In the ever-evolving world of real estate, a quiet shift is underway — and it’s redefining how homes are marketed, discovered, and sold. From bustling cities to quiet coastal communities like Martha’s Vineyard, more listings are entering the market without ever appearing on Zillow, Redfin, or Realtor.com.
And while that may sound mysterious (or even frustrating), for buyers and sellers who understand the landscape, it can be a huge advantage.
At the O’Hanlon Group, we’ve had incredible success guiding our clients through Compass’ 3-Phased Marketing Strategy — a smart, data-backed approach that allows sellers to test the market in stages, starting with private exposure and progressing to a full-scale public launch. But here’s the important part: we never pressure our sellers into this approach. Every listing plan is customized, and every decision is made in the best interest of our clients after a collaborative and informative conversation.
We also make sure all of our Off Market and Coming Soon listings are available on our website, ohanlongroup.com, giving early access to serious buyers who know where to look. For buyers working with us, we go the extra mile — just recently, we showed clients who flew in for the day three homes that fit their criteria, including one that was never publicly marketed. Without us, they wouldn’t have known it was an option.
We collaborate with all agents on the Island, not just Compass, to make sure our buyers don’t miss a single opportunity. That’s the power of local connections and a team that truly hustles behind the scenes.
So what’s driving this trend nationwide? And what does it mean for the future of real estate?
The following article from Business Insider lays it all out brilliantly — and we’re sharing it in full so you don’t need a subscription to understand the bigger picture.
📰 Full Business Insider Article by James Rodriguez
(Reprinted for educational and informational purposes)
To anyone snooping on Zillow, it appears that the two-bedroom condo at 364 Arkansas Street, in San Francisco's sunny Potrero Hill neighborhood, is not for sale. The site can only offer a hazy estimate of the home's value, basic facts about the property, and some grainy, decade-old photos from the last time it traded hands. Other popular home-listing portals — Redfin, Realtor.com, Homes.com — deliver the same result. The house is "off-market."
The condo is for sale, though, with an asking price of $999,000. I know this because I visited the website of Compass, the country's largest real estate brokerage by sales volume and the firm representing the home's seller. There, 364 Arkansas Street is tucked away from the rest of the internet, along with a vast trove of other homes listed for sale by Compass agents.
This is no accident or failure on the part of the seller's broker. Zillow and its competitors made their names by compiling home listings in one place, helping regular homebuyers navigate a once opaque market. But a monthslong fight over control of these listings, led by Compass CEO Robert Reffkin, is fracturing the housing landscape. A growing number of agents, especially those affiliated with Compass, are advising sellers to opt for a more limited advertising campaign for their homes. In some cases, this means an early release on the broker's website before sharing the listing more widely across the internet, essentially testing the waters before it technically hits the market. In other instances, agents may push their sellers to hide their homes from public view entirely, marketing them exclusively among agents who belong to the same brokerage, or within select groups of brokers known as "private listing networks." This state of play has spawned weird situations like the one in San Francisco: A home may be publicly touted for sale on one brokerage's website while lying dormant everywhere else.
The new reality poses the greatest threat to Zillow and other portals that subsist on an unfettered flow of data. Instead of scrolling happily through Zillow or Redfin, you might have to bounce from site to site in search of a home or hire the agent who seems like they have access to the most listings. Even then, you may be stuck with the feeling that more hidden homes are on the market, lingering just out of view.
The day of reckoning for search portals like Zillow is a long way off. Still, there's no denying the shift underway — in February, Reffkin told analysts that more than half of new Compass sellers were opting to "premarket" their homes within the walls of the brokerage before sharing their listings in all the usual places. Exclusive listings aren't novel, but Compass' aggressive push in that direction has roiled the rest of the industry. And it's far from the only company employing this tactic. Even Redfin, which runs a brokerage business in addition to its search portal, has threatened to adopt the Compass playbook.
"Writing blog posts and being all high and mighty and idealistic about how a marketplace ought to work, that's one approach," Glenn Kelman, Redfin's CEO, tells me. "And the other approach is a little more Hobbesian, which is, when you're punched in the face, punch back."
The threat to real estate portals — not to mention the house hunters and casual lurkers who love to browse them — became clear late last month. For the past half-decade, the National Association of Realtors, an industry group that effectively sets the rules for buying and selling homes in America, has been trying to stem the rise of "pocket listings," homes that are quietly advertised among a select group rather than shared widely. In 2019, NAR adopted the "clear cooperation policy," which requires agents to contribute listings to local databases within one day of marketing them publicly. The databases, known as multiple listing services, feed that info to other brokerages and search sites like Zillow, ensuring everyone can get a clear view of the homes for sale in that area. Over the past year, though, Reffkin has led the charge to get rid of the clear cooperation rule, arguing home sellers should have control over where and how their homes are marketed.
After months of debate, NAR said in late March that it would hold firm — sort of. While clear cooperation remains intact, the group also unveiled a new policy that will allow sellers to list homes on the MLS but opt out of sending their data to sites like Zillow for a period of time. These so-called "delayed marketing" listings will be available for other agents to find in the MLS and may be publicly advertised on the listing broker's website, but they'll be missing from the data feeds that send listings to the rest of the internet. And because regular buyers rarely have access to their local MLSes, they could end up relying more on agents to show them what's out there. All of this may sound nonsensical (why not get your home in front of as many people as possible?), but sellers and their agents have various reasons for slow-rolling their listings.
To get an idea of how this works in practice, take a look at Compass' proposed "three-phased marketing strategy" for sellers. The first step is to debut the home in Compass' internal database as a Private Exclusive, available only to Compass' network 34,000 agents and their "millions of clients." Unlike the MLS or a search portal like Zillow, the Compass database doesn't show whether the price has been cut or how long the house has been on the market, details that Reffkin argues can harm a seller by giving buyers more negotiating power. The next phase is what's known as a Coming Soon: The house is listed in the MLS and launched publicly on Compass.com, but isn't sent anywhere else. (That San Francisco condo I mentioned earlier is at this stage.) Some agents outside the brokerage may see it in the MLS, but again, the Compass site doesn't show price drops or days on the market. It does, however, signal that "increased competition for the listing will be coming soon when it's launched on all other sites," according to Compass. The third phase is the all-hands-on-deck approach: The listing goes live in all the typical online outlets.
Compass likens this road map to testing a product with a smaller audience before launch. A seller can tinker with the price, gauge the reception among Compass clients, and see if they can get a buyer to bite. A limited release may also appeal to sellers concerned about privacy. Reffkin and other Compass leaders have campaigned on a platform of "seller choice," the idea that a homeowner should have full control over how their home is marketed rather than surrender it to other platforms like Zillow.
"With NAR introducing a new MLS policy to 'expand choice for consumers,' they acknowledged the clear cooperation policy restricted home seller choice," Reffkin said in a statement after NAR's announcement last month. "Expanding choice means that NAR is still not letting homeowners choose precisely how to market their homes, but this is a small step in the right direction."
Those on the opposite side of the debate say most sellers just want to sell quickly for top dollar, and they argue sharing homes everywhere is the best way to achieve that. Even if a buyer offers you a dream price during that first phase in Compass' playbook, who's to say that a Zillow-fueled bidding war wouldn't deliver an even greater sum? Bret Weinstein, the founder and CEO of the Denver brokerage Guide Real Estate, says he can already envision the lawsuits from aggrieved sellers claiming they were duped into this "exclusive" marketing strategy.
"You're a few phone calls away from someone saying, 'Hey, I would have paid X amount for this house if I had known about it,'" Weinstein tells me.
Buyers, on the other hand, may miss out on their dream home if they choose the wrong agent or fail to scour every website. Buyers' agents may also be able to better justify their commissions if they can unlock a corner of the market for their clients, showing them homes they can't find anywhere else.
Both sides of the aisle may claim they're crusading on behalf of consumers, but you'll be hard-pressed to find anyone in the industry arriving at this debate with a neutral point of view.
"Everybody's got a financial bias," says Mike DelPrete, a real-estate tech strategist and scholar-in-residence at the University of Colorado Boulder. "At the end of the day, everyone involved has a financial dog in this fight."
The lifeblood of the real estate industry is inventory: the properties listed for sale every day by ordinary homeowners. "Listings are fuel," says Stephen Capezza, a real estate consultant who's held executive roles at both Zillow and the brokerage firm Side. Search portals draw millions of visitors each month with home listings supplied by brokerages and the MLSes. The portals then make their money by turning leads — customers who signal their interest in finding an agent or getting a mortgage — into cash through a referral system. Let's say you find a home on Zillow and click the buttons to "contact agent" or "request a tour." In many cases, Zillow won't connect you with the listing agent who represents the seller. Instead, the company will pass your information along to another agent who pays for access to Zillow's user base, either by shelling out a monthly advertising fee or promising a percentage of their commission, sometimes as much as 40%. Last year, more than 70% of Zillow's revenue — about $1.6 billion — came from its referral programs and other services for real estate professionals, annual filings show. That dollar figure was up 10% from the year prior, which the company attributed to an increase in revenue per visit and the number of visits.
At the end of the day, everyone involved has a financial dog in this fight.
The free flow of listings doesn't just benefit the giant search portals. It also levels the playing field for smaller brokerages or independent agents, allowing those with limited inventory to compete with the big guys. If large brokerages exert greater control over listings, hoarding them on their own websites or shopping them around internally, they stand to gain a clear edge in the marketplace. They can convince agents to come into the fold and sway clients by touting their exclusive inventory. They can also monetize leads through their own websites rather than handing those opportunities to another search portal. Even if most of those homes eventually go public — Compass says 94% of its exclusive listings end up on the MLS — the company can still lure customers by offering them a first look. In a tight market where every day matters, that's a seductive sell.
Keeping listings in-house could lead to big bucks for mega brokers. DelPrete estimates that Compass stands to generate $3.5 million in revenue for every 100 agents recruited, $1.1 million for every 100 closed leads funneled through its website, and $570,000 for every 100 "double-ended deals," sales in which Compass agents represent both the buyer and seller. And since brokerages typically take a cut of every commission, DelPrete says the companies could use their exclusive inventory to increase the percentage their agents hand over. If Compass could claim even 1% more of its agents' commissions, the company could haul in an extra $56 million in annual profit, according to DelPrete's analysis.
"A brokerage's job is to provide value to their agents," DelPrete tells me. "Right now, Compass is providing value to agents."
There is a chance that these changes will only register as a minor disruption for Zillow and the like. Perhaps Compass can sway some sellers to pursue their premarketing strategy, but most homeowners expect their homes to end up on the big search portals because that's where the buyers are.
"I mean, shoot, there are 'SNL' skits on Zillow," Capezza tells me. "It's synonymous with real estate. It's going to take more than a great debate, a couple changes to clear cooperation, to change consumer behavior."
Zillow makes a similar argument: Just follow the consumers. For now, they're scrolling through the search portals.
"It's clear what consumers want: open access to listings when they're searching for a home and exposure to the greatest number of buyers when they're selling," Errol Samuelson, Zillow's chief industry development officer, said in an emailed statement. "Companies like Zillow that deliver for consumers — in partnership with great real estate industry professionals — will succeed, not the companies putting their own interests ahead of the needs of home buyers and sellers."
But there are also clear reasons for concern for Zillow, Redfin, and their ilk. Four years ago, DelPrete wrote a blog post outlining the biggest threats to the search portals. Exclusive inventory was No. 1. He likened the situation to the fiercely competitive world of video streaming, in which companies like Netflix and Hulu have plowed billions of dollars into exclusive content. You may turn to Max on Sunday nights for your "White Lotus" fix, but only Netflix can satisfy your "Love Is Blind" cravings. We're stuck paying for all these different platforms because each offers its own private garden of movies and shows.
"When it comes to browsing for real estate, consumers want access to all of the available inventory," DelPrete wrote. "If a certain portion of listings are held off-market, available exclusively on another platform, consumer eyeballs will naturally follow."
"When you think about the future, you have to look at what's happening now," DelPrete tells me. "This is happening. It has been happening. And it's turning into a significant competitive advantage for Compass."
James Rodriguez is a senior reporter on Business Insider's Discourse team.
Business Insider's Discourse stories provide perspectives on the day's most pressing issues, informed by analysis, reporting, and expertise.
🌟 What This Means for Martha’s Vineyard Buyers and Sellers
This isn’t just a big-city trend — it’s a fundamental shift happening across the country, and it’s fully arrived on Martha’s Vineyard. If you're selling, a phased approach could allow you to preserve privacy, test pricing, and generate early interest — all without putting your home through the ringer of days-on-market counters and public price drops. And if you’re buying, you’ll need an agent with serious island-wide connections to ensure you’re seeing everything — not just what pops up online.
Want the inside track?
Let’s talk. We’re happy to share what’s coming soon, what’s off-market, and what might just be your dream home — even if it’s not on Zillow.
📲 Check out our exclusive listings and get in touch today at ohanlongroup.com.
