How to figure out share of ‘pocket listings’ in the market | Chappaqua Real Estate

How many home sales are taking place outside of the multiple listing service in your market? Clareity Consulting’s Matt Cohen says MLS executives around the country are showing an interest in getting to the bottom of that question, and he’s written a blog post explaining how to do just that.

Pocket listings are not new, but recent inventory shortages in many markets could be creating conditions — lots of buyers competing for scarce listings — that are ripe for real estate brokers and agents to close deals outside of the MLS.

A study by Silicon Valley-based MLSListings Inc. suggests that pocket listings constitute a significant and growing chunk of home sales. That study found that pocket listings made up 26 percent of home sales in five Northern California counties in the first quarter of 2013, up from 15 percent in 2012.

A wider, but still limited, study of four large U.S. counties from CoreLogic earlier this month suggested that MLSs played little or no role in nearly half of home sales in 2013, offering more insight into a topic which has generated plenty of rhetoric, but not a lot of hard data, in the industry.

– See more at: http://www.inman.com/2014/03/19/mls-execs-get-guidance-on-how-to-figure-out-share-of-pocket-listings-in-their-market/?utm_source=20140319&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dailyheadlinesam#sthash.6fhNlCSz.dpuf