REinventing MLS
Selling a home is stressful enough. Add a difficult divorce, four messy, busy teenage children, and the challenge of preparing a house for sale, and the process can quickly become overwhelming. For one Illinois mother, MRED’s Private Listing Status provided something she desperately needed: time.
Working with her real estate agent, the homeowner placed her home in Private Listing Status while preparing for a potential sale. The family needed a few weeks to get the house ready for photographs, evaluate its market value, and determine the best path forward.
“With four kids, it was hard enough trying to get the house ready,” she explained. “It certainly gave me that extra buffer of time that I needed.” Without that flexibility, she would have been forced to choose between two bad options: put the house on the market before it was ready or delay the process entirely.
The Private Listing Status also gave her more time to search for a replacement home while navigating the divorce. “Even with the time buffer the Private Listing status gave me, I still felt a ton of pressure to buy more quickly than I would have liked,” she said. “Without it, I am not sure I would have been able to find a home for my family in time.”
Ultimately, her husband decided to buy out her interest in the property at a mutually agreed-upon value informed by appraisals, eliminating the need for a traditional sale. The Private Listing Status allowed him to understand the true value of the home by getting feedback from fellow MRED agents, which resulted in a more equitable divorce settlement.
For this family, the Private Listing Status wasn’t about avoiding the open market. It was about having the flexibility to make thoughtful decisions during an extraordinarily challenging time.
Sometimes the most valuable thing an MLS can provide is a little breathing room for consumers.
MRED launched their PLN Status to address the requests of their brokerages who wanted a way to warm up interest in properties while they were preparing them for sale. The PLN status allows every MRED subscriber to gain early exposure to properties before they go fully active. Interestingly, the data shows that properties participating in this early, pre-listing status have fewer double ended transactions than active listings.
Double-ended transactions by agents have consistently been less common in the Private Listing Network status than in Active status:
2022: PLN Status 3.3% | Active Status 5.5%
2023: PLN Status 3.5% | Active Status 5.8%
2024: PLN Status 3.2% | Active Status 5.2%
2025: PLN Status 3.3% | Active Status 4.7%
2026 YTD (as of 8/31): PLN Status 2.9% | Active Status 3.4%
The data also shows that double ending represents an increasingly small percentage of transactions in either status.
Since 2022, double-ended transactions in the PLN status have declined approximately 12%, while those in Active status have declined approximately 38%.
The data does not support the assertion by some that PLN status encourages agents to capture both sides of a transaction.
At MRED, we believe the best way to address questions about how the marketplace operates is to start with the facts.
And in this case, the data is clear: the PLN is simply a way to give homeowners the time to prepare their listing or, in rare cases, sell their home without public display.
MRED has understood for more than a decade what others are just beginning to recognize: the broker is solely responsible for facilitating a successful, lawful transaction. The MLS is responsible for curating an organized, cooperative, equitable marketplace that gives brokers the flexibility to lawfully serve their clients as they see fit.
That philosophy has guided MRED’s Private Listing Network (PLN) status since it was launched more than 10 years ago in direct response to broker requests. It is also why MRED does not mandate how long a listing can remain in PLN status before being marketed publicly. Every property, seller and circumstance is different. MRED believes the practitioner advising the seller is best positioned to determine the appropriate marketing path.
The results support that approach. Even without a mandated timeframe, listings typically remain in the PLN for just 9 to 20 days, similar to markets that impose specific time limits. The key difference in MRED’s approach? The broker drives the marketing approach and timing, not arbitrary MLS rules.
MRED doesn’t impose arbitrary behaviors on broker marketing practices. MRED creates the marketplace and empowers professionals to serve their clients the best way they know how. After a decade of listening, learning, and refining the PLN, MRED continues to demonstrate the advantage of broker-centric leadership: lead the marketplace without trying to dictate the flow of transactions.
The court’s preliminary injunction ruling in favor of MRED marks an important victory not only for MRED, but also for MLSs, brokers, and the cooperative marketplace nationwide.
MRED stood its ground to protect a fundamental MLS principle: brokerages receiving other brokerages’ listing data may use it for their consumer sites, provided they follow the relevant licensing requirements and display all listings approved for distribution.
MRED did this by defending Objective Criteria, a principle established through the Department of Justice and recently reaffirmed by the National Association of REALTORS®. Brokers and consumers may filter listings by price, property type, location, bedrooms, amenities, and other objective characteristics. They cannot exclude a competitor’s listings simply because they disagree with the lawful way those properties were marketed.
What a brokerage cannot do is selectively remove legitimate listings using subjective criteria. What if a brokerage excluded only the listings of a competitor it was battling for market share? What if it refused to display listings without floor plans? How about a brokerage that eliminated listings it considered competitive with its own? These are subjective business decisions, not neutral search criteria, and they are prohibited by most, if not all, MLS data licensing agreements. That is why MLSs serve as referees of the cooperative marketplace. Someone must ensure competitors follow the same rules and prevent powerful companies from deciding what the rules are for everyone else.
MRED was willing to take that stand even when challenged by a large, publicly traded company. The ruling reinforces the ability of MLSs to consistently enforce their rules and data licensing agreements.
This is a victory for fairness, transparency and broker cooperation – principles MRED will continue defending every day.
One of the most frequent questions and concerns around private listings MRED gets is that agents used them to ‘double-end’ the deal. Meaning, the agent wanted to represent both the seller and the buyer to get both sides of the commission. The stats tell a different story.
Since MRED started tracking in 2022, the amount of double ended listings in a private status is actually less than what happens in active statuses.
Here are the recent percentages of double-ended agent listings in MRED’s marketplace:
2022:
2023:
2024
2025
2026 year to date
As an MLS, MRED wants to go to the data whenever we can to help tell the RIGHT story.
When a listing goes Active in the MLS, what happens? Thousands of emails, push notifications, and other alerts go live to consumers ready to buy.
In between the signing of the listing agreement and making it live for the public, did you have time to stage the property? Make any repairs? Get the professional photography and other marketing done?
Using a private listing status lets you take the listing, put it in the MLS for all of the other brokers, and do what’s right by your seller to make that best first impression.
