Thad Wong: The market spoke, Zillow listened. Will the rest of the industry?

There’s a reason the best brands in the world don’t just launch products. Instead, they use sophisticated pre-marketing strategies that thoughtfully control when and how a product enters the market. 

In retail, one of the most effective of these strategies is the drop: a product released at a specific moment – often for a limited time – to intentionally create buzz, urgency and demand.

There’s a wide range of businesses that engineer ‘drops,’ from luxury brands such as Balenciaga, Hermes and Rolex, to mainstream companies like Apple and Chipotle. 

It allows a brand to control the sales process, build mystique and create demand for future releases. And if pre-marketing is used to sell everything from burritos to iPhones to six-figure handbags, why not real estate? In fact, similar strategies have powered home sales for decades.

Since our founding in 2000, long before multi-phased marketing of listings became a headline issue, we were applying this approach at @properties Christie’s International Real Estate, first in new construction sales, where it helped us maximize absorption and pricing, and later in existing-home sales, through pre-market strategies. 

For us, the approach was never about limiting access. It was about introducing a listing in a more controlled manner to build demand, refine pricing and de-risk the sale before a full public offering. And it consistently yielded great results for our clients.

A test of who gets to define how real estate works

That’s why the recent debate over pre-market listings wasn’t just a dispute between two big industry players. It was a test of who gets to define how real estate works: the free market (practitioners and their clients), or platforms.

Zillow’s attempt to ban listings that weren’t immediately listed on Zillow (even when they were shared in the MLS for all real estate professionals to see) was a push to standardize behavior across an industry that has never been one-size-fits-all. It challenged discretion, consumer choice and agents’ ability to fulfill their fiduciary duties. It reduced strategy to compliance and tried to shift the center of gravity away from the agent-client relationship.

The market didn’t buy it. Agents kept advising clients based on what was in their clients’ best interests, and sellers continued to ask for flexibility given their own unique situations. Meanwhile, buyers, despite all the rhetoric, continued to value early access to listings.

Then came the inflection point. Compass International Holdings’ partnership with Redfin demonstrated that seller choice and consumer visibility were not mutually exclusive. 

The move forced Zillow to confront a simple reality: demand for this approach wasn’t going away. Their reversal, not only dropping the ban of pre-market listings that didn’t appear on Zillow first but also embracing pre-market listings through their own program, was a recognition that the market should determine the system, not the other way around.

Will MLSs come around?

Now that the industry’s largest portal has come to terms with this, it’s time to see if MLSs will too. The market has made it clear that phased exposure is both valued and effective. Listing policies should reflect that and not restrict it. 

In the meantime, Zillow’s recent acknowledgment is a win for agents. It reinforces our role as trusted advisors and validates the idea that how you bring a home to market is every bit as important as where buyers see it – something we’ve known for a very long time. 

It’s also a win for consumers, not in the abstract, but in practice. More options. Better execution. Less risk.

Lastly, the industry has sent a powerful message about control: control over data and intellectual property, control over best practices, and ultimately control over the agent-client relationship.

If we, as agents, hand that control to platforms, we become participants in someone else’s business model. If we maintain it, we continue to evolve as professionals, creating value in complex, high-stakes transactions.

That’s a win for all of us.

Thad Wong is Co-CEO of @properties and Christie’s International Real Estate, part of the Compass International Holdings (NYSE:COMP) family of brands. 

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of HousingWire’s editorial department and its owners. To contact the editor responsible for this piece: [email protected].