Is that a listing in your pocket or are you just happy to read this?

Pocket listings or Off-Market listings or Coming Soon listings – whatever you call them — are in the news and are impacting the real estate ecosystem.

Midwest Real Estate Data or MRED, a perennial industry modernizer, released at the CMLS annual meeting in Salt Lake City, a new definitive guide to one of the hottest topics in our industry today. Its 30+ page report, “Private, Not A Secret: An inside look at Off-MLS listing solutions,” is an outstanding deep dive and examination of the Off-MLS listings topic.

The National Association of REALTORS® has no official policy on pocket listings or other Off-MLS listings. But in a couple of weeks at the 2019 REALTORS Conference and Expo , that may change, and the change is a big one. It impacts more than just off-mls pocket listings. MRED keenly took action to protect the capabilities of brokerage firms to offer innovative seller platforms like Coming Soon.

On the docket? The NAR’s Multiple Listing Issues and Policies Committee will grapple with a proposal called “Clear Cooperation Policy,” which replaces the current MLS Statement 8.0.

Before anyone heads to the MLS Policies meeting scheduled for Saturday morning, November 9^th on the second level of the new, towering Moscone Center, they need to read this MRED report.

It is a must-read because MRED went deep into this subject, exploring the policies and plans that MLSs across the US have in place for coming soon status, as well as the problems they have faced. The report covers:

Reasons listings are withheld from the MLS
Unintended consequences of Off-MLS listings
Third-Party responses to Off-MLS listings when MLSs don’t act
Legal and Policy considerations
What other MLSs are doing
Off-MLS statistics and much more

MRED outlines the details and provides perspective of how many other leading MLSs have approached this same topic and contrasts their new PLN, or Private Listing Network solution as this graphic from the report illustrates: