Less visible inventory means a thinner market record
Real estate market reports can only describe the transactions and listings they can observe. That makes the growth of private listing networks a concern beyond any single report: when brokerages keep inventory within their own systems, buyers, sellers, agents and analysts may all work from a less complete picture.
Jonathan Miller, the appraiser behind market reports frequently cited across the industry, has spent decades working with the limits of that picture. Shaun Osher, founder of CORE Group Marketing, first met Miller in the late 1990s, when Miller was assembling reports and the central challenge was unreliable data. Osher’s concern now is that some information is disappearing from view altogether.
That shift matters because property data serves more than one audience. Sellers use comparable sales to judge what their homes might fetch. Buyers look for evidence that a price is supported by the market. Developers weigh what to build and what buyers may pay, while lenders assess the property securing a loan. Each decision depends, in part, on the quality and breadth of information available.
Private marketing can be appropriate when a seller wants confidentiality. Osher points to public figures and people dealing with personal circumstances as examples of owners who may have a valid reason to limit exposure. The distinction he draws is between privacy requested by a client and information control adopted by an industry. The first reflects an individual preference; the second can affect what other market participants are able to learn.
Why contract data can lead closed sales
Osher’s own experience with market reporting helps explain why timing and access matter. When he launched CORE in 2005, he created the CORE RealTime Report to follow signed contracts rather than completed sales. A closing records a deal that was agreed to months earlier; a signed contract offers a more current signal of buyer and seller activity.
The report did not have every detail. CORE could not always obtain the agreed contract price, so it used the last asking price and the date the contract was signed. Even with those limits, the approach offered a different read on market momentum than relying only on closed transactions, which necessarily reflect earlier decisions.
The New York Times covered the use of contract data to gauge the market, and Osher was quoted saying, “The best thing for both the consumer and the agent is full transparency.” He recalls that the article prompted an angry call from the chief executive of a large city brokerage, who accused him of exposing weaknesses in the market.
Osher’s argument was that clients who understand conditions sooner can be represented more effectively. Better information can help an agent explain the context for a negotiation and help a client make a decision with fewer blind spots. That logic depends on the data being available in the first place.
Data can inform a story, or be shaped to sell one
Osher doesn’t present himself as a neutral observer of statistics. He acknowledges using numbers to promote CORE, which was neither the largest nor the oldest firm in its market. The measure he chose was sales volume per agent, a figure that supported the company’s claim to have particularly productive agents.
He connects that approach to Darrell Huff’s 1954 book How to Lie with Statistics, which describes how figures and charts can be arranged to make a case. A statistic can be accurate and still tell only part of a story. Choosing a favorable measure is a familiar form of marketing, and Osher says he used it to present CORE’s strengths.
But selective presentation is possible only when information exists to be selected. Withholding listings at the source creates a different problem: it can leave the market record incomplete before an analyst, agent or reporter has a chance to interpret it. A report built from that record may miss transactions and inventory that would change its account of prices or activity.
That distinction is central to Osher’s defense of Miller. Analysts can be challenged over their methods, assumptions or choice of measures. Yet the reliability of their work also depends on access to the underlying information. If relevant listings stay out of view, criticizing a report for what it cannot show risks mistaking a data gap for an analytical failure.
More consumer access, alongside restricted inventory
The tension is sharper because consumers can now find extensive property information on their phones. Sales histories, tax details, floor plans, price changes and mortgage estimates are among the information tools mentioned by Osher. Digital access has widened what people can inspect on their own, while some firms are choosing to limit where new inventory appears and who sees it.
Those trends can pull in opposite directions. A consumer may have a wealth of historical data and still lack a clear view of homes currently being marketed privately. The available information can look abundant while remaining incomplete at the point where a buyer compares options or a seller evaluates competition.
Keeping a listing within a brokerage’s network can also affect the data available after a transaction. If fewer properties enter broadly visible channels, outside observers may have less information with which to compare results. The source doesn’t quantify the scale of that effect, but the mechanism is straightforward: market reports are shaped by the activity they can capture.
Osher’s point is that this reaches beyond Miller’s work. Restricting information can complicate the decisions of buyers and sellers, as well as those of professionals trying to understand current conditions. A thinner view of inventory and sales may make it harder to tell whether a particular result reflects the wider market or only the part of it that was visible.
Transparency starts with access
Osher’s position isn’t that data makes a market favorable or unfavorable. Data describes what is happening, subject to how it is collected and presented. Participants may emphasize the statistics that support their case, as he did for CORE, but meaningful scrutiny requires a record broad enough to examine.
For industry professionals, the practical question is whether private listing practices leave analysts and clients with enough information to judge prices and activity. Miller’s reports are part of that process, but the quality of any report rests on what the market makes observable. A fuller record gives readers more ability to test competing interpretations; a narrower one limits that scrutiny.
Osher argues that Miller should be treated as an ally in understanding the market, not blamed when reported numbers are uncomfortable. The lasting issue is access: before anyone can debate what the statistics mean, the underlying transactions and listings have to be available to count.
This guest column was written by Shaun Osher, Founder of CORE Group Marketing and author of the Padkos Blog. It was originally published October 5, 2026, at Housing Notes.
The post Defending Jonathan Miller appeared first on The Big Picture.