While others were focused on getting their children ready for school, soothing their morning jitters with mindless scrolling, or zooming through the Starbucks drive-through for a morning coffee, Howard Hanna Real Estate Services CEO Hoby Hanna spent Thursday morning fielding a flood of responses to his brokerage’s latest offering, HannaList.
Hoby Hanna
HannaList — which the brokerage prefers to call a strategic listing launch model rather than a private listing network — enables Howard Hanna listing agents and their clients to share listings with Howard Hanna buyer agents before wider distribution through the multiple listing service (MLS) system. The firm said the platform was created in collaboration with its MLS partners and aligns with current listing policies, including Clear Cooperation.
“I woke up this morning to either a bunch of people who work for us — clients and customers and people in the industry — going, ‘Oh my God, this is great. This is innovative. This is the way to go about it,’” he told Inman. “But I’ve also seen some other people in the industry’s comments that are negative. That has been ‘Oh my God, here’s another horrible thing that a broker is doing and they’re copying Compass, and here’s a movement.’ I’m like, ‘Whoa. Hold on.’”
Hanna said the concept of exclusive (or private) listings isn’t new, as brokers have always found ways to meet the needs of their agents and clients, some of whom are better served by starting their selling journey internally. However, market trends and industry rivalries have made the practice much more controversial, with the CEO saying he hopes HannaList proves brokers can make “adult, middle-of-the-road decisions” that benefit all parties involved.
“I think that if we were sitting here in 2009 talking about [this] strategy, there’d be no dialogue. Unfortunately, there is a shortage of inventory, so everyone thinks that anyone creating a different strategy must be hiding the ball,” he said. “Yeah, and maybe Compass has gone too far with their strategy. Maybe. I’m not criticizing them. I think they even adjusted that last week with their deal with Redfin.”
“What we’re doing is a common-sense, fair approach,” he added, reiterating that his team worked with MLS partners to develop HannaList. “We’re a company that’s been in the industry for almost 70 years, that has seen the ups and downs, ebbs and flows of multiple markets. We hope that this may make people think that it’s not an all-or-nothing situation.”
The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Inman: Let’s jump into it. This isn’t Howard Hanna’s first foray into exclusive listings. In 2019, you launched Find It First, which allowed buyers to search Howard Hanna listings before they were added to the MLS and distributed to larger portals. How did Find It First lay the groundwork for HannaList?
Hanna: [Exclusive] listings aren’t new. It’s a strategy some sellers have used. Even at [Inman Connect New York] in February, a couple of executives were asked about exclusive listings, and they said, ‘Oh yeah, there’s definitely a place for exclusive listings.’ One CEO even said something like, ‘If I were going to sell my house today, it should be exclusive.’ It’s sort of like, you can’t have your cake and eat it, too.
There are times when a property should be immediately exposed to as much of the market as possible because that’s what the seller wants and because that’s the strategy they think is best. There are other times when it’s better to take a property and give it some exposure, even if it’s internal to your office or your company, and get some feedback first. I think sellers should have some choice in how to sell their home. And it’s not all-or-nothing.
We launched Find It First so consumers could find our listings on HowardHanna.com before they appeared in other places. That was to drive traffic to our website, our agents and our listings.
We built it, and it was a good lesson in making sure we were always in compliance with Clear Cooperation or the rules that an MLS establishes for display. We belong to over 80 MLSs, each with different rules. That required our administrative staff or our sales associates to do double entry — you put the information in Find It First so it would appear on HowardHanna.com, and then you put it in the MLS, and it would override … There were glitches, and it was sort of clumsy.
But the idea was to create a distribution system for the broker to feed into the MLS, rather than the MLS feeding the broker. That was the idea behind Project Upstream, but they couldn’t get it to happen.
Drawing on our experience with Find It First, we knew we were large enough as a broker to build HannaList. We found a great partner in Ocusell and could map out this distribution system with each MLS. We’ve worked alongside our MLS partners, so when I look at somebody being critical of this decision, they don’t get it — we could have built the same thing without partnering with Ocusell or MLSs.
We believe in the multiple listing service. We believe in cooperation. We believe in working together, but we also believe brokerage firms should be able to control the distribution of their listings. Not just Howard Hanna. Everybody.
When your spokesperson sent over the press release, I zeroed in on the fact that HannaList was created in collaboration with your MLS partners. Then my mind went to Compass and CEO Robert Reffkin, who has been pounding the pavement about exclusive listings, eliminating CCP and the creation of a national MLS. How do you think Compass’ moves are shaping the reaction to your platform?
You know, who’s anybody in our industry to say to a seller, ‘This isn’t how you can sell your home.’ At Howard Hanna, we present what we think is the best strategy for listing a home, which isn’t just putting it in the MLS, putting up a sign, listing it on Zillow, and praying that a buyer comes. But the seller has the final say on what strategy best represents them.
And Compass has come out with a strategy, too. They’ve built an internal system for that strategy. Robert may be a little bit more out there, saying that [individual] MLSs should go away and [brokerages] should create a national MLS. But even that’s not new. Brokers, Realtors and agents have been talking about that for 15 years.
Then you add in Zillow. You now have these two 800-pound gorillas fighting. Zillow is a media company. They’re an advertiser. They’re saying, ‘If you don’t play by the rules, we won’t advertise you.’ And obviously that’s their choice.
In that, I think the industry has forgotten there’s a middle. There’s a common-sense choice that the adults in the room can come together and make. We can say, ‘Wait a minute. Sellers should have a choice. The industry shouldn’t be ubiquitous.’
Brokerage firms that are innovative and creative should be able to adopt a different distribution model that supports seller choice, meaning they might not want their listing on Zillow. The consumer will decide what’s right for them.
But you can also create this model within the MLS framework. It’s worked for a long time as a single B2B, so everybody can see what’s for sale when brokers are ready to put it in the B2B for sale. Some MLS executives don’t like that and may have an ulterior motive: wanting to control all the data and not work with the brokers who provide it.
But I think our strategy with HannaList represents the adult, middle-of-the-road decision that best benefits real estate agents, consumers and brokerage firms. It represents a strategy that’s pro-industry yet pro-consumer. There’s all this noise about [exclusive listings], but these options have always existed.
Earlier in our conversation, you said that if we were having this conversation in 2009, it would be much different. Less polarizing. Do you think the industry can get back to that?
Growing up in this business, there’s always disruption. We’re in an interesting time in our industry, and there’s going to be a lot of consolidation. And change brings panic and fear.
I remember when Microsoft and Bill Gates said they were gonna start Boardwalk, an online real estate portal that would end the existence of real estate agents. You wouldn’t need an MLS. But that website never really launched. Instead, we got what we have now: Realtor.com, Zillow and the other portals. And the agent is still here.
This is the largest single financial transaction someone will make, and it’s highly complex and emotional. So you’re always going to need a human touch.
So when we hear the stories now about how artificial intelligence is going to replace the agent, that’s no different than when people said the Internet was going to replace the agent. It won’t happen. But we’ll need to adapt.
Our industry has had two years of [significant] changes and challenges. Brokerage firms, we’re saying our job is to continue to offer services and grow for our agents, while maybe organized real estate has been an obstacle because they don’t want to change.
Whether it’s the National Association of Realtors, and saying ‘What’s your real intent other than collecting dues? What are you doing to enhance and improve the industry?’ Whether it’s the [hundreds] of MLSs we have and why they’re not, as a collective group, evolving.
I think it’s about how we, as brokerage firms, get back in control of our data and distribution of that data. And creating systems that work within the framework of MLS — not against them.
Email Marian McPherson