The National Association of Realtors is making a small but significant tweak to home listings. Yahoo Finance Senior Reporter Claire Boston reports the details in the video above.
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The National Association of Realtors just announced a change to its rules around listing options for real estate agents that it says will allow for more choices for consumers. And here to break down what's changed, we've got our very own Claire Boston. Claire, what has changed?
Hi, Brad. So this is real breaking news, just came in a few minutes ago. Um, but this is about what is called the Clear Cooperation Policy. And this governs how, if you are a seller, you have to list and market your homes. Um, traditionally, uh, there are these things called multiple listing services. That's kind of what you see if you're searching on Zillow, that disseminates a lot of information about the home you have for sale. But there are some sellers who for whatever reason maybe don't want to share that they have a home to sale for sale to the whole world. And, um, old policy said that they had to list or they had to market their homes, um, on these MLSs very quickly. Uh, but we're getting some changes to these rules in a new rule that says basically under certain circumstances, they can delay marketing of their homes. And the reasoning of this is maybe they don't want to tell everyone, you know, maybe the realtor has a couple of people in mind for a sale and they want to do it privately. Uh, the National Association of Realtors is saying this is going to give consumers more flexibility.
Yeah, we have a comment here from the president of the National Association of Realtors, Kevin Sears, who essentially said the National Association of Realtors is continuously reviewing some of these multiple listing services policies here and ultimately trying to make sure that they undertook this comprehensive review of the CCP Clear Cooperation Policy as part of those efforts to ensure home sellers and buyers have the information and flexibility. And that flexibility getting a little bit more clarity here with this announcement. You also have a story out today that's actually about how these new rules, how new rules in general meant future quote secret listings. So what does this adjustment mean for that pocket of the market?
Right. So we're talking about secret listings or pocket listings. These are those homes that are not listed broadly on the MLS. Um, these new rules are designed to give sellers a little bit more flexibility. It would allow for those listings to remain and, um, you know, to give sellers options to delay their listings. Um, you know, and and it's really they say it's really about choice here. Um, this rule had created a lot of controversy in the industry. You know, some realtors really liked it, some hated it. A lot of the realtors were saying, um, you know, we want to give our sellers choices, but we also want to make sure that homes are really broadly available. Um, you know, there could be fair housing concerns, for example, with not listing homes broadly. And so this they're saying will give sellers more flexibility while also still, you know, preserving that information to eventually be on the MLS.
Claire, thanks so much for breaking this down for us. Some breaking news here today on.