Sometimes, it is not difficult to believe that the universe conspires in mysterious ways. Almost immediately after my last post about what NAR can do for the MLS went up, I saw that NAR has issued new "Office Exclusive Listings / Pre-Marketing Guidance." Seeing as how I was hiking the Sierra Nevadas all weekend, I thought I would engage with this once I got back to civilization. So here we are.
I will admit at the outset that I am quite torn about this. On the one hand, it does appear that NAR is seeing which way the wind is blowing. On the other hand, it isn't really clear what this accomplishes. And there is too much of an attempt to preserve old decisions and old policies that time and events are making irrelevant. A clean restart would have been better, assuming that NAR remains relevant, which I don't think is the case.
But I did think there might be some usefulness in going through the document, asking questions about some of the guidance, and perhaps at least proposing some ways for NAR to rethink how it goes about MLS issues.
Let's get into it.
