Clear Cooperation: The Four Lanes, in Plain English

By Liz Bates, Founder & CEO, Who’s Got Pockets · DRE 01434739

Ask ten agents in Orange County to explain Clear Cooperation and you will get ten different answers, most of them delivered with total confidence and at least half of them wrong. That is not a knock on anyone. The policy has been around since 2020, it has been amended, litigated, and argued about ever since, and most of what agents “know” about it they picked up secondhand in a comment thread.

So this week’s briefs are about getting comfortable with it. Not scared of it — comfortable. Today: the four situations you can actually be in, in plain English. Wednesday: how to figure out which one you are in before you post anything anywhere.

First, what the policy actually says

Here is the whole thing in one sentence, from CRMLS: within one business day of marketing a property to the public, where that property is subject to an exclusive listing agreement, the listing broker must submit the listing to the MLS.

Every word in that sentence is doing work. One business day — Monday through Friday, not counting weekends or holidays. Marketing to the public — which CRMLS defines very broadly, and we will come back to that. Subject to an exclusive listing agreement — this is the part almost everybody skips, and it is the part that decides whether the policy applies to you at all.

A violation of Rule 7.9 draws a citation assessed at one percent of the list price, with a minimum of $500 and a maximum of $2,500. Worth knowing the number.

The four situations

1. You do not have an exclusive listing agreement yet.

You have had the conversation. The seller is thinking about spring. Nothing is signed. In this situation the policy has nothing to attach to, because Clear Cooperation governs listings subject to an exclusive listing agreement. CRMLS is explicit that a property under a non-exclusive listing agreement carries no requirement to enter it in CRMLS, even where there is public marketing.

This is where a lot of genuine pre-market conversation lives, and it is a legitimate place to be. It is also the situation most likely to change under your feet — the day that agreement gets signed, you are in a different situation, and what you did yesterday does not stay frozen in time.

2. Coming Soon in the MLS.

You have the listing agreement and a seller-signed Coming Soon form. The property goes into CRMLS as Coming Soon, and now you can market it — flyers, signs, social media — as long as the marketing says Coming Soon and gives the date it goes Active.

The trade you are making: up to 21 days to stage, shoot photos, and build anticipation, and Days Active in MLS do not accrue while you sit there. In exchange, no showings. None. Not in person, not virtual, not “just a quick walkthrough for my buyer.” If it is going to be shown, it has to go Active first.

Two details that catch people. The property has to be entered as Coming Soon before you market it, not after — if the Facebook post goes up first, the one-business-day clock starts. And an exterior photograph is required, same as any other listing.

3. Registered, or the office exclusive.

Your seller has signed a written instruction to keep the property off the MLS. You file it as Registered with CRMLS within two days of the effective list date, and the signed exclusion form stays at your brokerage.

Here is the part agents underestimate. Registered means no public marketing. Not “quiet marketing.” Not “just to a few people.” CRMLS puts it plainly: if the property is subject to an exclusive listing agreement and the seller has excluded it, no marketing of the property may be done, and if any marketing takes place, the property goes into the MLS within one business day. A For Sale sign counts as marketing. So does a flyer.

What you can do is share it with your own brokerage’s clients — specifically, anyone who signed an Agency Disclosure identifying your brokerage within the last year, plus other agents under the same broker’s license. Those people are not “members of the public” for this purpose. Everybody else is.

4. Outside the scope entirely.

Clear Cooperation applies to residential property for sale, residential one-to-four unit property, and vacant residential lots. Commercial property and five-plus unit residential sit outside it. So does a property under a genuine non-exclusive agreement, as covered above.

The part everyone gets wrong

“Marketing to the public” is much wider than most agents assume. CRMLS lists signs, websites, social media, brokerage and franchise websites, verbal and written communications, multi-brokerage or franchise listing-sharing networks, flyers, written material, applications available to the public, open houses, and showings.

Read that list again, slowly. Verbal communications. Multi-brokerage listing-sharing networks. Mentioning a property out loud to a room of agents from other brokerages is on that list. This is exactly why “I only told a few people” is not the safe harbor agents think it is.

And yes — that includes Facebook groups, and it includes networks like this one. Which brings me to the thing I want to say directly.

We are not telling you which lane you are in

That is not us dodging. It is genuinely not something anybody but you can answer, because it depends on paperwork only you and your broker have seen — whether an agreement is signed, whether it is exclusive, whether there is a Coming Soon form, whether there is a written exclusion instruction on file.

What Who’s Got Pockets does is give you a place to work agent-to-agent once you know your answer. What it cannot do is decide the answer for you, and any platform that tells you it can is selling you something. Clear Cooperation compliance sits with the listing agent and their brokerage. It always has.

So before you post a property anywhere — here, the group, Instagram, a flyer on a windshield — the question to answer is not “will anyone notice.” It is “which of those four situations am I actually in, and does what I am about to do fit inside it?”

Wednesday’s brief walks that question through step by step, including the flowchart. Bring your actual file.

Not a member yet? Joining is free and takes about two minutes — no activation email, you’re in instantly.

Cheers 🥂
Liz