Compass chief economist: The off-MLS marketing debate is ignoring 1.4M listings
I’ve known Mike Simonsen for a while, and catch his market update videos often. Here’s his argument in this Inman News piece: nearly 1.4 million homes were withdrawn from the MLS in 2025, which proves sellers already want limited exposure. So Compass didn’t invent off-market marketing. It built a structured version of what agents were quietly doing all along. He even gives it a stat, “days off market,” or DOFF. Love a good acronym and this one is great!
But, here’s the line I keep chewing on:
“What nobody is talking about is the 1.4 million listings that demonstrate how often sellers seek periods of limited exposure during the selling process.”
The word doing all the work is “exposure.” And it’s pulling double duty.
There’s exposure as time, how long a home is visible. And exposure as audience, how many buyers can see it. Withdrawals are a time move. Sellers pull the listing to reset days on market, repaint the kitchen, wait out the holidays, then relaunch. Mike’s own piece calls those windows “total invisibility.” That’s not limited exposure. That’s zero, on a timer.
Compass private listings are an audience move. The home stays for sale. Only a slice of buyers gets to see it.
So he’s collecting time-axis evidence and spending it on an audience-axis product. A withdrawal defers exposure. The seller still lands in front of everyone when it relists. A private listing forecloses it. Plenty of those buyers never see the place at all.
And if 1.4 million sellers really are begging for a pause, the clean fix isn’t a private network. It’s an MLS “coming soon” or hold status that stops the DOM clock while the listing stays wide open to every buyer. That’s a feature your MLS can ship. Funny how the data points there instead.
Sellers may want a pause button, not a velvet rope.
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Has anyone bothered to ask the MLS if they already have statuses or features that accomplish these goals?
“It’s an MLS “coming soon” or hold status that stops the DOM clock while the listing stays wide open to every buyer. That’s a feature your MLS can ship.”
WE HAVE THIS ALREADY!!! As an MLS staffer, I’m so frustrated about all this talk about the MLS doesn’t allow these options for sellers. Maybe I’m in one of the most amazing MLSs – but we already have these statuses and have for YEARS! Ask us! Call us! We actually answer the phone and respond to emails or calls within a day, if not instantly. We want to help realtors accomplish what their sellers are asking for. Ask us! We’re here to help you.