The Off-MLS Debate Has a Blind Spot — and It's the Buyer
The conversation around private listings and off-MLS real estate transactions has grown louder and more polarizing by the month. Brokerages, industry associations, and listing portals are all staking out positions. But according to eXp Realty Chief Technology Officer Carrie Lysenko, the debate is suffering from a fundamental imbalance: the seller's case is being made loudly and well, while the buyer's voice is barely being heard at all.
That blind spot, Lysenko argues, isn't just an oversight — it's a structural problem that could reshape the fairness and transparency of the American real estate market for years to come. If the industry is going to make consequential decisions about how homes are listed, marketed, and sold, then every party at the closing table deserves a seat in the conversation.
What Are Off-MLS and Private Listings?
Before unpacking the debate, it helps to understand what's actually at stake. The Multiple Listing Service, or MLS, is the cooperative database through which real estate agents share property listings. When a home is listed on the MLS, it becomes visible across a broad network of agents and buyers, maximizing exposure and theoretically driving competitive offers.
Off-MLS listings — sometimes called private listings, pocket listings, or exclusive listings — are properties marketed outside that cooperative system. They may be promoted through a brokerage's internal network, shared with a select group of agents, or listed on proprietary platforms before ever hitting the MLS, if they hit it at all.
Proponents argue this approach offers sellers privacy, exclusivity, and control. Critics argue it limits competition, reduces transparency, and ultimately harms the very buyers the broader market is supposed to serve.
The Seller-Centric Narrative Dominating the Conversation
Pick up almost any industry publication or attend any real estate conference panel on the subject, and a pattern quickly emerges: the arguments in favor of private listings are almost entirely framed around seller benefit. Sellers want privacy. Sellers want to test the market without days-on-market accumulating. Sellers want the prestige of an exclusive, off-market deal. Sellers should have the right to choose how their property is marketed.
These are legitimate points. Property owners do have a reasonable interest in controlling how their home is sold. The problem, as Lysenko highlights, is that seller autonomy is being treated as the only value worth protecting — and in doing so, the industry is glossing over a fundamental conflict of interest and a group of stakeholders who have no equivalent lobbying power in this debate.
Where Is the Buyer in This Conversation?
Buyers, particularly first-time homebuyers and those without deep connections to insider real estate networks, are at an immediate disadvantage when homes are sold off-market. If a property never reaches the MLS, a buyer working with a small independent brokerage — or searching portals like Zillow or Realtor.com — may never know the home existed.
This is not a hypothetical concern. Research has consistently shown that off-MLS listings tend to sell for less than their MLS-listed counterparts, which on the surface might seem like a buyer benefit. But reduced prices don't tell the whole story. Fewer buyers compete for the property, which means the eventual buyer may have simply been the most connected — not the most qualified, not the best offer, and not someone who found the listing through a fair and open process.
For buyers already navigating affordability challenges, rising interest rates, and historically low inventory, being locked out of a segment of available inventory because they lack the right industry relationships is a meaningful harm. The off-MLS movement, at scale, risks creating a two-tiered housing market: one for the well-connected and one for everyone else.
Why the Industry Needs to Reframe the Debate
Lysenko's central point is not that private listings should be banned or that seller preferences don't matter. It's that the real estate industry cannot make sound policy — whether through MLS rules, NAR guidelines, or brokerage-level decisions — if it is only listening to one side of the transaction.
Buyer representation has evolved significantly over the past several decades, and yet buyers still lack the organized advocacy infrastructure that sellers, listing agents, and major brokerages command. When the most powerful platforms and largest brokerages push for policies that benefit their listing-side business models, buyers have few institutional voices amplifying their interests in response.
This is where technology and transparency intersect with ethics. An industry that claims to serve consumers cannot selectively define "consumer" to mean only the party writing the listing agreement.
What a Buyer-Inclusive Debate Would Look Like
A more balanced conversation about off-MLS listings would ask several questions that are currently going unasked:
- How does limiting MLS exposure affect the pool of buyers who can compete for a given property, and what are the demographic implications of that narrowing?
- When a listing agent also represents the buyer in an off-market deal, how are dual-agency conflicts disclosed and managed?
- What data should buyers have access to about properties that were sold privately — and when should that data be made available?
- How do private listing platforms interact with fair housing obligations, and are all buyer segments equally likely to learn about off-market opportunities?
These are not radical questions. They are the baseline of any fair-minded policy discussion about a practice that affects millions of transactions annually.
Technology's Role in Leveling the Playing Field
One area where the industry can make real progress is through technology. Platforms that aggregate listing data, flag off-market activity, and give buyers broader visibility into what's available — regardless of how a listing was initially distributed — can help counteract some of the structural disadvantages buyers face.
eXp's focus on technology-driven real estate is directly relevant here. When the right tools are in place, buyers don't need to rely solely on knowing the right agent or being part of the right network. Data can democratize access in ways that policy alone cannot.
The Bottom Line
The off-MLS debate is not going away. As major brokerages continue to develop proprietary listing networks and the industry wrestles with questions of transparency and competition, the policies that emerge will shape the home-buying experience for millions of Americans. Carrie Lysenko is right to call out the imbalance: sellers have had their say, loudly and at length. It's past time the buyer's voice was part of the conversation too.