Zillow economist: Compass just told you who benefits from private listings (Hint: It's not the seller)
An opinion from Zillow's chief economist argues the data on private and office-exclusive listings undercuts the case that sellers come out ahead.
The debate over private and office-exclusive listings keeps being framed as a question of choice. The data, this argument goes, tells a simpler story about who actually captures the value when a listing is kept off the open market.
Broad exposure is what creates competition among buyers — and competition is what produces the seller's best price. Strategies that narrow exposure can serve the brokerage holding the inventory more than the homeowner who hired it.
"Exposure is the seller's leverage. Anything that reduces it should be argued on the merits."
For Inman Select readers running brokerages, the practical read is less about ideology and more about positioning: as scaled players lean into private networks, the independent's honest-broker pitch — maximum exposure, fiduciary-first — becomes a sharper differentiator, not a weaker one.