Chatting with a real estate agent friend who’s with a large national franchise, I found out that a lot of their “listings” are promoted internally as “Coming Soon” listings and are sold before they ever hit the MLS. The friend said some luxury listings are sometimes in “Coming Soon” status for months.
It’s a great way for large brokerages to capture both sides of the sale, they represent (make money from) both the seller and the buyer.
I think this is a long term trend. I’m promoting “Coming Soon” more myself but not so I can get both sides of the commission but to improve the odds the seller can cut in half the real estate commission they pay.
However, if large brokerages are shifting toward trying to sell more homes in-house that could explain, at least part, the low (MLS) supply.
Maybe it’s not so much that sellers are not selling for some unknown reason but that the number of homes listed for sale in the MLS is lower and the number of homes listed internally within brokerages is higher.