How Kevin markets a home
Every buyer sees your home.
When I list a home, it goes on the open market the day it launches. Not to a private list, not to one office, not to the buyers who happen to know the right agent. Every buyer, the same morning. Here is why that is the only way I will do it.
What is my home worth?- Sale vs. asking
- 105%
- Kevin’s average. The typical DC Metro sale closes at about 97% (Bright MLS, 2026).
- Days on market
- 7
- Kevin’s average. The typical DC Metro listing sits for about 45 days (Bright MLS, 2026).
- Homes personally sold
- 347
- Kevin as the agent of record. Over 1,000 with the teams he has led.
- Neighborhood records
- 12+
- Neighborhoods where Kevin’s sale set the highest price ever paid.
The first reason
More buyers, more competition, a stronger offer.
The price a home sells for is set by the buyers who see it. Put it in front of all of them at once and the ones who want it compete for it. Show it to a few and you get a few opinions of what it is worth, and you take the best of those.
Listings kept off the open market, as pocket listings, office exclusives or quiet pre-sales, shrink the pool of buyers before the first showing. The seller pays for that, usually without ever knowing what the home would have brought.
If you ever want a private sale, for privacy or for speed, I will tell you what it costs you in buyers before you decide. I will not call a smaller market a special opportunity.
The second reason
A full record protects your sale, and the next one.
Your buyer’s lender sends an appraiser, and the appraiser works from the recorded sales nearby: the price, the days on market, the photos, the details. When a sale was done quietly, that record is thin or missing.
A sale fully recorded on Bright MLS gives the appraiser what your price needs to hold, and it gives your neighbor the comparable when it is their turn to sell. That is simply the right way to treat clients, the ones I have now and the ones down the street.
What the numbers say
Private listings take longer and do not sell for more.
- Higher median sale price
- 16.98%
- Homes marketed through Bright MLS, against homes sold off it, across 442,829 sales over two years. Bright MLS On/Off MLS Study, 2021. Historical, not a guarantee.
- To contract, starting private
- 37 days
- Against 20 days for a standard listing, across about 100,000 sales, September 2024 to February 2025. Bright MLS, 2025.
- At the closing table
- No gain
- After adjusting for location and features, pre-marketing had no effect on the close price. Nearly 9 in 10 private listings ended up on Bright MLS anyway. Bright MLS, 2025.
Both studies are Bright MLS’s own, on this region’s sales: the Bright MLS On/Off MLS Study, 2021, and its office exclusives report, 2025.
The sellers who regret it
You only find out what you lost by never finding out.
The sellers I hear from who went private did not lose on paper. They accepted a good offer, from the one or two buyers who were shown the home.
What they never got was the other offer: the buyer who would have paid more, or waived something, or closed on their timeline. Nobody can tell them that buyer was not out there, because nobody looked.
The only way to know you got the best deal is to put the home in front of the whole market. Price comes from supply and demand, and a private sale cuts the demand side on purpose. It costs money and it costs time, and Bright MLS’s own studies say so.
The whole market, by law
Reaching everyone is not just good business.
Fair housing law exists so that every buyer gets the same chance to see a home for sale and make an offer on it. A listing shown only to a small circle, the clients of one office or the friends of one agent, works against that, whatever anyone intends.
I market every home to the whole market because it gets my sellers the best price, and because it is how the law expects a home to be sold.
Before you sign with any agent
Ask what day one looks like.
Some agents now offer a three-phase plan: a private start, then their own website, then the open market if the home is still unsold. Others call it a delayed start.
If an agent proposes either one without first asking whether you need privacy for a reason, that agent is not working for you. There are real reasons for a private sale, and I will ask you about them. Absent one, you should expect full marketing to the entire market on day one, and you should find an agent who gives you that.
In the words of eXp Realty’s CEO
“We will continue to stand against anything that hides listings, limits access or restricts opportunity. … If ‘exclusivity’ was really serving the seller, why does nearly every listing eventually go public? Because the data tells the truth: Exposure sells homes. Shielding listings hurts sellers, limits buyers and undermines trust. Period.”
“Would you really choose to list your own home privately? Would you? Because the answer is probably not. … You will know what that home is worth by exposing it to the most people.”
That is my brokerage’s position and it is mine. I would not list my own home privately, and I will not do it with yours.
Doing the right thing
The right way to sell a home is in front of everyone who might buy it. I put every home I list on the open market on day one, and I would do the same with my own.
Fifteen minutes on the phone.
No presentation, no pitch, nothing to sign. You describe the situation, I tell you what I’d do about it, and you decide from there whether there’s more to talk about.