NAR's New Office Exclusive Guidance: Every REALTOR® Needs to Read This

If you have listened to Dish and Dirt for any length of time, you know that I have spent a lot of time, a lot of episodes discussing office exclusive listings, private listing networks, clear cooperation rules of the National Association of Realtors, and the battle over who controls real estate listings and thus all the data created from those listings.

We've talked about Compass, talked about Zillow, talked about homes.com. We've talked about brokerages building these private listening networks and how everything now seems to be moving in the way of three distinct portals.

We talked about how the Department of Injustice may be investigating that to see if this is an antitrust issue for small brokerages.

Is this a fair housing issue? Could it be? We've also talked about the National Association of Realtors.

What is their opinion? What will they say about this? And through all of these conversations, one question continues to come up, and that is, what exactly are the listing broker's duties when the seller wants to keep the property off the multiple listing service? Well, I think we finally have one of the best answers that I've seen because recently the National Association of Realtors has released a guidance document that is titled Office Exclusive Listing Slash Pre-Marketing Guidance.

Now, While it does not create new rules, it does explain how NAR believes that realtors should approach office exclusives and pre-marketing while still fulfilling the fiduciary duties that they owe to the sellers.

Now, this is how they look at it based on NAR rules, not state law, not MLS rules.

I want to be very clear about a couple of things before we begin.

This is not a new rule change for NAR.

They are not abandoning office exclusives.

They have not eliminated clear cooperation.

In fact, NAR has not even picked sides in the Compass versus Zillow debate and who controls the data.

Moreover, NAR rules do not override state law.

They don't override federal law or your MLS rules.

And you also have to keep in mind that not all real estate agents are realtors.

In fact, about 40% of all real estate licensees are not realtors.

But what this does give us is a really good look at how a court of law would probably judge your actions in office exclusives and coming soons because we know that courts like to look at NAR rules, NAR guidance, NAR code of ethics when they try to determine what a reasonable real estate agent should do and how they should act.

If you read this document carefully, I think you're going to find something slightly different than you were expecting.

NAR actually reaffirms that office exclusives remain a legitimate option for sellers.

But, and it's a very big but, it also reminds brokers that the decision belongs solely to the seller, not to the broker, not to the broker's owner, not to the broker in charge, not to your marketing plan or your business development plan.

It belongs solely to the seller.

And the broker's job is to provide enough information for that seller to make an informed decision so that the seller can give informed consent.

It's not pitching your marketing plan as the greatest idea and not explaining any of the fallbacks.

And I think that's why this document is so important, because over the past year, our industry has spent a lot of time arguing about whether office exclusives are good or bad.

I think they're really bad, except in very, very narrow situations, such as a celebrity or somebody is a victim of criminal domestic violence, or maybe they work for ICE or something of that nature.

But I think maybe that is the wrong question because office exclusives are a marketing tool.

And like any tool, they can be used appropriately.

Somebody doesn't want their house on the market because they're a federal judge that has perhaps threats against them.

But it also can be used inappropriately when it becomes your marketing strategy for you to get both sides of the transaction.

The real question has never been about whether office exclusives should exist.

The real question is, Is an office exclusive actually in the seller's best interest? And that's what we're going to examine today on this week's episode as we walk through the NAR guidance documents.

This is Dish and Dirt with Gary Pickering, South Carolina's only podcast dedicated to the real estate agent craft.

And now the host of Dish and Dirt, Gary Pickering.

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