Worth your time this morning: A Troubling Plan to Revive the Frozen US Property Market: Buyers Should Beware the Real Estate Dark Pools (Financial Times)

Buyers should beware the real estate dark pools

The Financial Times this morning calls Compass’s private-listing playbook a “dark pool” — and warns buyers to beware. The timing is awkward. Compass’s $1.6 billion acquisition of Anywhere Real Estate, which closed earlier this year, means Sotheby’s International Realty now sits inside the same house Robert Reffkin is building. Which is to say: mine.

So take this as a note from inside the building.

The FT’s worry is the right one. A frozen market — sales at a 30-year low, sellers locked into 3% mortgages, buyers locked out by 7% ones — is not thawed by hiding inventory from the people trying to buy it. It is thawed by price discovery. Private exclusives and “coming soon” listings do the opposite. They shrink the buyer pool, suppress the data buyers use to negotiate, and let the listing brokerage sit on both sides of the trade.

Here's the FT in full — worth the click:https://www.ft.com/content/8927eabf-3c0f-4a5a-bf13-ee6b99225742?syn-25a6b1a6=1