The Cyr Team · The Process Question
Bright MLS's New Display Controls Create a Documentation Gap for Agents and Brokers
Quick Answer. Bright MLS is adding controls that let sellers hide price, price history, days on site, and individual photos from consumer websites.
Agents will explain those choices and enter the settings. Brokers will need a process for obtaining, retaining, and reviewing the seller's instructions.
But the existing paperwork does not specifically capture these new choices. A Bright coach said in an October 15 coaching session that there is no separate Bright form recording the seller's decision. The Pennsylvania, Delaware, and New Jersey listing agreements we reviewed do not specifically address them either.
The MLS records the selection. The brokerage still needs a record of what the seller authorized.
What Is Changing — and What It Leaves Alone
Bright's October 9 webinar showed Yes/No choices for Listing Price, Price History, and Days on Site, along with a separate exclusion toggle for each photo. Bright marked the controls "Available Soon." In an October 15 coaching session, Bright's coaches said the controls launch October 20, unless something changes. These join existing choices about displaying an address, automated valuations, and consumer comments.
Bright's materials indicate that these settings govern distribution to consumer websites. They do not remove the information from the MLS record. Agents can still see information that consumers may no longer receive.
The rulebook language, webinar materials, reporting, and listing-agreement comparison are collected in LTC Capital's reference on the display controls. What each setting does to a buyer is the subject of our companion piece. This one is about the brokerage.
The practical issue for a brokerage is what happens between explaining a setting and entering it.
What Bright's Existing Rules Require Brokers to Retain
Rule 2.6 lists seller instructions on marketing and showings among the documents brokers must retain, and requires a copy within one business day of Bright's request. Rule 1.8.5 requires the client's advance written authorization for changes to a listing, such as status or price. Whether it reaches display settings isn't stated, and neither rule says what an instruction for these controls must contain. Bright's enforcement policy adds that the broker is ultimately responsible and accountable for all actions of all subscribers affiliated with the broker (Appendix I).
So the retention duty and the broker's accountability are already in the rulebook. What the paperwork doesn't supply is a place to put the instruction.
The MLS Setting Records the Answer, Not the Instruction
A selection in the MLS shows whether a field was set to display. It does not, by itself, establish:
- What the seller wanted to accomplish.
- Which consequences the agent explained.
- What the seller authorized.
- When the instruction was given.
- Whether a later change was also authorized.
That distinction matters whether the answer is "hide" or "show." Both are choices about how the property will be presented.
According to a Bright coach, the decision is a conversation between the agent and the seller. But a conversation still needs a record the brokerage can retain and review. The gap is straightforward: the system captures the setting, while the brokerage must establish the instruction behind it.
Without a Shared Process, Documentation Can Vary
One agent may retain an email. Another may write a transaction note. Another may rely on the conversation. That leaves the broker reviewing files with different levels of evidence for the same type of seller instruction.
The existing listing agreements we reviewed contain choices about internet distribution, address display, valuations, and comments. They do not specifically capture price, price history, days on site, or individual photo exclusions. Until those decisions have a defined place in the transaction process, agents and brokers will have to bridge that gap.
The immediate question is therefore larger than which settings an agent should select. How will the brokerage consistently explain, obtain, retain, and review the seller's instructions?
What Agents Need to Explain Before Obtaining Instructions
Before obtaining the seller's instructions, the agent needs to explain what each choice may change. A seller may have a sound reason to limit public display. An occupied home may raise privacy concerns. A photograph may show valuables or a child's room. A seller may want to avoid drawing attention to time on market or earlier price reductions. Those reasons deserve a discussion. So do the possible consequences.
| Display choice | What the seller and agent need to discuss |
|---|---|
| Hide price | Buyers lose an immediate affordability reference. How the listing appears in price-filtered searches remains unconfirmed. |
| Hide price history | Buyers lose context about earlier changes. A visible reduction may also attract renewed attention. |
| Hide days on site | Buyers lose a reference point they may use to evaluate the listing and frame an offer. |
| Exclude individual photos | Privacy may improve, while buyers receive a less complete picture of the home. |
| Hide the address (already available) | Privacy may improve, while buyers have less information about location, commute, schools, and nearby sales. |
Bright has not documented how every consumer website will handle each hidden field. That uncertainty belongs in the discussion too.
The agent does not need to predict every buyer's reaction. A careful agent will want to explain the relevant tradeoffs, identify what remains unknown, and obtain the seller's direction.
Six Things the Record Needs to Capture
Whatever documentation process a brokerage adopts, it should address six things:
- Purpose: What does the seller want this choice to accomplish?
- Tradeoff: What information will buyers lose, and how might that affect their response?
- Uncertainty: What website behavior remains unconfirmed?
- Combined effect: What changes when several fields are hidden together?
- Instruction: What exactly did the seller authorize?
- Later changes: If the seller reverses the choice, where is the new instruction recorded?
These do not require a prediction that hiding a field will help or hurt the sale. They require a clear record of the discussion and the seller's direction. We call that record a documented listing decision: a contemporaneous account of the options discussed, the tradeoffs explained, and the seller's instructions. How a documented listing decision is made sets out what it contains, and The Part of a Listing Decision No One Could See, Until This Fall makes the paperwork argument.
Turning a Field Back On Takes Another Instruction
A Bright coach said the settings can be changed during the life of a listing, including on current active listings. That flexibility doesn't eliminate the documentation issue. It creates another point at which the seller's instruction needs to be recorded.
A seller who initially hides price history may later ask to display it. The file should capture that change. The discussion should also acknowledge what remains unknown: whether earlier changes reappear, whether alerts are triggered, and how quickly consumer websites update. Restoring a field also can't recover the exposure the listing may have missed while it was hidden.
What October 20 Will and Won't Settle
Once the controls are live, several technical questions should become easier to answer: the defaults, what websites display, and what happens when information is restored. Those answers will help agents explain the choices. They won't resolve the documentation gap on their own.
Before these controls become routine, brokerages need to decide where seller instructions will be recorded, how agents will obtain authorization, and how later changes will be documented.
Bright's controls provide a place to enter the answer. The brokerage still needs a process for documenting how that answer was authorized.