The “coming Soon” Boom Raises Questions About Value, Transparency

For most brokers and agents, “coming soon” listings aren’t new. But after a flurry of recent moves — from exclusive syndication deals to new pre-marketing platforms — the strategy is quickly hitting peak popularity.

The past three weeks have seen Compass International Holdings announce a mutually exclusive syndication deal for coming soon listings with Redfin and Rocket Companies.

Howard Hanna Real Estate Services launch HannaList as a pre-marketing platform.

Zillow launch Zillow Preview with exclusive coming soon syndication deals with REMAX, Side, United Real Estate, HomeServices of America and Keller Williams.

eXp Realty sign non-exclusive syndication deals with Realtor.com, Homes.com and ComeHome.com.

The concept of coming soon listings appears to be headed for a zenith in brokerage strategy. However, with Zillow, eXp and Howard Hanna all stating that their coming soon listings will follow local MLS rules, this means that many of these listings will only be pre-marketed for 24 hours.

What’s the point?

“I’m really trying to figure out what the point of it is,” James Dwiggins, the co-CEO of NextHome, said. “One day isn’t going to change anything when it comes to marketing a property unless we are in a really strong seller’s market where you have a million buyers ready to jump on any listing, but we are not in that market right now. Buyers are scarce, interest rates are high, and I don’t know how, in a market like this, private listings or coming soons are going to do much of anything. Buyers are not going to see a home 24 hours in advance online and then be ready to write an offer.”

In Syd Liebovitch’s market, the MLS allows listings to remain in a coming soon status for up to 21 days, but during that time the property is not allowed to be shown.

“Buyers who see a home on the internet want to see it NOW! There’s lots of research about the speed of response to buyer inquiries and a quick response is critical,” the president of California-based Rodeo Realty wrote in an email to HousingWire. “Buyers, especially the most motivated, who will often pay the most money, like those who have sold their home and have to buy another, have been transferred into the area, or just want to buy and buy now, want to see a house immediately when they see it on-line.” 

In Liebovitch’s experience, buyers who may have been interested in a coming soon property often forget about the property or have moved on to something else by the time the listing is available for showings. Due to this, he does not believe it is in the seller’s best interest to expose a property before it is ready to be seen at its best. 

Others say there is value in pre-marketing

Across the country in Massachusetts, Chip Stella, a broker-owner of the Wellesley-based Rutledge Properties, agrees that properties should be shown at their best, but he still sees the value in pre-marketing coming soon listings. Within Stella’s MLS, which is broker-owned and not Realtor association owned or affiliated, he said there is a coming soon feature that some brokers currently use. 

“You use a coming soon status because if there are active listings in the market and active buyers in the market considering properties like the one you have coming, you want them to be able to consider your listing and compare it to the active inventory so they can decide if they want to view your property prior to making an offer on any of the active inventory,” he said. 

Too many sites to monitor for inventory

Despite the use cases for coming soon listings, brokers and agents see some problems. For Stella, who runs a small independent brokerage, as more brokerages announce partnership with different portals or even launch their own pre-marketing platform, firms like his are being forced to watch several different sites for new inventory. 

“We have to be on Compass.com, Zillow, Redfin, Realtor.com and now we have to be twice as sharp to find the coming soon listing for our buyers,” Stella said. “In no conceivable way does this benefit a buyer. Centralizing these things would make things a lot easier, and we had had that in the MLS that was ‘working effectively’ for decades.” 

Dwiggins is also a strong believer in market transparency and the broad exposure of listings. Due to this, he feels that eXp Realty’s approach to pre-marketing these coming soon listings is one of the better approaches he has seen so far, as the brokerage said it is willing to provide its coming soon listings to any portal that is willing to take them. 

MLSs need to innovate now more than ever

When thinking about the future of coming soon listings, Dwiggins feels the announcements made this week are a clear signal to the MLSs that it is time for them to come up with a standard coming soon process.

“I don’t think there is anything wrong with pre-marketing as a methodology as long as it is not hidden as a private listing. I don’t have a problem with coming soon as long as it is transparent for the marketplace. I personally think this should be an MLS policy and that every MLS should figure out a way that makes sense for their market, but there needs to be something that all agents in all MLSs have access to. That way the general market can still see it when the seller wants it broadcast that way, but it needs to be shared through the MLS — you don’t get to pick and choose where you put your inventory.”

This picking and choosing where a coming soon listing appears, along with potentially hiding certain property statistics such as days on market or price changes has led Brown Harris Stevens CEO Bess Freedman to be weary of where the industry is currently taking coming soon listings. 

“Coming Soons and pre-marketing listings are not new concepts. What’s changed is the narrative manipulation and scale,” Freedman wrote in an email. “Premarketing masks how long a home has been for sale since brokerages claim these homes are not technically ‘on the market.’ But time is a fact no matter how you spin it, and it’s a valuable metric for many buyers and sellers. All of these tactics undermine a fair market, which is the very mechanism that makes our system collaborative and efficient.” 

Pre-marketing properties can be useful

Despite these concerns, agents and brokers who now have access to these pre-marketing tools are grateful to have them. 

“We recently used Redfin’s coming soon on a property in Boston’s South End. We generated multiple showings and strong early demand, and the property ultimately sold off market, over asking, co-brokered with another agent,” Eric Johnson, the team lead of the Compass-brokered Mission Realty Advisors, wrote in an email. “We did advise the seller to go to the MLS for full exposure, but they chose to accept the offer based on the strength of demand and the outcome. That is exactly the point: the homeowner had the choice. At the end of the day, this is not about pre-marketing versus MLS, it is about whether homeowners retain the right to choose how their home is sold, or whether that decision gets dictated by platforms and policies.”

In New Jersey, Lisa Comito, the regional manager of Howard Hanna Rand Realty, said she and her team believe that pre-marketing should be used in a way that supports transparency and broad exposure and builds momentum toward the formal launch of the listing. 

“With respect to HannaList, we view it as another tool to help our agents and clients navigate this evolving landscape. It allows us to thoughtfully showcase properties in a pre-market phase while still aligning with our core philosophy of collaboration and cooperation within the brokerage community,” Comito wrote in an email. “As with any tool, how it is used matters. Our focus remains on giving sellers the most exposure possible while maintaining a professional, ethical and transparent marketplace.”

It’s about seller choice

eXp Realty agent Renee Funk agreed that limiting the exposure of a listing is not the strategy an agent or seller should pursue if they are in search of maximum competition or price, which is why she’s glad eXp entered into non-exclusive syndication deals to pre-market the firm’s coming soon listings. 

“The role and responsibility of a professional agent is to understand all of the tools available. Professional agents must have the insights and competence to educate clients on each of the strategies a client can choose to leverage together with their agent,” she wrote in an email. “eXp Realty provides multiple tools in the tool chest for agents, and eXp is making portal ‘open access’ available with a smart commitment to not be limited in exclusive deals with any single portal. This consumer-first focus is a win for the consumer and the agent.” 

While these agents and brokers are pleased to have access to these tools, Stella said he is not interested in pursuing an exclusive deal with a portal to syndicate coming soon listings. 

“When we know we have a listing coming on the market soon, we use boots-on-the-ground methods. We have a great network of brokers that we have a good relationship with from all the other brokerages, and we push it out organically by talking to the other brokers and inviting them to a broker-only open house and building excitement that way.

“The vast majority of our listings are sold by our colleagues at the other brokerages in town, so we know that by going back to the basics and informing the other brokers about coming soon inventory is going to work because, if you are working with a highly skilled broker, you have your finger on the pulse of the market and know when things are going to come on the market,” he said. “Agents at those big companies that have those pre-marketing deals are the ones calling my agents trying to find out if we have any properties coming on the market soon. Boots on the ground works.”

Freedman, who faces stiff competition in New York City from Redfin and Compass, which now controls the majority of the market thanks to its acquisition of Anywhere, is also not worried. 

“Pre-marketing has been an option for many years,” she wrote. “But if everyone is pre-marketing broadly, is it really pre-marketing or just marketing?”