I want to say something that will make some people at the National Association of Realtors uncomfortable. Not as an attack — but because uncomfortable truths, stated plainly, are the only ones worth saying.
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The fragmentation of the marketplace we are watching unfold in 2026 — private listing platforms, brokerage portal partnerships, 55 percent of new listings from the country’s largest brokerage not reaching the MLS on Day 1 — did not emerge from nothing.
It was accelerated, unintentionally but measurably, by an NAR policy designed to prevent exactly this outcome. That policy is the Clear Cooperation Policy. It is time to reckon honestly with what it produced.
CCP was designed to open the marketplace. What it did was drive listings underground — and what had been a scattered, visible, cooperative practice became an institutional shadow market none of us had ever seen before.
A lesson from our own history
Our industry has faced this crossroads before. When the MLS moved from printed books to the internet, many brokers feared transparency would destroy their business model.
The leaders who prevailed did the opposite — they embraced it. That decision produced decades of growth, consumer trust and a cooperative marketplace that became the envy of the real estate world.
Six years ago, NAR faced a similar moment. And this time, the decision went the other way.
What the market actually looked like before CCP
Before May 2020, private listings existed — but they were not hidden. A listing agent might hold a home privately for a few weeks before submitting it to the MLS, but they would put a yard sign in the ground, post on social media or send an email to their network.
Competing brokers could see those listings. They would pick up the phone: “Would you co-broke with me? I have a buyer.” The cooperation that defines our industry still functioned — because the listings, even when private, existed in the open market where everyone could see them.
By 2019, these informal private listings represented roughly 2.4 percent of all transactions — a real problem, but a visible, containable one. NAR saw the number and reached for a compliance rule. The intent was right. What followed was not.
What CCP actually produced — and what made it worse
CCP created a hard binary. Once you publicly market a listing in any form — a yard sign, a social post, an email blast — you have one business day to submit it to the MLS. Your only alternative is zero public marketing: nothing visible, nothing advertised, nothing that cooperating agents or their buyers can see. CCP did not stop private listings. It forced them underground.
Agents and brokers who had operated in the open now had a financial incentive to hide. The informal, visible pocket listing — where a competing broker could call and co-broke — was replaced by the institutional private exclusive, accessible only to affiliated agents and clients.
Then, NAR and many MLSs added a financial penalty structure that compounded the problem. Some MLSs are imposing fines of up to $4,000 per violation on members who fail to comply.
I have belonged to a lot of professional associations in my career, and I cannot think of a single one that has ever fined its members for anything — let alone thousands of dollars. That is not how you lead a community of professionals. That is how you create resentment, resistance and workarounds.
Suppression through financial penalties does not eliminate market behavior — it drives it deeper underground and signals to the largest players that compliance is optional for anyone with enough scale to absorb the cost.
Large brokerages structured their private networks to stay below the compliance threshold. Independent agents quietly avoided public marketing to sidestep the risk. The compliance burden fell heaviest on exactly the agents the cooperative system was designed to protect.
The result: A 2021 Redfin analysis found that pocket listings had increased 67 percent since CCP passed — rising from 2.4 percent to 4 percent of all transactions. The policy designed to reduce private listings, backed by fines designed to enforce it, produced more private listings. And it handed the largest brokerages the structural incentive to institutionalize what had previously been informal.
NAR did not seal the pot. It turned up the heat, added a lock, and the lid blew off anyway.
Where 6 years of CCP have led
Compass reported in its Q4 2024 SEC earnings filing that 55 percent of all new listings in February 2025 started private — not reaching the MLS on Day 1 — then announced a three-year partnership with Rocket and Redfin to display those listings before the MLS sees them. Zillow launched Preview. Howard Hanna launched HannaList. Douglas Elliman launched Elliman Private Listings.
The MLS is now the last stop for a growing share of inventory, not the first.
And the harm to sellers is documented. Zillow’s own research across 2.72 million transactions shows sellers who list off-MLS lose between 1.5 and 3.7 percent of their final sale price. On a $500,000 home, that is between $7,500 and $18,500 left on the table.
This is not a side effect of the private listing trend. This is the direct cost of a suppression strategy that backfired and handed institutional players the blueprint to build a parallel market. NAR is going to lose the private listing battle. And the greater tragedy is that in fighting it this way, NAR may dismantle the very MLS system it was trying to protect.
What NAR should do instead
The leaders who embraced the internet understood something the CCP architects did not: You cannot regulate a market force into submission. You can only shape the container it flows into.
First, advocate for removing days-on-market and price reduction history from all public portal displays — the two data points agents use most to justify going off-MLS. Remove the stigma, and you remove the primary argument.
Second, work with MLSs to create a formal private-status designation. Allow private listings, but require every listing to be registered and visible to all MLS participants. The private tag becomes a showing preference, not an inventory wall.
Third, mandate plain-language seller disclosure with actual data showing what off-MLS listings sell for — at the kitchen table, before anyone signs anything.
CCP tried to solve a real problem and created a larger one. Admitting that is not weakness. It’s the only leadership move that still has a chance of working.
Darryl Davis is the CEO of Darryl Davis Seminars. Connect with him on Facebook or YouTube.
