Solicitation of Expired and Withdrawn Listings
A business practice among some agents is to solicit sellers whose listings have an MLS status of Expired or Withdrawn. This often includes downloading data of expired listings and sending it in bulk or paying third parties to contact sellers of expired listings. According to Section 12.6 of REcolorado’s Rules and Regulations, trolling or prospecting Expired or Withdrawn listings is not an acceptable use of MLS content, and providing MLS information to third-party companies is a violation of REcolorado Rules and Regulations.
What is the difference between Expired and Withdrawn listings?
Withdrawn listings have a valid listing agreement in place and therefore, brokers should not solicit these listings. This could be a DORA violation for sign crossing.
Expired listings have reached the end of their Listing Agreement period. Brokers should heavily research Expired listings to make sure they have not already been relisted with another broker. If they have, it could be a DORA violation for soliciting a seller who already has a contract with another broker.
It’s part of my business model to contact sellers of Expired Listings. Is this not allowed anymore?
Brokers can contact individual sellers with Expired listings to look for new business. However, brokers may not give Expired or Withdrawn listing information to third-party servicers or companies to solicit business on the broker’s behalf or the company’s behalf.
If you have questions about this rule, contact REcolorado Customer Care at support@REcolorado.com
Great Info – I was personally in the room with my client who has been on speaker phone with several other agents calling and “harrassing” him even after he told them he was under contact and was re-listing with me! I was thoroughly disappointed by several agents who were so persistant and would not take “no” for an answer – one agent even went so far as to tell him that they could do better than his current agent because they knew more! Definite Dora violations and my client was so turned off, so they actually did a dis-service to a lot of big name real estate companies with their flagrant lack of professionalism!
Great Info – I was personally in the room with my client who has been on speaker phone with several other agents calling and “harassing” him even after he told them he was under contract and was re-listing with me! I was thoroughly disappointed by several agents who were so persistent and would not take “no” for an answer – one agent even went so far as to tell him that they could do better than his current agent because they knew more! Definite Dora violations and my client was so turned off, so they actually did a dis-service to a lot of big name real estate companies with their flagrant lack of professionalism!
Starla Kohnert April 2, 2020 at 1:46 pm
Great Info – I was personally in the room with my client who has been on speaker phone with several other agents calling and “harassing” him even after he told them he was under contract and was re-listing with me! I was thoroughly disappointed by several agents who were so persistent and would not take “no” for an answer – one agent even went so far as to tell him that they could do better than his current agent because they knew more! Definite Dora violations and my client was so turned off, so they actually did a dis-service to a lot of big name real estate companies with their flagrant lack of professionalism!
offers a search called Actual Expireds under the Search menu that can be used to ensure the expired listing you re about to call has not been relisted. Withdrawn (WTH): If the owner requests it, and has signed the proper paperwork, you can withdraw a listing in the RMLS database.
Please take a look at the updated information we put together about Solicitation of Expired Listings, which will give you more information. This blog post also explains the difference between Expired and Withdrawn. Listings in Withdrawn status have valid listing agreements. REcolorado subscribers have an obligation to determine if there is no longer a valid listing agreement before calling.
Is there a reason that there’s no option to mark a listing as cancelled? I’ve seen other Matrix MLS platforms have a cancelled option. Seems like that would cut down significantly on agents soliciting wthdrawn listings if you could mark it as cancelled instead.
Hi Mike, thank you so much for your comment. Our Rules and Regulations committee agrees with you and has discussed this many times. And after those discussions, they felt that a new status of Canceled could lend to more confusion. Our Expired/Terminated status is essentially “Canceled” just without the name. Meaning a status of Expired indicates the listing contract has expired or has been terminated by agreement between the broker and seller.
Additionally, this is the only status that can be solicited; only after verifying, there is not another active. Due to this, the committee thought only having the one status of Expired to indicate this would help. Thanks again for reaching out!