of elsewhere. We’re just doing what Redfin did – make our website more popular with consumers.
What about the Private Exclusives, the title of this post?
They are allowed now, and because you only sell a house once, sellers and agents should have the choice to sell a home off-market. Here are good reasons to do so:
- The allure of an insider deal can cause a buyer to pay more – they are sexy deals.
- Buyers don’t have the benefit of open-market exposure to test the price.
- It keeps the bozo agents from screwing up deals.
We have it happening right now. Our sellers are in escrow with buyers who got squeamish this week. Their agent was NO help. He had no experience or ability to try to help them through their foibles which had little, or nothing, to do with buying the house. Donna and I both had to step in to save the day (another reason to hire us to sell your house!).
It is detrimental for escrows to blow out. Trying to ignite the same urgency as when a listing is fresh on the market is impossible. Every buyer thinks something is wrong, and rarely do a home sell for the same price or more the second time around.
Those are three good reasons for our sellers to go Private Exclusive. I still believe in open-market exposure being the best route but it’s because I’m old-school. The current market conditions are tough and inviting every joker to bid on my listings has consequences, and they’re not all good.
Reffkin and Compass will undoubtedly taking more heat for questioning the CCP in the coming months, but it’s a sideshow. There will be bigger changes down the road – promise.
