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Off-MLS listings appear to generate lower sale prices than publicly listed ones in majority-minority neighborhoods, according to new research from Zillow.
In 2023 and 2024, home sellers who opted to sell off of multiple listing services typically lost out on nearly $5,000, selling their home for 1.5 percent less than those listed on the MLS, the Zillow analysis claims. Homes sold off-MLS in ZIP codes where people of color are the majority typically sold for 3.2 percent less than MLS-listed homes, the analysis found. This equates to $9,850 lost per off-market listing in communities of color, compared to a loss of around $3,700 per home in majority white neighborhoods.
“The data is clear that selling off the MLS costs home sellers in communities of color thousands of dollars in lost value,” Zillow senior economist Orphe Divounguy said in a statement. “These off-market listings not only harm sellers, but they limit exposure to potential buyers, possibly deepening inequities that have long existed in real estate. We must maintain transparency in the housing market so we don’t go back to the dark ages of real estate.”
Homes in majority-Hispanic ZIP codes were affected most, selling for 4 percent less when sold off the MLS, a difference of roughly $13,730, Zillow found. In majority-Black ZIP codes, sellers of off-MLS listings typically lost out on $5,576, 3.1 percent less than the typical public sale.
Zillow said it analyzed a total of 10 million transactions, with 3.79 million meeting its inclusion criteria for comparing homes that sold on the MLS with privately listed sales. Privately listed sales were defined as sales that were marketed privately and were seemingly only submitted to the MLS once a purchase contract was in place. To classify these sales, Zillow identified sales that were reported pending or closed with at most one day active and with a buyer and seller represented by the same agent or by agents within the same brokerage office.
Zillow researchers said they also looked at off-MLS transactions, which were never published to the public MLS after being privately listed. The researchers further narrowed these off-MLS transactions into a smaller set of transactions that featured a previous sale in the MLS, which allowed for property details to be verified. Only this subset among off-MLS transactions was included in the analysis.
