Unlock MLS Touts Flex Listings After Zillow Preview Launch

The head of Austin’s multiple listing service isn’t buying into the hype of Zillow’s pre-marketing product.

Zillow this week announced Zillow Preview, its pre-market home listing option that will allow agents to put homes on Zillow and Trulia before they are publicly marketed through the MLS.

Unlock MLS and Austin Board of Realtors CEO Emily Girard called the new offering a welcome response to mounting demand for greater seller control, but pushed back on the rush of national players pushing to stake their claims on how listings are marketed.

“What is clear already is that the right answer for Central Texas sellers is not a national pre-market product or a private network’s exclusive inventory. It is a cooperative marketplace that puts the seller in control from day one.”

In an apparent reference to Compass, Girard called out unnamed critics who have denounced MLSs for putting listings online “before sellers were ready.”

“The contradiction now is that some of those same critics are building new infrastructure that expands consumer access to pre-market listings before sellers are ready for broad public exposure,” Girard said.

Girard touted Unlock MLS’ Flex Listings as a controlled “runway” to an eventual public listing.

“That is what a seller’s choice should look like: control over when a listing goes public without restricting exposure to a limited private network or forcing it to be available to everybody on the internet,” Girard stated.

Through Flex Listings, sellers in the Austin area can show their homes on a site that’s accessible only to Unlock MLS subscribers. Girard announced Flex Listings last year as a middle ground between totally private networks and mass exposure.

Compass isn’t the only private listing network in Austin, and it’s not the only brokerage whose agents trade listings with each other before joining the open market. Other Austin-based enterprises operate private listing databases in which Compass agents participate.

But the rollouts from the national residential giants are part of a larger race for inventory that some industry observers have said could threaten MLS access and distort market metrics.

Zillow’s announcement this week followed a similar rollout by Compass, which recently announced that Redfin would display its “Coming Soon” listings. A Coming Soon listing allows the seller to promote a home online without amassing days on market or displaying a price history. Compass and Redfin also plan to bring on Compass’ “Private Exclusive” listings, which are currently limited to agents at Compass International Holdings brokerages and buyers who contact them.

Zillow has threatened to remove homes from its website if they’re not uploaded to the MLS within a day of being publicly marketed. In a press release, Zillow presented the Zillow Preview option as a way to “shine a light on listings that might otherwise stay hidden, giving buyers open access to their options and sellers the broad exposure they deserve,” said Zillow CEO Jeremy Wacksman.