The trade group wants to replace the polarizing National Association of Realtors rule with what it’s calling a “Clear Collaboration Policy,” which it says would be more flexible than the status quo.
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Amid ongoing strife over the National Association of Realtors’ divisive Clear Cooperation Policy, rival trade group the American Real Estate Association is pitching a compromise it believes will satisfy consumers and brokers alike.
The American Real Estate Association on Friday released what it describes as a “Clear Collaboration Policy,” which officials called “a balanced, fair policy that respects seller choice, ensures professional access to listings, and fosters a competitive real estate environment.” The policy would end a “one size fits all approach” while addressing concerns that the U.S. Department of Justice has expressed about the current status quo, its authors told Inman exclusively.
The American Real Estate Association shared its proposal with members Friday.
The most significant aspect of the proposal involves how listings reach the public. Currently, Clear Cooperation requires Realtors to feed listings into a NAR-affiliated MLS within a day of marketing the property — a process that automatically sends listings to public portals like Zillow, which syndicates content from MLSs. Critics have balked at the requirement, arguing that it bars homeowners from marketing as they see fit while violating consumer privacy.
The proposed Clear Collaboration Policy, however, would change that. Agents would still need to input listings into an MLS under the proposal, but those listings would not automatically or necessarily get syndicated to consumer-facing portals. Documents provided to Inman describe this approach as “public portal opt-in, not forced opt-out.”
“Agents have the ability — but not the requirement — to syndicate listing data to public platforms,” the documents add.
READ WHAT JASON HABER HAS TO SAY ABOUT THE PROPOSAL
According to the American Real Estate Association, this approach would open the door for consumers to maintain their privacy. Meanwhile licensed agents could still find even non-public listings by searching the MLS. The organization is also pitching the proposal as a boon to smaller and independent brokerages.
“Clear Collaboration levels the playing field while maintaining a fair, transparent marketplace,” the documents state.
That point is an apparent nod to concerns that in the absence of Clear Cooperation, large companies would build their own private listing networks and cut smaller players off from swaths of the market.
Other benefits of Clear Collaboration, according to the documents, include fostering “true transparency without unnecessary restrictions,” and that it “eliminates outdated, punitive policies that do not serve agents or consumers.”
The proposal also suggests a “fair listing window” between the time agents share listings internally and when they have to submit them to their MLS. Jason Haber, who cofounded the American Real Association with The Agency’s Mauricio Umansky, told Inman “certainly one day is too rigid” for such a window, and that “one interesting idea we’ve discussed is not having a blanket national policy on that and allowing the local MLSs to establish that time table so it’s tailored to that region.”
“We are also actively crowdsourcing ideas from our membership on this,” he also said.
Clear Cooperation is a NAR policy, and thus only NAR has the power to change or eliminate it — something many in the industry have anticipated would happen for months now.
Jason Haber
Haber told Inman the goal is to “engage NAR and the real estate community around this plan.” The goal, he added is collaboration.
Haber also said that the proposal is the product of a working group within the American Real Estate Association, and that he and Umansky finalized the concept.
The documents don’t get into the technical details of how listing syndication would work if the proposal were to become policy. Haber also noted there is a patchwork of hundreds of MLSs in the U.S. and the technical implementation would likely vary.
Time will tell how receptive NAR might be to the proposal, but in the meantime Clear Cooperation remains arguably real estate’s most polarizing issue to emerge in the period following last year’s antitrust commission lawsuit settlements. Compass CEO Robert Reffkin fired an early salvo in the conflict last summer and has remained a vocal critic of the policy. A number of other industry leaders have join in Reffkin’s critiques, and the American Real Estate Association itself launched a petition last year to end Clear Cooperation.
However, many other industry leaders — eXp Realty CEO Leo Pareja and NextHome CEO James Dwiggins among them — support keeping Clear Cooperation and have criticized those pushing for an end to the rule.
The conflict has at this point reached something of a stalemate as both sides now wait for NAR to make some sort of move on the issue. For its part, though, the American Real Estate Association is framing its proposal as the way forward.
“The future of real estate,” the documents argue, “is Clear Collaboration.”
Update: This story was updated after publication with additional information on the proposed “fair listing window.”
Email Jim Dalrymple II
