Each Friday, Russ Anderson, the president and CEO of Briggs Freeman Sotheby’s International Realty and the president and CEO of Pacific Sotheby's International Realty, writes about luxury, trends, business and more in the advertising pages of the Mansion section of The Wall Street Journal. Below is his letter of June 13, 2025.
FROM THE PRESIDENT'S P.O.V.
Would you knowingly leave money on the table?
Many home sellers already are — because some brokerages are increasingly urging their agents to talk their sellers into off-market listings. These “private exclusives,” also called hip-pocket listings, are not displayed on an area’s multiple listing service and therefore not discoverable by agents using that MLS. Since these properties are known only to agents within the brokerage that has the listing, the buyer is almost always a client of another agent at that same brokerage. The listing brokerage, then, gets all the commission.
But what else does a private listing do? It limits the exposure of a property, which limits the pool of potential buyers — which limits the property’s sale price. It’s a bizarre sales tactic. Why? Because, from a survey of more than a million homes sold between 2019 and 2023 in just two regions of the U.S., homes listed on the MLS sold for 17.5 percent more than off-market listings.
Yes, you could be shorting yourself by almost 20 percent if your home is never on the MLS. There was a recent story about this trend in The Boston Globe. The article talks about a free market, basic economics and the global nature of the buyer pool now. One of the experts interviewed is Colleen Barry, the CEO of Gibson Sotheby’s International Realty, which serves Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Rhode Island. “That’s my greatest fear,” she says about the push for private listings, “[that] people aren’t being told the true nature of the risks that they’re taking on by not putting their home on the open market.”
Says Colleen, earlier in the story: “The best way to get the highest and best offer is to put [your home] out to the greatest number of people.”
That, friends, is what a free market is all about.
Russ Anderson
President and CEO, Briggs Freeman Sotheby’s International Realty
President and CEO, Pacific Sotheby’s International Realty
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