Listing Photos Can Go Private Now, and Other MLS Changes Buyers and Sellers Should Know

I'm on the committee of the Tri-Cities Marketing Council, a group of REALTORS® and real estate affiliates that meets Thursday mornings in Fremont, and I write many of our meeting recaps and take a lot of the pictures. On Thursday, September 24, 2026, our guest speaker was Roya Chaudhry, Chief MLS Officer for the Bay East Association of REALTORS®. Bay East runs the MLS where I enter most of my listings, so when its rules change, the way a home I'm selling shows up online changes with them.

You may never log in to an MLS, yet you see it every day. The photos on the big home search sites, the new listing emails agents send, the day count buyers check before they call, all of it starts there. This is my take on her talk, written for the people I work for: sellers, buyers, and anyone who just closed and would like their home's photos off the internet. The council's own recap, with the full recording, is on the Tri-Cities Marketing Council blog. Every photo in this post is mine.

Roya is clearly someone who enjoys this work. She never thought of herself as a data person, she said, and yet ideas for the MLS now wake her up at night, so she gets them on paper before they slip away. She also asked us to jump in with questions whenever we liked, and plenty of people did.

Seven things from her talk are worth knowing before you buy or sell

• Listing photos can be marked private, even after a sale. They stay in the MLS, and the public sites stop showing them.
• The MLS can't simply delete them. State law requires an MLS to retain listing records for three years or longer.
• The day count has a twin. Cumulative days on market follows a home from one listing to the next unless it was off the market for more than 30 days, and it now sits under the listing's History button.
• Active Contingent means one thing in this MLS: the seller accepted an offer that depends on the buyer selling another property.
• Coming Soon is a head start with limits. Agents see it in the MLS, the big home search sites don't get it, and it cancels itself after 30 days.
• A listing can mention a seller credit, but not its dollar amount. Buyer agent compensation can't appear in the MLS at all.
• Listings have more room: up to 99 photos, longer descriptions, and free floor plans for Bay East members.

Just bought or sold? Your listing photos can come off the public sites

If your home's interior is still showing on the home search sites months after closing, there's now a fix. Bay East can mark a listing's photos private. They stay inside the MLS, where agents still see them with a pink ribbon on each one, and so do Bay East's data-share partners, but the public sites stop showing them. Photos that already went out come back down within 48 to 72 hours, Roya said.

Who asks matters, because the request has to come from the listing side:

• Before the sale, the listing agent switches photos to private on the MLS photo screen, which now has Mark Private and Mark Public buttons that work on one photo or all of them.
• After it sells, the listing agent or broker emails Bay East, and Bay East takes care of it.
• If you were the buyer, ask your own agent to reach out to the listing agent. And if I was the listing agent on the home you bought or sold, just tell me, and I'll send the request in writing for you.

The demand is real. Bay East gets five to ten requests a day to delete a home's listing photos, Roya said, mostly from agents whose buyers have just closed. Deleting them isn't on the table, though. California Civil Code section 1088 requires a multiple listing service to retain the listing information agents place in it, and keep it accessible, for no less than three years from the date the listing went in, and Bay East's own MLS rules (section 11.5) say the MLS no longer removes photos from sold, expired, held or canceled listings. It marks them private instead, when the listing broker asks in writing.

Private takes effect quickly because the sites that receive MLS data have to refresh it within hours under their data agreements, she explained, and a site that falls behind can be warned, fined or cut off from the feed.

As for which photos to hide, most agents keep the main photo public, she said, and switch the rest to private. I think that's the right balance: the front of the home stays recognizable in the sales history, and the rooms inside don't stay on display.

One thing not to confuse it with is the VOW opt-out. A VOW, or virtual office website, is a brokerage website where visitors who register can search MLS listings, and Bay East's rules (section 12.19) let a seller keep the listing, or just its address, off those sites. A seller can also ask to switch off the comments and automated value estimates some of them show beside a listing. None of that touches the photos. If privacy matters more to you than pictures, my earlier council post, When the Address Is the Danger, covers selling when the address itself has to stay quiet.

Buyers, a listing's day count has a twin, and it now lives under History

When you look at a listing, its days on market, or DOM, tells you how long the current listing has been up, counted from the day it was entered. That isn't always how long the home has been for sale. For that you want cumulative days on market, or CDOM, which carries the count across a cancellation and a fresh listing. Under Bay East's rules (section 7.22), CDOM starts over at zero only when a home has been off the market, canceled or expired, for more than 30 days, and a home can come back as a new listing only after the seller signs a new listing agreement.

Roya calls the row of colored buttons under a listing's main photo the Skittles, and the History button among them is where CDOM lives now. It used to sit in the listing reports, and some agents asked Bay East to move it out of sight. As she put it, how you feel about CDOM depends on which side of the deal you're on. Bay East moved it but kept it, because an accurate record is central to what an MLS does, and DOM still appears in the reports.

What that means when you're shopping:

• A low DOM doesn't always mean a fresh listing. If CDOM is much higher, the home has been relisted, sometimes after a price change or a break.
• A long CDOM can mean room to negotiate, or a problem buyers keep finding. The history usually tells you which.
• Time spent as Coming Soon doesn't count toward DOM. Bay East's rules restart DOM when a listing moves from Coming Soon to New or Active.
• Compare it with the local pace. In my Hayward report for August, homes that sold in August had a median of 16 days on market, while the ones still for sale at the end of the month had been listed a median of 32.
• Ask for the History. On any home you're serious about, I'll pull its past listings, price changes and both counts before we write an offer.

A listing's status tells you more than you might think

The status is the first thing I read on any listing, and Roya cleared up two that trip people up. Here's how Bay East's rules (section 10.1) define the ones you'll see, with her updates folded in:

• Coming Soon: an optional starting status. The home is in the MLS so agents can see it, but it isn't sent to the big home search sites.
• New: a fresh listing with no accepted offer. It reads New for its first 7 days, then Active.
• Active: for sale, with no accepted offer.
• Back on Market: a listing that went off the market and has come back. It reads that way for 7 days, then Active.
• Price Change: the listing agent changed the price, and there's still no accepted offer. It also shows for 7 days.
• Active Contingent: the seller has accepted an offer that depends on the buyer selling another property. Roya was firm that it's for that and nothing else. If you love the home, ask about a backup offer.
• Pending: the seller has accepted an offer.
• Hold: the listing agreement is still in effect, but the home is temporarily off the market. This is the status agents knew as Withdrawn Temporarily, Roya said, and only the name changed.
• Expired and Canceled: the listing agreement ran out, or was canceled in writing. These two start the clock on resetting CDOM.
• Sold: escrow has closed.
• Sold Off MLS: a home that changed hands without ever being marketed, usually because the seller wanted it that way. Until now these went into the MLS as ordinary sales. The new status marks them for what they are and records their actual list, pending and sold dates once escrow closes. For anyone pricing a home, that's useful, because a sale that never saw the open market can be weighed differently from one that did.
• Leased: when a lease is done, the listing now closes as Leased rather than Sold. Bay East also trimmed the lease input form in August, dropping fields members no longer used, and the residential form gets the same treatment next.

Roya expects another round of changes around December, if all goes to plan. They've cleared the MLS committee and now sit with the software vendor. The work happens through a task force for each project, and she welcomes emails from agents who want a say in what comes next.

Sellers, Coming Soon gives you a head start, with firm limits

Some sellers want a little runway before the home goes fully live: time to finish the painting or line up a move while agents start to hear about it. Bay East's Coming Soon status is built for that (sections 9.1.1 and 10.1.1 of its rules):

• It's optional, and it takes a signed listing agreement that explains what Coming Soon can and can't do.
• Every agent in the MLS can see it, and the big home search sites don't get it. It isn't syndicated, it isn't in the IDX feeds behind other brokerages' websites, and it can't be scheduled for open houses or broker tours inside the MLS.
• You can still market it. Once the listing is entered as Coming Soon, the rules allow public marketing, so the listing brokerage can put up a sign or show it on its own website.
• Showings are your call, and the MLS holds everyone to it. The listing has to say whether showings are allowed. If they aren't, nobody shows the home, the listing agent included. If they are, the listing agent has to let any MLS agent show it too.
• It lasts 30 days. Then it's canceled out of Coming Soon automatically unless the agent moves it to New or Active, and an active listing can't go back to Coming Soon.

The one-business-day rule is about the opposite situation: a home being marketed before it's in the MLS at all. A yard sign, a social media post, a website, an email or text blast, flyers, an open house, or presenting the home to a room of agents from other brokerages, like ours, all count as marketing to the public. Once any of that happens, the listing has to be entered in the MLS, as Coming Soon or as an active listing, within one business day (sections 7.5 and 7.5.1, which Bay East titles Clear Cooperation).

If you'd rather not market the home publicly at all, Bay East also has an office exclusive option (section 7.6.1). The home isn't marketed to the public and isn't distributed through the MLS, so agents at other brokerages won't find it there, and you sign a certification saying that's what you want. And for every listing, the paperwork comes first. Roya's version: relist a home five times and you need five listing agreements. Bay East's rules require the seller's written authorization before any listing goes in (section 8.1), and so does state law.

Seller credits can be in the listing, but the dollar amount can't

Under section 12.5.1 of Bay East's rules, a listing's public or confidential remarks can mention a credit, incentive or concession to the buyer, as long as the remarks:

• say what the credit is for, such as a credit toward roof repairs,
• leave out any dollar amount or percentage, so a line offering a $5,000 credit doesn't belong there, and
• don't use it to pay a buyer's agent.

Buyer agent compensation is a separate matter. Since the national practice changes of August 17, 2024, an offer of compensation to a buyer's agent has no place in the MLS (section 7.12), and Roya said the fines for slipping one in are big. The rules also require that sellers and buyers be told broker compensation isn't set by law and is fully negotiable (section 8.5). I walk sellers through how that works today in what it really costs to sell a home in the Bay Area.

If you're buying and a listing mentions a credit, ask about the amount before you write. The number gets negotiated in your offer and the purchase contract, and your financing program caps how much a seller can credit you, which I cover in how much income you really need to buy a Bay Area home.

Your listing now has room for 99 photos, 2,500 characters and a free floor plan

A few changes came straight from member requests, Roya said:

• Photos: up to 99 per listing, up from 60.
• Public remarks: up to 2,500 characters, up from 1,500. That's room for what buyers actually ask about, like the upgrades, the age of the roof and the light in the kitchen.
• Driving directions: up to 100 characters, up from 50.

The tool I was happiest to hear about is the free floor plan. Bay East members can walk a home with the CubiCasa app on a phone and get a floor plan at no charge for homes up to 5,000 square feet, with extra fees above that (Bay East's MLS tools page). The plan goes in with the listing photos, which means it can be marked private after closing like the rest of them, and the measurements can be left off, which some agents prefer for liability reasons, she said. Buyers love a floor plan, because it answers where the bedrooms sit in relation to the kitchen before anyone books a showing.

The alerts and reports you get from agents run on these tools

All of these come with Bay East membership, under the MLS's Resources tab. Because members' dues pay for them, Roya said, Bay East checks each year how many members actually use each one, so usage decides what stays.

• Collaboration Center is the MLS's portal for automatic listing alerts. You get new matches by email, see the public details, save favorites and change your search, and your agent sees what you save and where you look. Roya's example was a client who kept saying Fremont and kept looking in Union City. Honestly, I like that: it tells me what you want before you've put it into words.
• RealReports turns a home and its area into one shareable report. Bay East's tools page calls it "a Carfax for homes," and its built-in assistant, Aiden, answers questions about trends, recent sales and what's nearby. When a new listing is entered, its agent automatically receives a RealReport by email, and Roya assured us that email is real, so it's worth keeping.
• Paragon Connect, the newer version of the MLS software, is the one Roya wants every agent working in today. Her own first impression was rough, she admitted, but years of feedback to the vendor and a recent retest by a member task force changed her mind. The vendor could switch off the old version whenever it chooses, and agents' listings and contacts carry over between the two.
• RentSpree handles online tenant screening and rent payments for lease listings. Per Bay East, applicants pay the application fee, and there's no other cost.

RPR, the most popular of the member tools by a wide margin, and Homes.com Pro round out the list, and another app is under consideration.

Here's what I'm doing differently after her talk

• Private photos, offered up front. At the listing appointment I'll ask whether you'd like your interior photos and floor plan marked private after closing, and when we close, I'll send the request in writing.
• A floor plan for every home I list, unless the seller would rather not have one.
• The full history on every home a buyer is serious about: both day counts, past listings and price changes, before we write an offer.
• Coming Soon explained before it's chosen: the 30-day limit, the showing rule, and where the listing will and won't appear.
• Credits described by purpose in the MLS, with the numbers in the offer.

You can watch her talk on YouTube

Tom Bigley recorded the meeting for the Tri-Cities Marketing Council YouTube channel. The link starts at 23:28, when Susan Munkner introduces Roya, and her talk, with the questions and a speed round at the end, runs about 35 minutes.

The rest of the morning had new faces, sponsors and a Super Tour home

Among our first-time visitors were Yujie Peng of KW Advisors, a homeschool teacher for about seven years before real estate, and Lys, whose name is the Norwegian word for light. Sachin, an agent and broker who is also building software for real estate, was back for a second visit. Chuck Edell, our dignitary for the morning, reaches 50 years in the business this December. Luchie Grissom walked us through the council's 2026 sponsorships. Charles Baldwin presented the single home on that week's Super Tour, a new home in Newark, and the drawing settled last week's $100 Super Tour pot. Nominations were also open for Bay East's 2026 awards, from REALTOR® of the Year to Good Neighbor of the Year (award criteria).

My photos from the morning, laid out like a listing's

Thirty-six of my photos from the morning, set out like the MLS screen where a listing's photos live: a main photo, then a lettered slot and a label for each of the rest. Two slots are marked private with a pink ribbon, the feature Roya walked us through. Press any photo to see it full size.

Meeting photos, Tri-Cities Marketing CouncilThursday, September 24, 202636 public2 private

Photo slotsOld limit, 6038 / 99

AMain photoMLS Update

Meeting

Tri-Cities Marketing Council, Fremont

Date

Thursday, September 24, 2026

Speaker

Roya Chaudhry, Chief MLS Officer, Bay East Association of REALTORS®

Topic

What's new in the MLS

Photographer

Harv Balu

Good morning5 photos, 1 private

1. BPublicDoors open
2. CPhoto C, PrivatePrivateWelcome tableKept private: a listing flyer on the table shows its MLS number and price.
3. DPublicRoya and Chuck
4. EPublicThe pledge
5. FPublicChuck Edell
6. GPublicBehind the camera

New and returning faces4 photos

1. HPublicYujie Peng
2. IPublicLys
3. JPublicWelcome back
4. KPublicSachin

Committee and sponsors7 photos

1. LPublicTwo sergeants
2. MPublicMarlyn Sylva
3. NPublicPlatinum Affiliates
4. OPublicOn the maracas
5. PPublicThree levels
6. QPublicBreakfast, too
7. RPublicGolden Coupon

Super Tour3 photos

1. SPublicFull house
2. TPublicCharles Baldwin
3. UPublicOne minute

Roya on the MLS11 photos, 1 private

1. VPublicSusan Munkner
2. WPublicThe introduction
3. XPublicRoya Chaudhry
4. YPublicAsk anything
5. ZPhoto Z, PrivatePrivatePrivate or publicKept private: the screen shows a listing's MLS record number. The next photo shows the same buttons without it.
6. AAPublicA hand goes up
7. ABPublicAlong the side
8. ACPublicWhere CDOM went
9. ADPublicFree floor plans
10. AEPublicClient alerts
11. AFPublicMore questions
12. AGPublicHigh five

Drawings5 photos

1. AHPublicPhones up
2. AIPublicPrize in hand
3. AJPublicA California journal
4. AKPublicThe big one
5. ALPublic$100 winner

Slots A to AL, in the order of the morningPhotographs © 2026 Harv Balu

Photographs by Harv Balu. Select a photo to open it full size; the arrow keys move between them.

Thank you, Roya

Thank you to Roya Chaudhry for an update full of practical detail and for taking every question we threw at her, and to Susan Munkner for introducing her. Our council meets Thursday mornings in Fremont, guests are always welcome, and the council's speaker calendar lists who's coming next. Our next guest, on October 1, is Alameda County Assessor Phong La.

If you're selling in Fremont, Newark, Union City or anywhere in the Tri-Cities and want a listing that uses everything the MLS now allows, from a floor plan to private photos after closing, call or text me at (510) 600-3425, or email homes@HarvRealtor.com. I can also put together a home value estimate, and if you're buying, I'll pull the full listing history on any home you're serious about.

Harv Balu, REALTOR®

• Cell / Text: (510) 600-3425
• Email: homes@HarvRealtor.com
• Web: HarvRealtor.com
• REALTY EXPERTS® · 41051 Mission Blvd, Fremont, CA 94539 · DRE #02195792

Disclosures

This post is general information for home buyers, sellers and real estate professionals, not legal advice. Harv Balu is a REALTOR® with REALTY EXPERTS®, not an attorney. MLS rules change and differ from one MLS to the next. The rules cited here are the Bay East Association of REALTORS® MLS Rules and Regulations as amended effective December 1, 2025, and statements attributed to Roya Chaudhry are from her presentation to the Tri-Cities Marketing Council on September 24, 2026, as she shared them, including changes that are newer than those rules. Roya Chaudhry and the Bay East Association of REALTORS® did not review or endorse this post. Mentioning a product or service is not an endorsement. Broker compensation is not set by law and is fully negotiable.

Photographs by Harv Balu, taken at the meeting.

Equal Housing Opportunity. Harv Balu, CA DRE #02195792. REALTY EXPERTS® (CA DRE #00414413) is independently owned and operated. © 2026 Harv Balu, REALTY EXPERTS®.