Who Benefits from Private Offerings — The Real Estate Firm — or The Seller

In 2026, 13  of the most well-known real estate firms, consolidated under a single company and created a network of 340,000 agents — 20% of the market.

These firms are aggressively promoting “Private Exclusives” as a unique competitive advantage they offer. That means they’re marketing homes exclusively to their own agents — their 20% of the market. If it doesn’t sell, they take the traditional route and expose it to the full market.

The question is:who benefits from a Private Exclusive, the 13 firms or the Seller?

The 13 firms benefit in two ways:

1.     They get clients by marketing Private Exclusives as a unique competitive advantage.

2.     And if the property sells, both sides of the commission stay within their group.

What about the Seller? The concern is limited market exposure. To protect sellers, MLS rules prohibit properties marketed through private networks to also be publicly marketed on websites like Zillow or Realtor.com. That means buyers outside the affiliated firms may never know the property is for sale.

For that reason, New York, Washington, Illinois, Wisconsin, Hawaii, and Connecticut have already introduced bills or passed laws that don’t allow private offerings unless a seller specifically wants it. Sellers who typically want it are celebrities or other people in the public eye. Virginia does allow private offerings.

Here's why both the MLS and the states noted above see limited exposure as a problem. When exposure to buyers is reduced, the probability of obtaining the best offer is also reduced. The reason’s simple: when fewer buyers know a property is for sale, the probability of reaching the strongest buyer is reduced.

As an example, last year we had a client who received three offers. Each buyer knew they were competing with two others. The difference between the highest and lowest was $50,000. The property sold for well above list price.

Do you think if the property had been exposed to just 20% of the market that there would have been a bidding war, and that the property would have sold way above list price?

So, the real question is: how do you know if the advice you’re getting benefits you—or the company promoting it?