The battle over private listings, market transparency and the future of home search is reshaping the real estate industry. In the latest episode of the REALTOR® News “Change Agents” podcast, Move, Inc. CEO Damian Eales chats with NAR Chief Marketing and Communications Officer Bennett Richardson about Realtor.com’s recent collaboration with Zillow on preview listings and how AI could fundamentally change how consumers begin the homebuying journey. Move, Inc. is the real estate technology company that operates Realtor.com.
Eales shared why he believes open marketplaces will define the next era of real estate. “We’re very competitive with Zillow on so many dimensions,” Eales says. “But [we typically align] around what is good for consumers, American consumers, both buyers and sellers.”
That shared focus on transparency helped drive the new relationship surrounding preview listings. Eales argues that pre-market listings are already happening throughout the industry, and the greater risk is allowing those listings to disappear into closed networks.
“We think that private networks are really damaging to the American real estate market,” he says. “Sellers are persuaded to trade less audience for the sale of their home in return for benefits that the agent may be getting, and buyers are not getting full and fair access to all of the properties that are available on the marketplace.”
Instead, Eales says Realtor.com is focused on maintaining an “open marketplace where listings are transparent, where they’re broadly accessible to consumers.”
Why the MLS Still Matters
Eales repeatedly emphasized the importance of the MLS system, calling it one of the defining strengths of the U.S. housing market.
“We’ve been very vocal advocates for the MLS system,” he says, comparing it to Australia’s real estate market, where no MLS structure exists and sellers often must pay heavily for visibility.
“The MLSs give this incredible benefit to American sellers: that they will display that listing free and ubiquitously everywhere,” Eales says.
He also argued that “coming soon” listings within MLS frameworks provide a better solution than private marketplaces because they preserve both transparency and equal access.
“ ‘Coming soon’ ensures a fair marketplace where every buyer has equal access to all listings and all information about the property,” he says. “Every seller has that maximum exposure that the MLS was designed to provide.”
Eales warned that fragmented private networks could create long-term problems for consumers and the industry alike.
“Sellers want clicks, not cliques,” he says. “Economics 101 tells us that the more eyeballs that see something that is available in the marketplace, [the more] potential buyers, more bidders, more offers and oftentimes a higher sales price.”
He also raised concerns about some platforms limiting information visibility during pre-market phases.
“We have seen a really alarming trend where in some of these private marketplaces…the listing agent and the portal is starting to hide information,” Eales says. “It’s a pretty slippery slope.”
AI and the Rise of ‘Pre-Search’
Eales also points to artificial intelligence as one of the biggest opportunities ahead for the industry. According to Eales, Realtor.com’s long-standing reputation for trusted housing information gives it an advantage as large language models increasingly rely on authoritative data sources.
“The realtor.com brand is the most sought-after brand by these AI agents,” he says. “The biggest turnoff for any LLM is a hallucination, and trusted sources of information like realtor.com at a national level appeal very highly to the AI companies.”
Eales described a growing focus on what he calls “pre-search,” the stage before consumers begin actively searching listings.
This is when buyers ask questions “before they’ve even attached to a buyer’s agent or before they’ve even searched for a single listing,” he says, and they begin to have “questions about finance or questions about what can I afford.”
That shift is already influencing how Realtor.com is approaching AI partnerships and product development, including a recently launched app within ChatGPT.
“We can start to participate in pre-search so that we can attach to an agent to a human in the loop,” Eales says.
He also previewed broader changes coming to Realtor.com’s search experience, including more conversational AI-driven tools and expanded video integration.
“AI gives us the opportunity to turn every listing into a video,” he says.
Even as technology evolves, Eales stressed that agents who are REALTORS® must remain central to the transaction process.
“We think that we’re going to be very, very well positioned when it comes to bringing the best of AI to buyers, sellers, but most importantly, the agents that we have to ensure remain at the center of every transaction in American real estate.”
