Until recently, very little alternative existed for potential buyers who did not find a suitable property to purchase from inventory listed through the local multiple listing service (MLS). Likewise, agents working with pocket listings (homes quietly offered for sale but not listed on the MLS) struggled to generate interest in the homes without risking the overexposure dreaded by some sellers.
Pocketlistings.net is a new search engine for buyers’ selling agents. Its purpose: to locate elusive pocket listings under which sellers quietly advertise their property without putting it on the MLS. Each property is posted by the seller’s listing agent who controls how much property information is released, such as the home’s address and photos. Only selling agents representing potential buyers can access the contact information for each post, thus the website does not accommodate for sale by owner (FSBOs) properties. Selling agents can also post a want ad detailing the needs of their buyers, and the site will match up any corresponding listings.
Pocketlisting.net is free and generates a search for any city, state or zip code.
first tuesday take: While a pocket listing may come across an agent’s desk every now and then, most sellers want to find potential buyers for their homes as soon as possible. Otherwise, why sell? The reason for hiring an agent is to locate buyers ASAP using the knowledge and expertise of a professional.
Unless instructed by the seller, failure to use all readily available avenues and media to expose the property to potential buyers is a breach of the listing agent’s fiduciary duty to get the home sold — the sole purpose of the employment. Agents cannot best locate buyers by limiting their marketing to locating buyer’s agents, but it is an additional way to go.
We know of no legitimate or rational reason why a seller would want to keep their home off a buyer’s radar. If a seller wants a pocket listing, they have no need for an agent except to waste that agent’s time. Pocket listings lost popularity at the same time listing books began to give way to computer-generated information and the internet.
Re: “Is that a listing in your pocket? Pocketlisting.net goes beyond the MLS” from the San Francisco Chronicle
“Agents cannot best locate buyers by limiting their marketing to locating buyer’s agents, but it is an additional way to go.
We know of no legitimate or rational reason why a seller would want to keep their home off a buyer’s radar. If a seller wants a pocket listing, they have no need for an agent except to waste that agent’s time. Pocket listings lost popularity at the same time listing books began to give way to computer-generated information and the internet.”
We will very soon get as much, if not more exposure to properties posted on our site as they do on MLS. Not only that, we are not here to compete with MLS, we are here to be an alternative. More and more homes are sitting on the sidelines fearing the MLS and the dreaded ticking of the DOM, public price reductions, and all of the headache associated with “marketing” a home the traditional way. We are an alternative. Social networking has changed the game, and we’re going to change right along with it. Our main goal is to give buyers, sellers, and agents hope for exchanging property if their MLS listing comes up empty by capitalizing on search engine traffic, each person’s own network (this coming in our next version), and allowing agents to go beyond their own personal brokerage.
On the other hand, “pocket listings” can be a great way to advertise business that is “not ready to list” yet, and see what interest there is. I also find that if you are upfront and blunt about pricing, the overpriced seller will not be interested in doing business with you, while folks that have developed a healthy awareness of market realities will.
So I signed up, and we shall see. It’s worth a good try.
Steve B.
Yes, I agree with Steve. You have sellers that need to sell and sellers that want to sell – the former is “prospect” the other is a “suspect”.
As an agent I have come acorss pocket listings and even had sellers that wanted their property to be a pocket listing, only to find out that they were asking too much for it and were just ” putting it out there to see if anyone bites”. A complete waste of time. Stay away from them or any agent who states they have a “pocket listing”.