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Opponents of the National Association of Realtors’ clear cooperation policy are stepping up efforts to force the 1.5 million-member trade group to repeal the rule.
The National Association of Realtors (NAR) is a rival trade group formed in response to harassment allegations at the NAR. Petition On Friday, they called on the NAR to end the controversial policy.
The petition had garnered more than 2,000 signatures as of 6:30 p.m. ET on Monday.
Jason Haber
“We’re just getting started,” Jason Haber, a Compass agent and one of the association’s founders, told Inman.
“We wanted to get these ideas out in the public eye, so we circulated the petition over the weekend. Today is the first business day it’s been out, and the response has been phenomenal. Once we reach 2,500, we’ll keep going. The purpose of the petition and our efforts is not to be adversarial, but to help NAR understand that agents across the country are ready to move on from Clear Cooperation.”
A clear cooperation policy that came into effect in 2020 requires real estate agents to submit property information to multiple real estate brokerage services within one business day of selling the property to the public.
“The ‘clear collaboration policy,’ enacted under the guise of greater transparency, places severe limitations on both homeowners’ consumer choices and real estate professionals’ ethical obligations,” the American Association of Realtors petition states.
“This policy would require real estate agents to submit property listings to the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) within one business day of public marketing, regardless of their client’s wishes. This blanket requirement would violate the fiduciary duties that real estate agents owe to their clients, forcing them to disclose information that may not be in the homeowner’s best interest.”
Compass CEO Robert Reffkin has been a vocal critic of the policy: Private, exclusive listings sold off the MLS only to Compass agents and their buyers are part of the brokerage’s business model.
The CCP contains an office exclusivity exception, which allows broker and agent licensees to advertise properties within their brokerage or directly to their agent’s clients without submitting the property to the MLS.
Some real estate brokers have threatened revolt over the exemption, which they say unintentionally benefits large national brokerages at the expense of smaller independents because the large networks allow them to collect commission on both sides of a transaction in so-called double-ended office-exclusive arrangements. Critics call the exemption a “loophole” that perpetuates pocket listings.
The Agency’s Mauricio Umansky is also a co-founder of the American Association of Realtors. Last week, Umansky threatened to refile an antitrust lawsuit against the NAR over the way CCP regulations affected his now-defunct private listing network, ThePLS.com.
Asked for comment on the petition, NAR sent Inman the same statement it sent last week in response to Umansky’s threat: “NAR is actively listening to industry stakeholders’ input and feedback regarding clear collaboration policies. NAR looks forward to engaging in this important ongoing dialogue with the ultimate goal of helping NAR members and consumers succeed.”
NAR’s MLS Technology and Emerging Issues Advisory Committee, which is part of NAR’s Multiple Listing Issues and Policy Committee, met on Sept. 12 and 13 to discuss CCPs but did not reach a final decision. We will meet again The NAR plans to further consider the rule next month, though a date for that meeting has not yet been set, the agency told Inman on Monday.
Additionally, the US Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division is investigating the Chinese Communist Party. The Department of Justice and the American Antitrust Institute are fighting the investigation in court, and the case may next go to the US Supreme Court.
The American Association of Realtors’ petition makes no mention of criticisms of pocket listings, including “fair housing,” which NAR cites as a primary reason for implementing CCP. Opponents say pocket listings limit the buyer pool for a property to an agent’s network, which is likely to be made up of people similar to the agent, and do not provide buyers with equal access to properties.
“Clear Cooperation is not optimized to address fair housing issues and maintains the dominance of the MLS as a listing service at the expense of homeowner choice,” Haber told Inman.
“There are many ways that NAR could have addressed potential fair housing concerns regarding ‘off-MLS’ properties. For example, it could have required agents to list their clients’ properties that are not listed on the local MLS on one of the nationally known consumer-facing websites. These sites are available directly to consumers, unlike the MLS, which is only available to members.”
The petition also fails to address the assertion by NAR and many MLSs that listing on the MLS maximizes exposure to buyers (which sellers presumably want if they agree to public marketing), thereby increasing seller profits.
“Homeowners have a right to choice and a right to be preferred,” Haber said. “Homeowners should not be undervalued or treated in a paternalistic manner. Homeowners understand that ‘maximum exposure’ does not necessarily equal highest price in certain situations depending on the type of product, area, market conditions, etc.”
“In addition, some customers value discretion and privacy as much as price (such as those going through a divorce) and would like the opportunity to remove their personal data from the MLS.”
A common criticism of those who want to abolish CCPs is that they want to grow pocket lists so they can represent both the buyer and the seller in a transaction and receive double the commission, but Haber argued that the opposite could happen if CCPs were abolished.
“I believe the opposite is true – that the percentage of double-ended transactions is likely to decrease,” he said. “The market will be flooded with innovation and there will be all kinds of interesting disruptions that will be good for the industry. Agents have been fined by the NAR for catering to customer demands. It’s time for us to put an end to that and put the customer first.”
Email Andrea V. Brambila at
