Jason Oppenheim and Ivan Sher participated an intense debate about Clear Cooperation at Inman Luxury Connect. The issue remains among the most polarizing real estate has seen in years.
SAN DIEGO — Celebrity real estate broker Jason Oppenheim doesn’t mind a lack of transparency when it comes to the market for many luxury goods. But, he argued Tuesday afternoon, housing is something different — and that means it needs more rules.
“I don’t mind the Wild West if you want to buy a watch, you want to sell a Picasso, but this is a fundamental need for people,” Oppenheim, president and founder of the Oppenheim Group, said of real estate. “And buyers have the right to have transparency in terms of what’s available, how long it’s been on the market, what’s the square footage, what are the bedrooms, the bathrooms, what are the material defects of the property.”
Oppenheim made the comments Tuesday afternoon while on stage at Inman Luxury Connect in San Diego, and his point was to defend Clear Cooperation — a much-debated rule from the National Association of Realtors requiring agents to put their listings into their local MLS.
“The problem if you remove it, is that it lacks transparency,” Oppenheim said, referring to Clear Cooperation and the housing market. “Now, in 5 or 10 percent of cases, there may be a reason why a celebrity client doesn’t wanna have their property on the MLS. I get that there are exceptions. And unfortunately, those 5 or 10 percent need to suffer for the greater good.”
But Ivan Sher, founder and principal of IS Luxury, fired back, arguing throughout the session that Clear Cooperation actually undermines consumer choice.
“There’s no scenario,” he said, “where I feel it’s appropriate to have an organization overhead telling sellers and agents what they can and can’t do when they’re not involved in the transaction.”
Sher’s argument centered on the idea of seller choice, and his quarrel with the policy was that while he can take off-market listings, he can’t share those listings with brokers outside of his company.
“If I went and said, ‘hey, I’ve got this home coming on the market, you should bring your buyers that looked at X property to come take a look,’ I am inhibited from doing that with Clear Cooperation,” Sher said. “There is zero transparency. It’s all about control.”
“Why is it that NAR gets to say, ‘hey, you can only show it to people in your brokerage, but when another broker has a viable buyer, they can’t bring that buyer to come take a look at your home,” Sher added.
But Oppenheim countered that without Clear Cooperation, the residential market would look more like commercial real estate, which he described as “an absolute nightmare for buyers” because there is no central and comprehensive place to find every listing. Oppenheim also argued that even if there are sellers who might want to list off-market, agents also have a fiduciary duty to their buyers — who he said do not benefit in a world without Clear Cooperation.
“But the problem is, if you don’t have it then you’re gonna have big brokerages — which is already happening — where they’re going to be saying, ‘OK, we’re going to do what we do in commercial. We’re going to hoard property. We’re gonna try to double-end it. We’re going to try to market it just to our own agents. We’re going to encourage every seller to keep it off the market so the buyers can’t see days on market and buyers don’t know if it’s fallen in or out of escrow. And we’re going to use that to recruit agents to put other brokerages at a disadvantage,’” Oppenheim said.
Ivan Sher, left, and Jason Oppenheim at Inman Luxury Connect on Tuesday. Credit: AJ Canaria Creative Services.
The debate came against the backdrop of an intense industry conversation over how and where listings are displayed. Oppenheim’s comments in particular referenced Compass — he mentioned the brokerage by name several times during the session — which has made listings marketed within its own private network a centerpiece of its current business strategy.
However, other companies such as eXp Realty and Zillow have objected to Compass’ strategy, and in some cases, the situation has escalated into ongoing legal battles.
In a sign of how polarizing the issue has become, Tuesday’s debate between Oppenheim and Sher was good-natured but also perhaps the liveliest session at Inman Luxury Connect. And at various moments during the session, the two industry leaders’ comments prompted cheers from the audience — cheers that seemed to come from supporters of both sides of the issue.
In the end, the matter wasn’t ultimately solved during Tuesday’s session. But Sher suggested that he really just wants the freedom to share off-market listings as he sees fit.
“If I’m able to tell you all the off-market properties that I have available, we don’t have that issue,” he said. “It’s done, it’s solved.”
But Oppenheim remained unconvinced.
“And if you don’t have any off-market properties,” he countered, “then it’s also solved.”
Email Jim Dalrymple II