I worry about the impact for home sellers of this “pocket listings” trend. I would surely want to discuss this carefully with my clients before keeping a home off the MLS. I’ve seen too many demonstrations of the MLS listing working to Flagstaff home owner’s advantage. The market price cannot be really determined in a private sale.
In other words, the ONLY legitimate reason I can see for a real estate agent to NOT list the property on MLS before allowing his or her seller-client to make a contract to sell is if there are extreme privacy concerns of the seller. Then, I would want to make sure the seller understood the advantages of an MLS listing in order to (temporarily) preserve that privacy.
MLSs at ‘cliff’s edge’ over ‘pocket listings’ | Inman News.