Which Lane Am I In? Four Questions Before You Post
By Liz Bates, Founder & CEO, Who’s Got Pockets · DRE 01434739
Monday’s brief laid out the four situations you can be in under Clear Cooperation. Today is the practical half: how to figure out which one applies to the file sitting on your desk, before you post it anywhere.
This is deliberately boring. Compliance should be boring. The agents who get in trouble are almost never the ones who read the rule and made a judgment call — they are the ones who never asked the question at all.
Four questions, in order
Question one: is there a signed listing agreement?
If the answer is no, Clear Cooperation has nothing to attach to yet, because the policy governs listings subject to an exclusive listing agreement. You are having a conversation with a homeowner about a future sale. That is a real and normal thing.
Be honest with yourself about the answer, though. “We shook on it” is not a signed agreement, but it also means you are days away from one, and the moment it is signed your situation changes. Do not build a marketing plan on the last quiet week before the paperwork lands.
Question two: if there is an agreement, is it exclusive?
Exclusive right to sell, or a seller’s reserved listing agreement, puts you inside the policy. A genuine non-exclusive agreement does not — CRMLS states there is no requirement to enter a non-exclusive listing in CRMLS even where public marketing occurs.
Read the form rather than trusting your memory of what you usually use. And if you are not certain what you are looking at, that is a question for your broker today, not a question for after you post.
Question three: what is the property?
The policy covers residential for sale, residential one-to-four units, and vacant residential lots. Commercial and five-plus unit residential fall outside it. Worth confirming rather than assuming — a duplex and a six-unit are not in the same bucket.
Question four: what has your seller actually authorized, in writing?
This is the one that decides everything downstream. Coming Soon needs a seller-signed Coming Soon form — using the status without one is a Rule 10.1 violation carrying a $750 fine and no warning. A Registered listing needs a written exclusion instruction from the seller, kept on file at your brokerage. Hold status needs written authorization too, though no particular form.
If you cannot point at the document, you do not have the authorization. Your intent is not the standard. The paperwork is.
Then match your answers to a lane
No agreement yet, or a genuine non-exclusive one — the policy has not attached, and you have room to have conversations. Understand that this can change the day something gets signed.
Exclusive agreement, seller wants to prep before it goes live — Coming Soon in CRMLS, entered before you market it, marketing that says Coming Soon and names the go-Active date, exterior photo included, and absolutely no showings until it flips to Active.
Exclusive agreement, seller wants it off the MLS — Registered within two days of the effective list date, exclusion instruction on file, and no public marketing at all. You can work it inside your own brokerage with clients who signed an Agency Disclosure with your firm in the last year. Not beyond that.
Commercial or five-plus units — outside the policy’s scope, though your own brokerage’s rules still apply and are worth checking.
One thing that surprises people
“Marketing to the public” includes verbal communications and multi-brokerage listing-sharing networks. Saying it out loud to agents from other brokerages is on the CRMLS list. So is posting it to a network or a Facebook group.
People hear that and assume it means the off-market world is closed. It does not. It means the sequence matters. Sort out which lane you are in, get the paperwork that lane requires, and then work it. Agents have been trading pockets and buyer needs for decades and will keep doing it. The ones who sleep well are the ones who did those steps in that order.
Keep the flowchart somewhere you’ll find it
We built the Can I Post It? flowchart to walk exactly these four questions in about thirty seconds. It is not legal advice and it is not a substitute for your broker — it is a prompt to make you stop and check before you hit post. Save it to your phone. Send it to a new agent on your team.
And to say it as plainly as I can: we are not telling you which lane you are in. Who’s Got Pockets does not see your listing agreement, your seller’s instructions, or your brokerage’s policy. Clear Cooperation compliance is the listing agent’s responsibility and their brokerage’s. What we give you is somewhere to work once you know your answer — and, on the pre-market board, statuses that make you state which lane you are in before anything shows.
If any of this is genuinely unclear on a specific file, the right next call is your broker or a qualified real estate attorney. That is not a dodge. That is the actual answer.
Not a member yet? Joining is free and takes about two minutes — no activation email, you’re in instantly.
Cheers 🥂
Liz
