What is Clear Cooperation and Should You Care?

Clear Cooperation is the idea that if a home is marketed for sale by a real estate professional, then the home must be visible to all potential buyers on the Multiple Listing Service (the MLS is an on-line database used by real estate pros). From the MLS, property info is syndicated to third party websites like Zillow and Redfin. Keep in mind that as a seller, you can opt out of your home being syndicated to third party sites (maybe you’re a celebrity and don’t want your home on the public web).

Why would we need a Clear Cooperation policy? Well, it’s to avoid “pocket” or “private” listings – homes that are for sale but are only marketed privately, often within a brokerage or to a small network of buyers. You don’t have to think too hard about how pocket or private listings are exclusionary and could be used for evil – sellers only selling their homes to certain types of people.

There is ongoing debate across the industry around Clear Cooperation. On one hand it protects consumers by ensuring buyers have equal access to listings, and on the other, it restricts sellers’ ability to control how their homes are marketed.

The Compass real estate brokerage is opposed to clear cooperation and instead has been working to promote a phased marketing strategy: first marketing a home privately within their brokerage, then releasing it as a “coming soon” listing, and eventually putting it on the MLS. And just this month, Compass announced a partnership with Redfin that allows Redfin to display Compass “coming soon” and private listings on its website before those homes appear on the MLS.

Lawmakers in WA State are close to adopting policies in support of Clear Cooperation that would mandate that if a broker markets a residential property to a select group of buyers or agents, it must also be marketed publicly at the same time.

I believe that Clear Cooperation is another step in the right direction with providing as much transparency as possible in the real estate industry. Those trying to circumvent the policy seem to be trying to hide information from the general public and at the same time drive eyeballs and attention to certain on-line platforms where consumers are enticed or pushed into working with a select group of agents and mortgage companies – and that never seems like a good thing.