Pocket listings really do sell for more — at least in Dallas 

Even before the National Association of Realtors revised its Clear Cooperation Policy in March 2025, the private listings debate was going strong — and in the year since, it has only escalated. Common themes are choice and transparency, but what about the impact on a seller's bottom line?

The prevailing view has been that marketing a home off the MLS offers little benefit to the typical seller, and most likely leaves money on the table. However, a new study suggests the opposite, potentially bolstering claims made by private-listing proponents.

Findings contradict theory: Pocket listings sell for more

Dr. Darren K. Hayunga, an associate professor in the Real Estate Program at the University of Georgia's Terry College of Business, recently authored a research paper on pocket sales — a topic he had followed over the years and hoped to study himself.

"Finally I had the opportunity to do it, and I didn't know what the empirical results would indicate," Hayunga told Real Estate News.

Hayunga's research, which was not commissioned by any third party, focused on one market — the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area — and defined pocket sales as "zero-day listings," or properties that only entered the MLS after they were sold off-MLS. 

"I know what the theory would suggest, and that is when you have a time on market that is so low, sellers should expect a reduced price," he said.

"If you want to get a higher price, maybe the fair market value, you better expect to stay on the market in order to find somebody with a high enough reservation price," Hayunga continued. "Conversely, if you want to sell quickly, just underprice your property and somebody will find it and they'll buy it from you."

But — at least for the properties Hayunga analyzed in Dallas — that theory didn't hold true: Pocket listings sold for 1.7% more, on average, compared to homes listed on the MLS.

Why North Texas?

The Dallas-Fort Worth market has high transaction volumes and a "highly decentralized brokerage structure" that appears to promote more strategic listing decisions, the paper indicated. "Consequently, pocket sales in this market arise in a deep, competitive environment rather than as an artifact of illiquidity."

The DFW market was also ideal for making like-for-like comparisons, Hayunga told Real Estate News, allowing him to match pocket sales with non-pocket sales that had the same number of bedrooms and bathrooms, were in the same neighborhood and sold around the same time.

"I don't think that other studies have gone to the extent to really dial this down," Hayunga said. "What this gives us then, is we're able to control all the observables on the property and I've got it down to the neighborhood, which is one kilometer by one kilometer."

Those "observables" included around 50 variables that could impact a home's price, such as the construction materials, the presence of a pool or whether it's part of a HOA.

"If we're going to model price, we have to be able to control for these things, and the DFW data does that," Hayunga said.

The effects of Clear Cooperation — and other caveats

Hayunga analyzed roughly 700,000 residential transactions, of which about 1% were pocket sales, using MLS data from the North Texas Real Estate Information System (NTREIS) and agent licensing data from the Texas Real Estate Commission.

Those sales occurred between 2002 to 2022 — which means most of the data was pulled from an era when the CCP, a rule implemented in May 2020 requiring agents to enter a listing in the MLS within one business day of publicly marketing the property, did not yet exist. Additionally, MLS rules and state laws have evolved in recent years, with some permitting pre-listing marketing options and others prohibiting pre-marketing altogether — factors that aren't accounted for in the study.

While Hayunga's findings revealed an average 1.7% premium across all pocket sales analyzed, there was a notable difference when comparing transactions before and after the CCP took effect.

Pocket sales earned a 3.3% premium in the data sample from 2016 up until the CCP was implemented. After the policy was in place, that premium declined to about 0.9%, which is not statistically significant, Hayunga noted. 

When asked why there was such a stark change post-CCP, Hayunga was hesitant to speculate, but he said in a follow-up email that it was likely due to the policy's new time constraints.

"Prior to CCP, an agent could spend two weeks or two months quietly finding the buyer who values the home's specific features, allowing them to extract that 3.3% premium," Hayunga wrote. "The CCP requires a listing to be on the MLS within one business day of public marketing. This truncates the search window. An agent will likely not find a premium buyer in 24 hours."

Most pocket listings aren't what you'd expect

Pocket listings are often associated with luxury properties whose high-profile owners demand privacy — but Hayunga's research found that lower-tier homes were more likely to sell as pocket listings than those priced at the upper end of the market. That finding suggests that selling luxury properties as pocket listings is a strategic move, but not one that is frequently used.

"While the volume of pocket listings is concentrated in lower-tier properties, the decision to withhold a luxury asset from the open market is a distinct signal of exclusivity," the paper said — which may explain why luxury properties that sold as pocket listings commanded a significantly higher premium of around 8.2%.

Other reports show pocket listings sell for less

As a growing number of brokerages began touting private listing networks last year, a handful of studies emerged suggesting that those marketing practices offered no clear financial benefits to sellers. 

A Bright MLS report published in April 2025, for example, found that homes initially listed as office exclusives take "longer to sell and offer no price advantages over immediately promoting a home through the MLS." Bright's analysis specifically looked at homes that were pre-marketed, noting that nearly 90% of those listings eventually ended up on the MLS. 

Two earlier studies comparing homes listed on the MLS with properties that were never marketed through the MLS found significant differences in sale prices. In Bright's coverage area, homes on the MLS sold for 18% more, on average. An analysis by the Northern Nevada Regional MLS reported a 17% price bump for homes listed on the MLS.

A Zillow report released in Feb. 2025 found that sellers who sold their homes off the MLS saw a typical loss of $4,975. In some high-cost areas, that figure ballooned to as much as $30,000.

Meanwhile, a study conducted by the San Francisco Association of Realtors and RealReports showed that Bay Area homes listed on the MLS sold for about $302,000 more on average than properties sold off-MLS — an 18.6% premium.

Who's right? Zillow, Bright stand by their findings

When asked about Hayunga's report, a Zillow spokesperson reiterated via email that "study after study after study after study has clearly shown that selling on the open market to a wide audience delivers the strongest financial outcomes for sellers." 

"This study, focused on just one region and based on a very small sample size, is an outlier suggesting otherwise," they added.

A spokesperson for Bright MLS also noted that Hayunga's definition of pocket sales as "zero-day listings" is a narrow representation compared to how pocket sales, private listings or office exclusives are actually treated in each market. Some of those sales are never added to the MLS at all, they said, making it difficult to draw any broader conclusions.

Meanwhile, Compass, which touts the benefits of its 3-phased marketing strategy, released data in Feb. 2025 that showed listings that start out as a Compass Private Exclusive or Compass Coming Soon ultimately sell for 2.9% more, on average, when they are later listed on the MLS compared to homes that went straight to the MLS. 

Hayunga's paper has not yet been fully peer-reviewed, but it is currently under review at the Journal of Urban Economics.