Dear Monica: We want to sell our house privately without advertising the address or price. Our agent said the rules on private listings have changed and that it would likely be harder to sell this way. Can you comment? Stan B.

 

Dear Stan: On May 1, 2020 new rules called Clear Cooperation Rules went into effect saying that sellers can exclude their property listing from the MLS but once a listing is excluded under the new rule, an agent can only promote the listing for sale within their own brokerage. If they promote, communicate, or advertise it in any way outside of their brokerage, they must add it to the MLS in Active status within one business day. You can’t have signs, public facing websites, social media, digital communications marketing (ex: email, text or phone blasts, social media messaging), multi-brokerage listing sharing networks, flyers or written material or on any applications available to the public or hold an open house.

 

Your agent is right that your property will be harder to sell if it is privately marketed.