Private listings, sometimes called whisper listings, are quiet listings that don’t hit the public market. With the seller’s consent, agents rep these properties behind the scenes with no web presence, no advertising, and no public buyer pool. Recently, there has been a growing movement by some brokerages to turn private listings into a marketing strategy, by hoarding information and releasing it through private channels only to agents within their brokerage.
Brown Harris Stevens CEO Bess Freedman is raising the alarm on such programs. In her latest opinion piece for Inman, Bess writes “Let’s be clear: Any brokerage that advocates for only marketing listings internally is not putting the client’s interests first, but rather it is an attempt to pad its own pockets.” Private exclusives should be the exception, not the rule.
