Though the housing market has been in recovery for over a year now, in many markets across the country nobody seems to have told sellers. With persistently tight inventory plaguing the stronger markets, agents across the country report we may be in the middle of a new renaissance for the pocket listing.

The vast majority of multiple listing services (MLSs) across the country require that their members add a new listing to their database within two or three days of signing a contract with the buyer. But in many tight markets, it’s entirely possible [m dash] or at least plausible [m dash] for a home to be snapped up within that two-day window. And many agents are taking advantage of that fact, reaching out to colleagues and friends across the industry to offer them a crack at a listing before it becomes public knowledge.

At this month’s annual meeting for the National Association of Realtors, California-based MLS Listings, Inc. revealed that more than a quarter of the sales in its Northern California coverage area were pocket listings in the first quarter of  2013, up from 15 percent last year, prompting MLSListings Inc.’s chairman, Robert Baily, to speculate that if the problem persists it could lead to the collapse of the MLS.

And California’s not alone in seeing more of its sales activity getting pushed off the MLS. In Chicago, brokerage @properties unveiled a mobile application earlier this year that allows its agents to market properties to each other before they go on to the local MLS. And in Virginia, Frank Llosa, broker-owner of Falls Church, Va.-based Frankly Real Estate Inc., has launched PreMLS.com, a site which links to a series of invite-only facebook groups in 13 metro markets to allow brokers to market properties before they hit the MLS.

Here in the Bay State, collapse does not appear to be imminent. Kathy Condon, president and CEO of MLS PIN, said her staff closely monitors the database for telltale patterns that could indicate pocket listing activity, such as listings which go from active to pending immediately after entry. “We take that very seriously,” she said, and so far she’s not seen a significant increase in the practice.

That sentiment was echoed by several agents, even those in bidding-war plagued markets close to Boston.

“I can’t say I’ve seen it firsthand in our market,” said Deborah Heffernan of Avenue 3 Real Estate in Cambridge. “My market is predominantly Boston, Cambridge and the western suburbs, and there’s certainly not a lot of inventory and an incentive to keep deals in-house. But I think we’re all looking over each other’s shoulders too much” for  pocket  listings to go unnoticed.

“We don’t see it too much,” said Justin Green, co-broker owner of In Realty in Dorchester.  Green said some off-MLS market activity does tend to occur with distressed sales, where often an agent has a buyer lined up and puts the property on the MLS as a formality to meet a bank’s sales requirements. “But I haven’t seen it systematically, or problematically,” he said.

Off-The-Radar Sharing

But at the higher end, where sellers may be inclined to prefer an off-MLS sales for privacy reasons, agents say they are seeing a more activity begin to shift off the MLS in the past several months.

“There’s more pocket listings now then ever. I know for a fact there are some real estate offices in certain neighborhoods in Boson proper that work together before sharing them with [the] MLS,” said John Ford, broker-owner of Ford Realty on Beacon Hill. “The attitude is, ‘Let’s keep our listing among ourselves,’ share and share alike as long as you belong in my [neighborhood].”

Ford says he tells buyers straight out, if they want a condo in the Back Bay, “Find yourself a Back Bay broker. I’m telling you this as a Beacon Hill broker. Do I need to say any more?”

On the Cape, too, where listings are often more seasonal, it’s long been the case that a seller might alert an agent to their desire to sell after the summer’s over, or might prefer to keep the house off market during the winter when there are fewer visitors, creating the opportunity for a broker to pre-market the property without formally taking the listing, said Paul Grover, co-broker/owner of Robert Paul Properties. But he has noticed an uptick in such activity in recent months.

“I showed a property in the last two weeks, a $10 million property, that [I only found out about] after I reached out to some colleague and said, ‘Listen, I’ve got a buyer, this is what he’s looking for, do you have anything?’” he said.  “Sometimes it’s a little sticky, whether something like that counts as a pocket listing.”

For now, “I think it would take a major player moving off the MLS to really shake things up,” in the Massachusetts market, said Heffernan.

But that very possibility may be in the cards. Last month, The Realty Alliance, a network of dozens of the country’s largest independent brokers, announced that many of its members were fed up with their MLSs and it was considering launching its own technology initiative. While they have yet to lay out their exact plans, many observers believe that initiative will include a private network for their member brokers which will allow them to pre-market listings before putting them on the MLS.

Email: csullivan@thewarrengroup.com