There is no standard definition for what constitutes a pre-market property. Listings advertised as off-market are regularly actually in the pre-market stage—a soft launch period where agents show properties to a handful of potential buyers before photos and floor plans are uploaded online.
Meanwhile, some vendors want to sell off-market to test the water without committing to sell, and to retain privacy and control over how their property relates. In the past few months alone, pre-market and off-market listings have repeatedly crept into the news and into our inboxes—real estate portals appear to be exploring a revenue stream we haven't historically seen much of.
So, what is the opportunity for real estate marketplaces around these listings that aren’t technically on the market yet?
In the United States, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) Clear Cooperation Policy (CCP) states:
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. Real estate agents and brokers in the United States are obliged to upload new listings to the country's unique Multiple Listings Service (MLS)—upon which portals like Zillow are heavily reliant.
Compass CEO Robert Reffkin calls CCP "forced cooperation". On the other side of the fence, Zillow CEO Jeremy Wacksman has argued his company was "staunchly against anything that prevents open, fair and transparent access to listings", and his colleague Errol Samuelson said rolling back CCP would be "harmful for consumers and agents".
In short, CCP has meant that pretty much all available housing stock is on the MLS, and therefore on portals, pretty much all the time. That was until earlier this month.
NAR somewhat loosened its grip over public listings last week when it updated its Clear Cooperation Policy, keeping the rule in place but introducing more flexibility for sellers. A new category now allows listings to be delayed from public platforms while still entered into the MLS, while regional MLSs will autonomously decide the limits of those off-market periods.
More lenient CCP legislation could mean less stock for Zillow and other MLS-powered portals. It also means agents and brokers get access to private listings. When the new CCP policy goes live in September 2025, the United States will likely see an influx of monetizable "off-market" listings—invisible to the MLS and, by extension, the public.
Whether the change proves to be the thin end of the wedge is yet to be seen, but it will almost certainly inspire some business model tweaks as marketplaces adapt to off-market listings. Any U.S. real estate marketplace business contemplating the issue might be well advised to pay attention to how those in other countries look at it.
There are plenty of examples around the world. We'll start in Australia, where one business has focused its entire model around pre- and off-market properties...
"Not all properties for sale are advertised. So, how do you find them?"
So says Listing Loop, an off-market specialist that connects buyers and sellers of off-market and pre-market properties across Australia, which the business claims accounts for one in five transactions every year.
Homebuyers register to become a part of the platform, and can then search for properties that aren't visible on portals like Realestate.com.au or Domain. The business also offers adjacent services including conveyancing and says transactions on its platform close up to seven times quicker than the national average.
Meanwhile, Listing Loop is a premium lead-generation solution for agents, including free listings and no exclusivity contracts. But why did the business identify pre-market as a niche that could be monetized? Bree Dallwitz, CMO at Listing Loop, told Online Marketplaces:
"We have observed that as more people are educated about the housing market, more people are starting to understand that not all properties are in one destination. We can see demand for off-market and pre-market purchasing opportunities to rise as high as 40% as more vendors and agents look to save on advertisting costs and putting their properties directly into the hands of highly qualified, high-intent buyers.
"When a listing is getting ready to go on the market, there is typically a 10-14 day preparation timeframe during which an agent can create a buyer interest and potentially bid for that property. Listing Loop is an extension of an agent’s database, where we expose those properties to waiting buyers who may not be in an agency’s database.
"In Australia, the off- and pre-market opportunity is around 20% but this can reach as high as 26% at certain times of the year."
Knight Frank is one of the world's leading independent real estate consultancies offering professional, commercial and residential property services.
In February 2024, Knight Frank's residential division launched a new property portal for buyers and sellers. Less than 12 months later, the firm launched My Knight Frank, an additional set of functionalities to its portal that—you guessed it—allows buyers and sellers to connect with other Knight Frank users without using portals like Rightmove and Zoopla as intermediaries.
Tim Hyatt, head of residential at Knight Frank, said:
"After two years of development today sees the last piece of the ‘My Knight Frank’ puzzle fall into place; the fully automated digital portal is live and being used by hundreds of clients on a daily basis. The functionality is such that landlords, vendors, tenants, and buyers are now all able to benefit from its capabilities, a large part of which is removing the burden of admin."
Viewed through the prism of off-market real estate, the launch serves as a warning to incumbent portals.
Large agency networks like Knight Frank (which has circa 500 offices) have the technological capabilities and close-knit audiences to justify heavier investment into bespoke marketplace environments that leverage their historical branding and reputation to broker transactions without portal spend.
Given the notoriously high costs of listing on Rightmove and the rise of AI-enabled Agentic Search, is it possible that agencies with large networks could simply choose to funnel their "Rightmove budget" into a unique portal solution that dangles off-market properties in front of its users instead?
The UK-based challenger home search platform Jitty conceptualised its first paid-for service by monetising off-market properties.
Dubbed "Jitty Pre Market", Jitty says it will work directly with estate agents and send email digests with off-market opportunities in specific areas, granting early access to properties nobody else has seen, including rival portals like Rightmove and Zoopla.
Jitty didn't reveal the price point for the feature, but did say they believe between 10-20% of homes are “pre-market” at any given time.
Graham Paterson, CEO at Jitty, told Online Marketplaces that around 10% of homes in the UK won't even make it onto a portal before it is sold.
"We've learned that one of the most important things for motivated buyers is seeing homes earlier in the cycle. Buyers feel like the best homes were never making it onto the portals, and still want to see them. But signing up for individual agents' mailing lists is cumbersome.
"Jitty Pre-Market will show you homes before they go onto portals—sometimes days before, sometimes hours, sometimes weeks. About 10% of homes in the UK never even make it onto portals, and in London it’s as high as 20-25%.”
In Sweden, Hemnet has a pricing package that includes 'soon-to-list'. The downside for the Swedish real estate giant is that its two closest rivals, Booli and Boneo, are off-market specialists.
The de facto state-owned real estate aggregator, Booli, is taking on the clear market leader, Hemnet, with a pre-market proposition. The difference is that Booli, as an aggregator, does not monetize properties at the listing stage, unlike its rival.
At the start of December 2024, Hemnet had 7,500 ‘soon for sale’ listings, while Booli had 37,800.
Boneo, another Swedish marketplace, is backed by seven major brokerage firms and claims to have the largest combined selection of upcoming sales and development projects via its 'På G' service (circa 12,500 listings at the time of writing).
Boneo generates seller leads and has a free-to-use matchmaking service that shows homeowners how many people are currently in the market to buy their (for now) unlisted property. Boneo claims to have 500,000 would-be buyers searching for properties at any given time via its brokerage backers.
The firm's website says 60% of visitors to Boneo's portal plan to buy a home in the next six months, and 33% within three months.
Much like the aggregator Booli, pre-market listings are free to list on Boneo. However, given that Sweden is a vendor-paid market, advertising costs fall on the home seller.
Boneo offers several packages for distributing properties for sale on social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram; the difference being that the ads are only shown to high-intent buyers according to Boneo's "BoneoMatch" monitoring and matchmaking service.
The good news for Booli and Boneo is that "soon for sale" listings are becoming a more popular trend in Sweden, as home sellers test the waters without marketing their homes publicly.
In neighbouring Denmark, the leading real estate marketplace Boligsiden recently introduced pre-market listings to its portal.
Associated listings will not include photos, however, they will include information about the size of the home, the number of rooms and its expected sale price. Boligsiden said:
In this list, you can see homes that brokers have just received and will soon put up for sale. If you are looking for a home in an area with a lot of activity, this list can give you an advantage in the hunt for your dream home.
When Online Marketplaces covered this launch at the turn of the year, Boligsiden had circa 210 properties under the 'coming soon' tag.
While some specialist portals like Listing Loop and Booli have carved a successful niche by focusing purely on off-market real estate, the fact that traditional market leaders like Rightmove and Hemnet have mostly avoided off-market opportunities speaks volumes—they're probably not worth the squeeze.
If, however, you are willing to build a business model around connecting off-market players, there are plenty of revenue opportunities out there. Don't expect the same stock volume as a traditional portal, but corner the market, and you may have something.
Simon Baker, chairman at Online Marketplaces, explains:
"Pre-market homes can provide strategic value to a property portal, depending on the business model and market conditions. If the portal has a robust email database with detailed insights into visitor search behavior, there is an opportunity to monetize early access in two key ways.
"The first is agent monetization: Agents may pay to discreetly access a curated audience actively searching for properties in specific areas. The second is consumer monetization: Buyers may pay for early access to exclusive, pre-market listings, gaining an advantage in competitive markets.
"The success of this model, however, is highly dependent on supply and demand dynamics. In a seller’s market, where demand outweighs supply, buyers may be willing to pay for early access. Conversely, in a buyer’s market, agents may find value in targeted exposure to motivated buyers.
"Pre-market listings are unlikely to become a core revenue driver for a traditional portal. The fundamental role of a property portal is to create market transparency, ensuring that all buyers have equal access to available properties. While pre-market monetization could provide a niche revenue stream, it is unlikely to materially impact the portal’s broader business model."
In the United States, however, the rollback of CCP legislation raises a bigger question: to what extent will the market share split shift away from Zillow and Realtor.com towards regional brokerages and agents?
Don't get too excited: Zillow isn't going to go bust any time soon. But in an industry that traditionally struggles to make big changes, fast, the newfound opportunity for brokerages to create localised, network-based businesses will add some much-needed choice to buyers and sellers in the States—and maybe a new playbook or two for entrepreneurs who want to try something new.
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