Buyer & Seller Resources
Northwest MLS Tools for Your Real Estate Journey
Essential tools and information to help buyers and sellers navigate the real estate process, including important benefits, seller options, and homeownership resources.
Benefits of NWMLS’s Marketplace
For more than 40 years, Northwest MLS member firms have agreed to cooperate and share all listings of all properties with the entire brokerage community and the public. This open, fair, transparent, and comprehensive marketplace benefits sellers, buyers, brokers, and appraisers.
Northwest MLS’s marketplace provides buyers with access to all property listings and sellers with the benefits of making their listing available to all potential buyers.
Which Market Reach Do You Want?
Northwest MLS’s Marketplace for All
- Buyers and brokers have access to all property listings
- Sellers’ listings available to all potential buyers to maximize sale price and terms
- Complete, accurate listing and sales data available to all
- Buyers can choose their own broker
- Sellers have various options for marketing, privacy, and security
- Buyers and brokers have facts about market time and price changes
- Complete transparency
- Supports fair housing and equitable access
Private, Exclusionary Listings
- Listings hidden from buyers and brokers
- Sellers miss out on buyers with better offers
- Buyers forced to work with the listing firm, which represents seller
- Seller likely to receive lower purchase price
- Buyers may need to hire multiple brokers to have access to listings
- Incomplete, unreliable data for market analysis and appraisals
- Seller’s property only available to a small, select group of buyers
- Incomplete, unreliable data for market analysis and appraisals
- Misrepresentation about listing market time and price changes
- Discriminatory effect and fair housing violations for exclusionary practices
With NWMLS, buyers and brokers have equal access to all for-sale property listings. They don’t need to be part of exclusionary listings, have access to “insider” information, or work with a specific brokerage firm to see all homes that are for sale.
NWMLS’s marketplace also gives buyers choices and promotes competition among brokers. For private, exclusionary listings, buyers are forced to work the listing firm. When properties are listed with NWMLS, buyers can work with the broker of their choice, and buyer brokers compete on price and service, rather than access to “insider” information.
NWMLS’s marketplace supports fair housing. The discriminatory effect and disparate impact that results from restricting access to listings to an exclusive group of buyers and brokers is just that – discrimination.
Seller Options for Privacy, Security, and Marketing
Northwest MLS provides sellers with choices for privacy, security and marketing preferences, while maintaining an open, fair, transparent, and comprehensive marketplace.
Sellers have a myriad of choices to control how their property is marketed and accessed, ensuring that listing brokers can best address each seller’s individual needs.
Seller Choices: Marketing and Listing Information
Select the “list date” when the property will be available to other brokers and buyers
Decide whether to have a “For Sale” sign at the property
Option to limit listing photos to a single image
Choose to withhold the property address and map location from public websites
Opt-out of any internet advertising to the public
Elect to omit the seller’s name and/or phone number from the listing in MLS database
Withhold the property address or tax parcel ID from the MLS database
Withhold publishing of the listing in the MLS database due to unique needs of a seller
Seller Options: Restrictions on Showings and Property Access
Sellers should discuss all these options with their listing broker to decide how to best address the seller’s needs.
Sellers have the option to control the time and manner of any showings of their property, including:
- Require appointments for showings
- Limit showings to specific days and times
- Choose how much advance notice is required before showings
- Require seller’s or listing broker’s approval of each showing
- Prohibit all broker previews and showings for a specific period of time
- Provide specific instructions for each showing
Sellers can choose how brokers and consumers can access their property, including:
- Hold no open houses
- Prohibit concurrent showings
- Require the listing broker’s presence at all showings
- Require any buyers that access the property be pre-approved by a lender
- Require the listing broker to enable a secondary security code for each keybox access
- Require brokers who access the property leave a business card
- Limit keybox access to certain hours
- Not install a keybox on the property so that only the listing broker or seller can provide access
- Temporarily remove the property from the market
Watch a Video to Learn More
Seller Benefits
Buyer Benefits
Homeownership Resources for Buyers
Down Payment Resource
Northwest MLS brokers have access to the Down Payment Resource (DPR) program, which connects homebuyers with various down payment assistance programs to help them purchase homes. The DPR program generates a list of potential assistance programs depending on the buyer’s housing and financial criteria.
This program is integrated into the Northwest MLS database, making it easy for NWMLS brokers to see if listings are eligible for financial assistance. Buyers working with NWMLS brokers can also quickly see if a property is eligible for down payment assistance programs within the OneHome client portal.
Washington Covenant Homeownership Program
Washington State Legislature passed the Covenant Homeownership Act in spring 2023 with bipartisan support.
The Covenant Homeownership Program provides down payment and closing cost assistance for first-time homebuyers in the form of a loan, secondary to the primary mortgage loan. The loan has a 0% interest rate and is paid back on the sale or refinancing of the home.
The maximum amount of down payment assistance is 20% of the cost of the home, or $150,000, plus closing costs (if paid by the buyer).