If you pay attention to real estate news, then you might have heard about disagreements surrounding the industry’s Clear Cooperation Policy among the many headlines lately. One of the most vocal voices against CCP is Robert Reffkin, Compass’ own founder/CEO. He strangely finds himself aligned in this fight with Michael Ketchmark (the attorney who spearheaded the changes last year which resulted in less transparency on the MLS, while he walked away with an 8-figure paycheck) as well as the DOJ. They are aligned against the National Association of Realtors and just about every MLS in the country.

What is the CCP? Enacted in 2019, NAR’s policy states: “Within one (1) business day of marketing a property to the public, the listing broker must submit the listing to the MLS for cooperation with other MLS participants. Public marketing includes, but is not limited to, flyers displayed in windows, yard signs, digital marketing on public facing websites, brokerage website displays (including IDX and VOW), digital communications marketing (email blasts), multi-brokerage listing sharing networks, and applications available to the general public.” (Find the full text here.)

According to Robert Reffkin, Clear Cooperation is forced cooperation. It restricts the way you are allowed to market listings for your clients, forcing them onto the MLS within 24 hours and severely limiting your ability to do strategic pre-marketing like “Coming Soons.” This has resulted in a system where your properties are automatically sent to hundreds of sites and aggregators.

“Days on Market” and public price drops are the killer of value. While Compass Private Exclusives or Compass Coming Soons are focused on protecting homeowners from “Days on Market” and public price drops, most MLSs and aggregators don’t offer such protections to homeowners.

Leads from your listings are then sold via aggregators, without the listing agent’s involvement. Unlike listing agents, most of these aggregators are focused on selling leads, not selling homes. These aggregators, like Zillow, Realtor.com, etc, receive the seller’s valuable data for free, and then use it to perpetuate a business model that does not work in the best interests of that seller.

These days, information is king. This policy forces sellers to give up that information within 1 day if they wish to work with a licensed RE broker. Moreover, many have argued that Clear Cooperation forces agents to break the law, where state law clearly says agents have a fiduciary duty to do what’s in the best interest of their clients. And, if agents choose to honor their clients wishes over MLS rules, we can be fined up to $5,000.

The DOJ has been actively investigating the CCP for years. In fact, in July 2020, the DOJ even asked NAR to extend Clear Corporation’s requirements for listings to go to the MLS from 1 business day to 60 days, which NAR declined.

Ketchmark says, “Homeowners are the ones who own their homes, not the National Association of Realtors, and if the homeowner and their agent make a decision that they don’t want to list it on any particular site for any particular reason, they ought to have a right to do that. Why in the world, if I own a home in the Midwest or anywhere in the country, if I make a decision that I want to have my agent make a flyer and pass it out at it at a local baseball game or pass it out at a church meeting or a school board meeting, or pass around flyers in my neighborhood, should I not have a right to do that?”

While I question Ketchmark’s motives, I do agree with his message this time around. The public should have the right to choose if and when to distribute their data across the web.

The big real estate aggregators are not going down without a fight. This data and the leads that they are able to source and sell with it are how they make their money. Zillow, followed by Redfin, have threatened not to display listings that have been previously marketed while in a private network, such as Compass Private Exclusives. However, these headlines seem to be a lot of empty words, as Zillow’s actual policy does not apply to Compass Private Exclusives or the MLS’s Private Listing Network (not to mention we would question their ability to enforce it even if it did).

There is only one category of listings that are actually problematic under ZLAS: Private Exclusives that are publicly marketed, but not put into the MLS within one day. As of this writing, there are no such listings anywhere in the industry. Every single one of Compass’s listings are either private, or put into the MLS within one day of being public. Zillow saw a chance to make headlines, and they took it.

Read more from Inman here – “In challenging the National Association of Realtors’ Clear Cooperation Policy, Robert Reffkin writes, Realtors are upholding their highest moral, ethical and legal duties to serve clients.”

This story is ongoing, and the argument might just be beginning. We will have to see! I just ask that, when you see headlines, always consider the source. There are parties that are in danger of losing their monopolies, and they will fight hard to prevent that.

At the end of the day, this is an argument for consumers retaining the rights to their data, rather than being forced to disseminate it to every corner of the internet if they want to enlist the services of a real estate professional. Most will likely still choose to list in the public MLS and allow their listings to feed through to the 3rd-party sites, but they should still have the right to make that choice.