The real estate industry worked hard to define the Clear Cooperation policy. Now that we are a year into this policy, it is time to take a look at its impact. Has it changed anything that it was intended to change?
Depending on the market you are in, there are between 8% and 12% of deed transfers that happen off MLS. Some portion of those are Realtors® avoiding the MLS, but other portions occur naturally – like a new home, moving a property into a family trust, giving a property to a family member, donating property to a charity – yada yada. It happens.
Clear Cooperation targeted the Realtors® who were avoiding the MLS.
We have learned through conversations that the number of Office Exclusives has changed significantly since the policy was implemented – but a new culprit has emerged to get around the Clear Cooperation policy. Namely, Temporarily Off Market status in the MLS.
In most MLSs, the rules around the Temporarily Off Market fields are that you may continue to advertise the listing for sale, but you may not have open houses or showings. In effect, that is allowing Realtors® to pre-market their listings in the same ways they did before the Clear Cooperation Policy was implemented.
WAV Group is seeking MLSs to volunteer to participate in a data study to see if Clear Cooperation has been effective. Contact Victor Lund if you volunteer to pull data. Once we have the group of volunteers, we will agree to the methodology and the time frames for the data and how this data will be filtered. There will be no charge for participation.
Our ambition is to determine if Clear Cooperation has fixed a problem or simply changed the way Realtors® perpetuate the problem by taking different paths.
We could use your help.
(Note: I use the term Realtors® because the Clear Cooperation Policy is demanded only in MLS markets where the MLS is affiliated with the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS®. Broker owned MLSs may have adopted the policy or something similar, but were not required to adopt it. For that reason, broker owned MLSs are excluded from this study unless some broker owned MLSs are willing to participate to provide a benchmark where the policy did not change.)
