The Future of Home Sales Won’t Be Found in a Binder

In the coming years, every real estate brokerage will offer some form of private listings to property owners. But most will simply layer exclusivity onto outdated systems built for agents, not customers.

The Industry is Shifting—But Most Are Missing the Point

Real estate is quietly undergoing a transformation. Public inventory is still below healthy levels, buyers are harder to reach, and homebuilders—who account for a large share of new supply—are rethinking how they go to market.

The traditional playbook no longer works. It’s slow, reactive, and optimized for the wrong user: the agent.

Yet instead of rewriting that playbook, many brokerages are just adding filters to the same old system.

Case in point: Compass and the Return of the MLS Binder

Last week, Compass made headlines with its newest “innovation” to showcase private listings: a physical book.

It’s a throwback to the days when real estate listings were stored in office binders—and a reminder that many in the industry are just putting a modern wrapper on outdated infrastructure.

Private Is the Future—But It Needs More Than a Label

Brokerages are beginning to embrace private listings, and that’s a good thing. It validates the direction we’re headed.

But there’s a problem: their systems are still built around public listings, commission splits, and agent-centric workflows. So when they go “private,” all they’re really doing is withholding the listing from Zillow.

Their structure limits them—agents are still tethered to the process, with no flexible pricing, and they’re prohibited from sharing home inventory across competing brokerages.

Private doesn’t mean modern. It means controlled, intentional, and backed by data.

What developers, portfolio sellers, and homeowners actually need is a new infrastructure. One that empowers them to test price, preview demand, and run private campaigns before they go live.

What We’re Building at Pending

At Pending, we’re taking a different approach: building the infrastructure for in-house sales from the ground up—starting with pricing, outreach, and off-market intelligence—so residential developers and sellers can control the entire process, end-to-end.

We started Pending to fix this. Our platform isn’t a new kind of listing—it’s a new way to sell.

What we’re building:

• Off-market pricing tools to determine the right number before going public

• Targeted buyer campaigns for buyers and their agents

• Demand intelligence that reveals who’s active, where, and why

This isn’t another listing platform. It’s bringing modern tools and workflows to a category that’s 10 years behind the rest of the economy.

Everyone needs a place to live, yet housing is one of the most inefficient markets in the world.

Fixing the housing shortage isn’t only about building more—it’s about making the system work better. Sellers need options. Buyers need visibility. And the middle—the messy, agent-centric listing process—needs a total overhaul.

And while others are busy printing books, we’re busy building the infrastructure.

If you're a developer, seller, or fund manager exploring smarter ways to sell residential inventory, we'd love to talk.

Email: [email protected]