If you have been anywhere near a conference room, a brokerage meeting or a real estate social media feed in the last few weeks, you have probably heard about a new academic paper out of the University of Georgia by finance professor Darren K. Hayunga, which details a study of more than 700,000 transactions. It found that private listings produce a price premium for sellers.
The private listing camp is treating it like a gift from the research gods. The paper is being cited in presentations, dropped into group chats and forwarded to agents as proof that the science has spoken, and MLS advocates need to sit down and be quiet.
There is just one problem: Most of the people circulating this paper have not read past the abstract.
I have read it. All of it. And what it actually says is almost the opposite of what is being claimed. Let me walk you through it.
What the paper claims
The study, titled “Pocket Sales in the Housing Market: Selection, Outcomes, and Policy,” was posted to SSRN in late February 2026.
Dr. Hayunga looked at residential transactions recorded in the MLS with zero days on market, meaning deals where a buyer was found privately before the property ever went public. His methodology is sophisticated. He used something called Coarsened Exact Matching to compare these private sales against comparable standard MLS transactions in the same neighborhoods and market conditions.
His headline finding: Sellers who did private deals got about 1.7 percent more than sellers who went through the standard MLS process. For luxury properties, that number jumped to over 8 percent.
That sounds significant. And if that were the whole story, the private listing advocates would have a legitimate point.
But it is not the whole story. Here is what happens when you keep reading.
What the paper actually concludes
Hayunga then analyzed what happened after the National Association of Realtors implemented the Clear Cooperation Policy in May 2020. And this is where the paper stops supporting the argument being made about it.
After CCP was implemented, the pocket sale premium collapsed. Not softened. Collapsed. The pre-CCP premium was 3.3 percent. The post-CCP premium dropped to 0.9 percent. That is a 73 percent decline. And here is the phrase the study uses to describe that 0.9 percent number: statistically indistinguishable from zero.
Those are not my words. Those are the researchers’ words. “Statistically indistinguishable from zero.”
So, the study that is being handed around as proof that private listings work is a study whose own data shows the financial advantage of private listings effectively does not exist once any meaningful policy guardrail is in place.
Let that land for a moment.
The argument being made is: Look, academic research proves private listings produce a price premium.
The actual research says: The price premium disappeared when regulation was implemented. If you use this study to argue against regulation, you are using evidence that regulation worked to argue that regulation should go away.
The part nobody is mentioning
There is something else in this paper that I have not seen cited once in any of the conversations happening around it.
The last page.
After 55 pages of complex econometric analysis, here is how Dr. Hayunga and his team concluded their own research: The private listing strategy is, in their words, “being regulated away by both policy and private platforms.” They wrote that major platforms are “aligning with the transparency mandates of the CCP” and that “the ability to broadly market a home without listing it is being structurally dismantled.”
Read that again. The researchers whose findings are being used to justify private listings finished their own paper by saying the strategy is dying.
That is like a scientist publishing a study showing a medication produced results in 2018, then adding a footnote at the end saying the medication was pulled from the market in 2020. The headline sounds promising. The conclusion tells you the story is over.
The people circulating this paper are handing agents the headline and leaving out the footnote.
4 things you need to know before citing this study
If you are going to reference this research in a listing presentation, a team meeting or a social media post, you need to know these four things.
- First, this paper has not been peer reviewed. It is an SSRN preprint, which means it has been posted publicly but has not yet gone through the independent academic scrutiny that research requires before it can be treated as settled evidence. Peer review exists precisely to catch methodological problems and test whether findings hold up. That process has not happened here.
- Second, this study covers one market, namely Dallas-Fort Worth, from 2002 to 2022. That is a specific geography with specific market dynamics. Applying findings from one metropolitan area as a universal law is not analysis. It is a stretch.
- Third, the data ends in 2022. The Compass-Redfin partnership, Zillow’s policy changes, the February 2026 federal court ruling and the broader platform-level shift toward MLS transparency requirements all happened after this study’s horizon. The market the paper describes has already changed significantly.
- Fourth, and this is the one that matters most: The study’s own Section 6 contradicts its headline finding. The 1.7 percent premium existed before CCP. After CCP, the researchers’ own numbers show it was gone. Citing the headline without citing Section 6 is not summarizing research. It is selectively reading research to get the answer you want.
What this means for you
I am not writing this to tell you that private listings are never appropriate. There are narrow circumstances where a seller’s specific situation — genuine privacy concerns, a medical situation, a security need, a particularly complex personal circumstance — may make a private approach worth considering.
But those are exceptions. And they need to be the seller’s informed choice, made after seeing honest data about what each path typically costs.
What is happening right now in parts of this industry is that a preprint, circulated before peer review, is being treated as settled science. The headline finding is being amplified. The CCP finding in Section 6 is being ignored. The author’s own conclusion that the strategy is being regulated away is being left on the cutting-room floor.
Your sellers deserve better than that. And frankly, so do you.
Before you cite a study, read the study. All of it. Including the part where the researchers tell you the conclusion themselves.
This one did. We just need to start listening.
Darryl Davis is the CEO of Darryl Davis Seminars. Connect with him on Facebook or YouTube.
