Did NAR eliminate the Clear Cooperation Policy?

No. In March 2025, NAR kept the policy in full but added a new option allowing sellers to sign a disclosure and delay public marketing of their listing for a defined period, known as a delayed marketing exempt listing.

What are Zillow's Listing Access Standards?

Zillow's own rule, stricter than NAR's policy, that removes a listing from Zillow's platform if it was publicly marketed off the MLS for more than one business day — without recognizing exemptions like office exclusives that NAR allows.

Do private listings sell for more or less than MLS listings?

Studies disagree. Bright MLS/Drexel and Zillow's own research found private listings sold for less (estimates range from about 1.5% to 18% depending on methodology). Compass's research and an independent University of Georgia study found private or pre-marketed listings sold for a premium in some cases, particularly for luxury homes. Differences in how studies define and filter 'off-MLS' sales, including whether FSBO sales are included, affect the results.

Does this debate affect FSBO sellers?

Indirectly. A FSBO listing isn't entered into the MLS by default unless the seller separately pays for a flat-fee MLS service, so FSBO sellers are operating somewhat outside the MLS/portal system this debate centers on, for different reasons than an agent-represented seller choosing to keep a listing private.

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Market Intel

Private Listings, Zillow, and the MLS Fight: What the 2026 Debate Means for Sellers

Q: What is the Clear Cooperation Policy?

A National Association of Realtors rule, in effect since May 2020, requiring agents in a Realtor-owned MLS to submit a listing to that MLS within one business day of marketing it publicly. It allows limited exceptions like office exclusives, as long as they aren't marketed more broadly.

Private listings, "office exclusives," and portal access rules have turned into one of real estate's biggest fights. Here's what's actually happening and what the data says — without picking a side.

By CounteredAI Team · 2026-07-20

If you've seen the terms "private listing," "pocket listing," "office exclusive," or "Clear Cooperation Policy" showing up in real estate news lately, you're watching one of the industry's biggest ongoing fights. It involves NAR, Zillow, Compass, and MLSs across the country, and it directly affects how visible a home for sale actually is. Here's what's happening and what the available data shows — laid out as facts, not a recommendation.

The rule at the center of it: Clear Cooperation Policy

The Clear Cooperation Policy (CCP) is a National Association of Realtors rule that took effect in May 2020. It requires agents who are members of a Realtor-owned MLS to submit a listing to that MLS within one business day of marketing it publicly — a yard sign, a social media post, a brokerage website listing all count as "public marketing." The goal, as stated by supporters, is to make sure every listing is visible to every buyer's agent searching the MLS, rather than being shopped privately to a smaller network first.

CCP does not ban private listings outright. It allows "office exclusives" (marketed only within one brokerage) and "coming soon" listings, as long as they aren't publicly marketed beyond that limited scope. The policy has been debated since it was introduced, but the debate intensified sharply starting in late 2024.

What changed: March 2025

In October 2024, NAR's Emerging Issues Advisory Board began reconsidering CCP. On March 19, 2025, NAR announced the "Multiple Listing Options for Sellers" policy. It kept Clear Cooperation in place in full, but added a new option: sellers can sign a disclosure form allowing their agent to delay public marketing of a listing for a defined period — a "delayed marketing exempt listing." Participating MLSs were required to implement the option by the end of September 2025, though adoption varies by market.

NAR President Kevin Sears described the change as balancing "greater choice for sellers in marketing their properties while considering buyers' need to access information through MLSs."

Zillow's response: the Listing Access Standards

Zillow had already begun rolling out its own Listing Access Standards (LAS) in 2024, and the policy goes further than CCP. Under LAS, any home publicly marketed off the MLS for more than one business day is removed from Zillow's platform — and unlike NAR's rules, Zillow's standard does not recognize exemptions like office exclusives or delayed marketing listings. Zillow's stated position is that withholding listings "behind a velvet rope limits competition, reduces transparency and disadvantages buyers, sellers and agents," in the words of Zillow Chief Industry Development Officer Errol Samuelson.

In 2025, Zillow removed 48 listings under LAS, about 90% of them from Compass.

The legal fight

Compass sued Zillow (later expanding the suit to include Redfin and the MRED MLS) under the Sherman Antitrust Act, characterizing LAS as an attempt to protect a market monopoly. In February 2026, a federal judge denied Compass's request for a preliminary injunction that would have blocked Zillow from enforcing LAS while the case proceeded. On March 18, 2026, Compass dropped the lawsuit after Zillow relaxed some elements of its Listing Access Standards — though the core rule against listings hidden behind registration walls or brokerage-contact requirements remains in force.

The dispute didn't end there. By May 2026, Compass had terminated its direct listing data feeds to Zillow nationwide, and by mid-2026 Zillow had filed suit against Compass and the MRED MLS. Separately, MLSs including MRED and Realtracs (Nashville) have been building out structures — described by some industry press as "private listing networks" — that allow listings to circulate among cooperating brokerages with less reliance on public MLS syndication to portals. The Council of Multiple Listing Services has publicly pushed back on what it calls a "false narrative" from large firms about the consumer benefits of exclusive listings, without naming Compass directly.

The case made by each side

Supporters of Clear Cooperation and broad MLS distribution — including NAR's traditional stance, Zillow, Redfin, and fair housing advocates — argue that requiring listings on a shared, publicly accessible database keeps the market transparent, gives every buyer's agent equal access at the same time, and reduces opportunities for a listing to be shown selectively to some buyers and not others, which fair housing advocates have flagged as a discrimination risk.

Supporters of private and delayed-marketing listings — including Compass and groups like the American Real Estate Association — argue that sellers should control how and when their home is exposed to the market. Cited reasons include privacy (particularly for high-profile sellers), avoiding the public visibility of price cuts or extended days-on-market that can happen once a listing goes fully public, and the ability to test pricing with a smaller pool before a full public launch.

What the data actually shows

This is the most contested part of the debate, and the studies disagree with each other:

Bright MLS and Drexel University analyzed over one million transactions from 2019 through Q1 2023 and found homes kept off the MLS sold for roughly 17–18% less than comparable MLS-listed homes.
Zillow's own analysis of about 10 million transactions across 46 states (excluding FSBO sales) found off-MLS sellers left an average of $4,975 per home on the table, more than $1 billion combined across 2023–2024, with the gap reaching roughly $30,000 in high-cost markets like California.
Compass's own research found the opposite: pre-marketed, privately shown listings sold for about 2.9% more than listings taken straight to the MLS.
An independent study by University of Georgia professor Darren Hayunga, analyzing Dallas-Fort Worth transactions from 2002–2022, found pocket listings carried a modest price premium — about 1.7% for typical homes and over 8% for luxury properties — but that the premium largely disappeared after Clear Cooperation took effect in 2020, without private listings becoming less common.

Real estate analyst Mike DelPrete has pointed out a methodological issue that complicates several of these comparisons: some "off-MLS" datasets include FSBO sales, which independently sell for less than agent-assisted sales (NAR data puts the FSBO median about 18% lower) for reasons unrelated to MLS exposure, such as being concentrated in rural markets or lower-cost property types. Studies that exclude FSBO and isolate office-exclusive listings specifically — including a Bright MLS analysis focused on that group — have found smaller effects, with one such study reporting that pre-marketing as an office exclusive "has no impact on the close price."

Where this leaves FSBO sellers specifically

Worth noting directly: a FSBO listing is not entered into the MLS by default. Without an agent, a seller isn't automatically part of the MLS ecosystem this entire debate is about — unless they separately pay for a flat-fee MLS listing service. That means FSBO sellers relying on a platform like CounteredAI, direct share links, and their own marketing are already operating somewhat outside the MLS/portal syndication system that CCP and LAS both govern, for different reasons than the strategic "private listing" choice being debated between agent-represented sellers.

Where things stand

As of mid-2026: Clear Cooperation Policy remains officially in effect, with the March 2025 delayed-marketing exemption layered on top of it. Zillow's Listing Access Standards remain in force in a relaxed form after the Compass lawsuit was dropped. Compass has cut its direct Zillow feeds. New MLS-level structures for circulating listings with less public syndication are actively being built. And the underlying empirical question — whether keeping a listing off the open market costs sellers money, makes no difference, or occasionally helps — does not currently have a single, settled answer. Different studies, using different data and different definitions of "private listing," have reached different conclusions.