The battle over private listings is playing out nearly everywhere—from statehouses and courthouses to brokerage offices and Wall Street boardrooms. As opponents and supporters of the practice make their cases, the debate looks vastly different depending on the venue.
But one tool that is nearly always effective is data. And as the practice draws more attention from outside the industry, empirical evidence—that private listings limit buyer access, or sell faster, or affect the final sales price—becomes particularly powerful when shaping big-picture narratives that can sway large swaths of consumers, or lawmakers.
Compass today announced a new study of its own private listing program, covering over 70,000 closed transactions, which shows properties sold with “phased marketing” (including some level of pre-marketing as a “Coming Soon” or “Private Exclusive”) earned sellers 4.6% more than homes that went straight on the MLS.
These properties also sold 34% faster, according to Compass.
Another study put out by the brokerage in early 2025, looking at data for 2024, found a 2.9% price premium on pre-marketed listings.
“The data is consistent: Giving homeowners marketing strategies to build interest in their home and refine the price before listing on the MLS and portals leads to a higher sale price,” said Dave Crosby, Compass’s chief data officer.
The study is unlikely to convince the brokerage’s critics. Compass is hardly an objective party to the private listing debate, and no matter how robust its methodology or samples, the company has a clear motivation to find support in data for these conclusions.
A Compass spokesperson previously told RISMedia that as a publicly traded company, the brokerage cannot put out false or misleading data or information.
The big picture
The new study also shows how important that fight over “objective” data-based evidence is as the industry splinters over how to approach policies and platforms used to market homes. The data is drawn from a more recent 12-month period from March 2025 to March 2026, capturing some of the recent changes—largely driven by Compass—in how “pre-marketing” takes place, from portals to MLSs. It also controlled for 50 “confounding” variables, including agent “attributes” and macro conditions.
Notably, the industry appears closer to an agreement on some of the more foundational principles Compass claims the study supports—specifically that “pre-marketing” is something valuable to a broad array of sellers. Many other industry incumbents—from Zillow to big MLSs—have tweaked rules to allow sellers to obscure price drops or days on market stats, which often erode the property’s appeal in the eyes of buyers.
But the value, principle or efficacy of keeping listings entirely off-MLS remains much more sharply debated—something Compass seems to understand.
Almost half of the blog post announcing the study’s results focuses on another, independent analysis first covered by RISMedia, which found that listings that effectively sold off-MLS (Compass’s “phased” listings usually end up marketed on the MLS at some point) sold for a smaller but significant 1.7% price premium (and much higher at luxury price points).
Notably, the price premium disappeared after the Clear Cooperation policy went into effect, according to that research, which focused on 20 years of MLS data ending in 2022.
That study was cited multiple times by Compass CEO Robert Reffkin on social media, and drew heated reactions from both sides of the private listing debate.
University of Georgia professor Darren Hayunga, who conducted the study, previously told RISMedia that his research supported the hypothesis that staying off-MLS was a rational and effective strategy for many sellers—and possibly buyers as well. He also rejected the idea that it is driven entirely by agents, who benefit from double-ending deals (something Compass has been accused of).
But this appears far from ending the debate, even as far as data is concerned. Hayunga admits in his study that conventional wisdom says that limiting the exposure of an asset like a home will lower the sales price, and told RISMedia that the result was somewhat surprising.
And Zillow—with its own business-driven motivations—has also conducted research showing that dual agency and off-market deals have negative impacts on sellers. A handful of states have even passed laws that require real estate agents to disclose to sellers that a privately-marketed listing can cost them money or time.
