Clear Cooperation Policy explained for listing agents

What does the Clear Cooperation Policy actually require?

One sentence carries the whole obligation. NAR publishes it as Section 1.01 of the model MLS rules: "Within one (1) business day of marketing a property to the public, the listing broker must submit the listing to the MLS for cooperation with other MLS Participants." Adopted 11/19 in NAR's own dating, effective 1 January 2020 with local implementation required by 1 May 2020, mandatory for every association owned MLS, and unchanged in substance through 2026.

Three details trip agents who think they know the rule. The trigger is marketing rather than the listing agreement, so a signed listing you keep entirely private starts no clock at all, which is why the office exclusive exists. A business day excludes Saturdays, Sundays and federal or state holidays, so a Friday afternoon sign is due in the MLS by the end of Monday. And that is short enough that the photographs, the remarks and the compliance fields have to be finished before the sign goes up rather than after.

Sitting underneath 1.01 is the ordinary filing rule most MLSs also run, requiring listings to be delivered within a set window, usually 48 hours, after all seller signatures are obtained. Clear Cooperation adds a second, faster deadline that fires the moment anything reaches the public.

What counts as public marketing, and what does not?

NAR lists the conduct expressly. Public marketing "includes, but is not limited to, flyers displayed in windows, yard signs, digital marketing on public facing websites, brokerage website displays (including IDX and VOW), digital communications marketing (email blasts), multi-brokerage listing sharing networks, and applications available to the general public."

Read that list again for the two items agents forget. Your own brokerage website is public marketing, so a coming soon page on your firm's site starts the clock even though you have not touched a portal. And a multi brokerage listing sharing network counts, which reaches private Facebook groups, WhatsApp broker chats spanning several firms, and the pocket listing platforms that market themselves as agent only. The March 2025 update clarified the other side of the line: one to one, broker to broker communications do not trigger the policy, while communications across multiple brokerages do.

What are the two exempt options, and how do they differ?

On 25 March 2025 the NAR Board of Directors adopted Multiple Listing Options for Sellers, which retained Clear Cooperation and added a second exemption alongside the office exclusive. Every MLS had until 30 September 2025 to implement it.

An office exclusive is the older route. NAR defines it as "an exempt listing where the seller has directed that their property not be disseminated through the MLS and not be publicly marketed." No MLS entry, no IDX, no syndication, and no public marketing at all. Break the last condition and Clear Cooperation applies again from that moment.

A delayed marketing exempt listing is the new one, defined as "an exempt listing where the seller has directed the listing broker to delay the public marketing of that listing through IDX and syndication for any period as allowed by the local MLS." The listing enters the MLS immediately and every participant can see it, while the outward flow to consumer sites is switched off. NAR gave each MLS discretion "to determine a delayed marketing period that is most suitable for their local marketplace," so the length is a local number to look up rather than assume.

Route	In the MLS?	Visible to other brokers?	On Zillow and Realtor.com?	Signed seller form needed?
Active listing	Yes	Yes	Yes, subject to seller display opt outs	Listing agreement only
Delayed marketing exempt	Yes	Yes	No, for the period your MLS allows	Yes, informed consent to waive public marketing
Office exclusive	No	No	No	Yes, seller direction to withhold
Public marketing with no MLS entry	No	No	Yes	This is the violation

Both exemptions turn on paperwork. NAR requires a "signed disclosure documenting the seller's informed consent to waive the benefits of immediate public marketing through IDX and syndication," covering the professional relationship, the MLS benefits being given up and the seller's choice between the two routes. A verbal instruction is not a defence at a hearing, and the form is the first thing a compliance officer asks for.

Which MLSs run different rules?

Northwest MLS in Washington State has never operated under Clear Cooperation and has built its own answer. On 31 August 2026 it announced a listing status called First Look, effective 4 September 2026, under which a property must be submitted to NWMLS and made accessible to its 30,000 plus member brokers while the seller may publicly market it for up to 21 days of pre launch preparation. Showings are optional in that window, the seller decides whether the listing goes out through IDX, and days in status and any price changes stay in the NWMLS database afterwards. NWMLS frames the design as preventing "off-MLS shadow markets" while giving sellers preparation time.

Elsewhere the local variation is in the numbers rather than the principle, and the numbers are the part that bites. CRMLS writes the requirement into Rule 7.9 as mandatory submission upon marketing, and adds a detail no national summary carries: a person who signed a California agency disclosure form under Civil Code section 2079.16 identifying the listing broker within the previous year is not a member of the public for the purposes of the rule. Midwest Real Estate Data in Chicago has required since at least 2018 that a listing be entered within 48 hours of the effective listing date or within 24 hours of the broker advertising to the general public, whichever comes first. Coming soon windows vary just as widely: 21 days at CRMLS, which converts the listing to Active on day 22 or the start showing date, 14 calendar days at Stellar MLS in Florida, and up to 30 days at ARMLS in Arizona. Pull your own rulebook rather than a national summary of it.

Portals now enforce their own version too. Zillow announced listing access standards in April 2025 under which a listing that has been part of a private listing network and selectively marketed is not displayed on Zillow unless it was broadly accessible to all market participants, and a non compliant listing stays off Zillow while it is with the same agent or brokerage. Zillow's own filing sets out the compliant private route: the seller instructs the agent in writing not to submit the listing to the MLS, the agent shares it only inside the brokerage and one to one with clients, and the seller signs a waiver explaining what limited exposure costs. The wider mechanics of how a listing reaches the consumer sites are in how listing syndication to Zillow and Realtor.com works.

What does a violation actually cost?

There is no national fine schedule. NAR sets the policy and each MLS sets the enforcement, so the number is always local, and three published schedules show the spread. CRMLS, in its MLS Citation Policy and Schedule of Fines effective 10 July 2026, fines failure to submit a listing to the MLS upon marketing at 1 per cent of the list price with a floor of $500 and a cap of $2,500, and charges $750 for using coming soon status without the seller's signed authorisation, with no warning notice first. ARMLS in Arizona fines the equivalent breach of its Rule 8.0 at a flat $500. MLS PIN in Massachusetts charges $1,000 for non filing of a mandatory listing and escalates a repeatedly late coming soon form from $250 to $500 to $1,000 and then to suspension. CRMLS also adds a $100 review processing fee where a panel confirms the citation and refers anyone collecting three citations in a calendar year for further discipline.

The larger cost is rarely the citation. A listing that gets pulled and re entered loses its original days on market in most systems, which changes how every buyer agent reads it. A portal that refuses the listing removes most of your consumer reach for the life of the file. And a seller who later learns their home was publicly marketed for a week without MLS exposure has a straightforward complaint to make about the duty they were owed.

How do you run a compliant pre launch?

Decide the route before anything is produced. If the seller wants privacy, take the office exclusive, get the form signed, and market nothing anywhere. If the seller wants preparation time with full broker exposure, take the delayed marketing exemption, enter the listing on day one, and confirm in writing how many days your MLS allows. If the seller wants speed, go active with the file already finished, because the rule compresses everything into one business day. The description, the photograph set and the compliance fields all have to clear both a fair housing read and an MLS content read before the first sign goes up, which is covered in how to write an MLS listing description and fair housing words to avoid in a listing description.

Frequently asked questions

Does a coming soon sign in the yard trigger Clear Cooperation?

Yes. A yard sign is named in NAR's list of public marketing, and it does not have to say coming soon to count. Once it is visible you have one business day to file the listing, unless the seller has signed a delayed marketing or office exclusive form and your MLS operates a coming soon status that fits its own rules.

Can I take an office exclusive and still post it in a broker group?

No, if the group spans more than one brokerage. NAR treats multi brokerage listing sharing networks as public marketing, and an office exclusive requires that the property is not publicly marketed at all. One to one contact with an individual broker at another firm does not start the clock.

Does a delayed marketing listing accrue days on market?

That is set by your MLS and the answer varies. Because the listing is entered on day one, many systems count from entry while others hold the count until the delayed period ends. Confirm your own MLS's treatment before promising a seller a clean start.

Is Clear Cooperation still in force in 2026?

Yes. The March 2025 policy expanded seller options and explicitly retained the rule, and NAR continues to publish Policy Statement 8.0 as current. It has been litigated: the Ninth Circuit revived an antitrust challenge in The PLS.com, LLC v. National Association of Realtors, 32 F.4th 824, decided 26 April 2022, and a parallel case brought by Top Agent Network was dismissed without prejudice on 13 January 2025. Compass sued Zillow over the listing access standards in June 2025, lost its preliminary injunction on 6 February 2026 and dismissed the case the following month. Nothing decided so far has withdrawn the one business day requirement.

Has the Department of Justice said Clear Cooperation is illegal?

No, and the misquotation is common enough that the Antitrust Division addressed it directly. In a supplemental statement of interest filed on 17 March 2025 in Nosalek v. MLS Property Information Network in the District of Massachusetts, the Division wrote that "industry participants have made public statements about the Division's purported position on clear cooperation policies that are misleading and out of context" and that it "has not taken a position that such policies standing alone, that is, without mandated MLS publication of offers of compensation or exceptions benefitting primarily large brokerages, are anticompetitive."

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Last verified: 2026-09-02