First Look's First Days: What the Data Shows (and Where It's Getting Confusing)

Northwest Multiple Listing Service's new First Look status launched September 4, and nearly a week in, we've pulled every First Look listing in King and Snohomish counties to see how sellers and agents are actually using it. We found 98 listings, ranging from $289,000 to $15,000,000. Some patterns are encouraging. Others point to real growing pains buyers and their agents should know about before they get frustrated by a listing that doesn't behave the way they expect.

What Sellers Are Choosing

First Look gives sellers two independent choices: whether to allow showings, and whether to market the listing broadly online. In the first five days:

Of the 98 listings, 72 (73%) chose to allow showings during First Look, while 26 (27%) did not. On the marketing side, 70 listings (71%) chose broad public display, and 28 (29%) chose to limit marketing to firm-selected channels instead.

Those two marketing numbers track each other almost exactly, and that's not a coincidence — Washington's new marketing law makes limiting public display a legally exposed choice outside of a genuine health or safety concern, so most sellers choosing broad showings access are also choosing broad public marketing. Notably, nearly three in four sellers are choosing to let buyers in the door right away rather than using First Look purely as prep time — which means for most of this first week's listings, "First Look" functions much closer to an early Active launch than a true "coming soon" preview.

Where It's Getting Confusing: Availability Timelines

For the 26 listings that did prohibit showings, the whole point of that choice is to build anticipation for a specific, upcoming launch. That only works if buyers and their agents actually know when the wait ends. Right now, it mostly isn't working:

Only 7 of those 26 listings stated a clear date in the agent remarks for when showings or the Active launch would begin. Two more gave a vague window — "going on market next week" — with no firm date. The remaining 17, nearly two-thirds of the no-showings listings, gave no indication at all. If you're a buyer's agent trying to advise a client on whether to wait for a home or move on to something else available now, more than 60% of "not yet available" listings this week simply aren't telling you when — or if — that will change.

Where It's Getting Confusing: Showings vs. Showing Info

We also found a data-hygiene issue worth flagging directly. Several of the 26 listings marked "no showings allowed" still had full showing instructions — ShowingTime links, keybox codes, appointment requirements — populated in the listing's Showing Info field, the same as an active, showable listing. That's very likely leftover habit from how listings have always been entered, not an intentional signal, but it means a buyer's agent skimming a listing sheet could reasonably conclude showings are available when the seller has actually said no. In this transition window, the safe move is to read the agent remarks in full, not just the structured fields, before assuming a listing is or isn't showable.

Where It's Getting Confusing: Remarks That Don't Match the Field

We searched agent remarks across all 98 listings for explicit statements like "no showings during First Look." Eight listings said so directly. Seven of those matched the structured Showings Allowed field correctly. One did not — a listing whose remarks described a temporary showing delay while the structured field itself read "Yes," a real mismatch between what a buyer's agent would see in the checkbox versus what the listing agent wrote in plain language. A ninth listing restricted showings only on specific blackout dates rather than a blanket "no," which is a different (and reasonable) use of the remarks field, not an error — but it's one more example of how much currently rides on reading the fine print rather than a single Yes/No field.

None of this points to bad faith — it's exactly the kind of inconsistency you'd expect in the first week of a brand-new field going live across hundreds of offices and agents at once. But it does mean buyers and their agents shouldn't fully trust the structured fields alone yet. Read the remarks. Ask the listing agent directly if a showing date isn't clear. That extra step matters more this month than it will once the process settles.

One More Data Point: Offer Timing

Of the 98 listings, 88 gave no specific offer review date, meaning offers will simply be reviewed as they come in. The other 10 set a specific date, ranging from September 8 to September 28 — early evidence that at least some sellers are already using First Look's runway to build toward a defined offer-review event once the listing converts to Active, rather than reviewing offers on a rolling basis.

What We're Watching

We'll keep pulling this data as more First Look listings convert to Active and a full 21-day cycle plays out. In particular, we're watching whether the availability-date and remarks-consistency issues above improve as agents get more comfortable with the new fields, and whether the major listing portals settle into a clear, consistent way of labeling First Look inventory for the buyers actually searching on them. If you're evaluating a First Look listing right now, or considering using one yourself, we're happy to walk through exactly what we're seeing.