Company: HOUS
Filing Date: 2025-05-07
Form Type: 10-Q
Source: 0001398987-25-000067
Chunk: 68

Company: Anywhere Real Estate Inc.
Filing Date: 2025-05-07
Form: 10-Q
Item: Item 8
Chunk 68
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 practices have drawn increasing scrutiny, controversy and criticism, including from various industry participants as well as regulators, as an outgrowth of the industry antitrust litigation. 

One of the mandatory practices is commonly known as the Clear Cooperation Policy. NAR and its affiliated multiple listing services (“MLSs”) require a listing broker to submit a listing to the MLSs for cooperation with other MLS participants generally within one business day of marketing a property publicly. What constitutes public marketing may vary from MLS to MLS. Exclusives are an exception to the Clear Cooperation Policy. Both the policy and the exception have been the subject of significant debate.

Exclusive, private, or offline listings refer to real estate properties that are for sale but not listed on the MLSs or are otherwise only accessible to certain real estate agents and brokers.

In March 2025, NAR announced its decision to maintain the Clear Cooperation Policy while also introducing a new exemption that allows home sellers to delay the syndication of their listing on the Internet Data Exchange ("IDX") for a period of time. The manner of implementing this new exemption must be done by September 30, 2025 and is expected to vary among MLSs, which may result in differing rules and enforcement protocols across MLSs. At least one major MLS has announced that it will not implement the new exemption at all as it believes it already provides a comparable offering for sellers.

Following NAR’s announcement, two significant brokers/listing aggregators stated that they will not publish any listing, for the life of the listing, if such listing (e.g., certain exclusives) is not posted to the MLS within a day of any public marketing (as defined by the aggregators). At least one aggregator has criticized this decision and stated that it will not implement such bans. The growing tension between brokers favoring private listings and those aggregators or MLSs increasingly restricting their use has led to litigation in one MLS.

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We are closely monitoring this situation as it continues to evolve. There is no recent industry experience with the widespread use of exclusive listings or with bans on certain exclusive listings by aggregator sites. Accordingly, it is difficult to predict how consumers, brokerages, agents, franchisees, MLSs, and portals will respond to these recent developments or the impact on our business.

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Third Party Data. This Quarterly Report includes data and information obtained from independent sources such as the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation ("Freddie Mac"), the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. Federal Reserve Board, NAR and the Federal