Why eXp and NextHome say the private listings war is here

Pareja said consolidation in real estate is following a familiar historical pattern.

“If you look at American history, when industries start to consolidate, they tend to not stop, and so consolidation begets consolidation,” he said. “Industries that for decades were fragmented all of a sudden become consolidated.”

He compared the current moment to the airline industry and even the railroad consolidation of the late 1800s. For real estate, he said, the pressure is coming from a combination of national platforms, technology, industry downturns and capital.

For eXp, Pareja said, NextHome offered something different from a pure scale play.

“We were looking for a platform that was synergistic and complimentary, that didn’t cannibalize our business,” he said. “We recruited a total of 28 agents in 2025 away from them, right? So there was almost zero overlap.”

Dwiggins said NextHome’s leadership had reached similar conclusions about where the industry was headed.

“We built this business from the ground up, no investors, from a garage, mortgaged our houses and took all of our savings accounts to create the company,” he said. “We (James and co-CEO Keith Robinson) built this beautiful boutique franchise business.”

But, he added, the market was changing fast.

The private listings war

“We needed protection from a private listings war, which I unfortunately think is here and about to get accelerated,” Dwiggins said.

Private listings were a central concern for both executives. Dwiggins said they have a limited place in the market, but he believes they are being pushed far beyond that.

“I think private listings are a really bad thing for the industry,” he said. “It’s always been, in my opinion, something that should be used in a very small use case.”

He framed the issue around the seller’s interests. “Isn’t our job supposed to be about putting the seller’s interests forward?” Dwiggins said. “Did we forget who we actually work for in this process?”

Pareja said the North American MLS system remains one of the industry’s greatest advantages, especially compared with markets where portals dominate access to inventory.

“What makes North American real estate wonderful is we have MLS, and we also syndicate data to actual competitors that fiercely compete for those positions,” Pareja said. “Creating more distribution of our seller’s listings is better, and like, fight me on that one.”

That belief also underpins eXp’s deal with Google, HouseCanary and ComeHome. Pareja said the arrangement gives the brokerage more control over how its listings are distributed. “The fact that we are the ones sending the data via my state and the relationship with HouseCanary, that actually puts me in control to take it away if they go back on their word or we don’t like the position they take,” he said.

He also said scale matters in a fragmented environment. “NextHome could not have done the Google deal that we did, purely just because they didn’t have enough scale to do it,” Pareja said. “But now that we’re together, we went from 72,000 active listings to 80,000 active listings.”

Is AI a black swan event for the listing ecosystem?

Both executives argued that broader distribution is not only good for sellers, but necessary as search changes. Dwiggins said the home search experience remains outdated. “When you go to portals today, the search experience is basically the same as it’s been for, I don’t know, like 15 or 20 years — bedrooms, bathrooms, and square footage,” he said.

He said buyers want a more intuitive search experience, one that reflects how people actually think about where they want to live. “I want a pool, and I want to have it [on a] north-facing slope, and I want to have this, and I want to have that, and I want it to be this far from my favorite restaurants in downtown,” he said.

Pareja sees AI as a possible “black swan event” for the listing ecosystem. “There is a black swan event, which is that LLMs really get to understand every nook and cranny of any listing available,” he said.

If AI-powered search becomes the default consumer experience, Pareja said, brokerages need to think carefully about positioning. “What puts us in pole position if that statement is true?” he said. “Wouldn’t it be good to give the world’s biggest LLM all of our properties that are actively available for sale in real time?”

Leadership structure is moving too slowly

Still, both leaders said the industry’s leadership structure is moving too slowly. Pareja called it “an abdication of leadership.” Dwiggins was equally direct.

“There are too many unqualified people, and I say that as respectfully as possible, on boards making decisions that they’re not qualified to make,” he said. “That is the problem with organized real estate, from associations to MLSs all the way down.”

For broker-owners and agents, however, both executives said the answer is not to obsess over every technology headline. It is to return to relationships and value.

“In a hyper AI tech focus world, I think the human is going to be at a premium,” Pareja said. “I would obsess with relationships and value, and everything else is noise.”

Dwiggins agreed. “A human connection, I think, is going to be the most important thing to remember in an AI-based world,” he said. “This is an infrequent transaction that people do once every eight to 13 years. It’s not an Amazon package, it’s something that’s scary, it’s expensive.”

For Dwiggins, the industry’s future still rests on a simple question.

“If you wouldn’t do it with the sale of your own home, then don’t do it with other people,” he said.

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This article was generated using HousingWire Automation and reviewed by a HousingWire editor before publication.