How to share an off-market listing privately

Some listings are not for everyone. A quiet sale, a pocket listing, a property shown to a short list of buyers. You want to send details to a few people without having them forwarded, posted or found years later.

No link is perfectly private. Anyone who has it and the password can pass them on. But you can make sharing deliberate and put a limit on how long it works.

Use three controls together

• A password. Readers must enter it before they see the pages. Send it separately from the link, by text or phone, not in the same email.
• An end date. The link stops working on the day you choose, such as the day the offer window closes.
• An email first. Readers enter their email address before opening it, and you can download the list. It tells you who looked, and it makes people think before forwarding.

All three are part of the paid plans, and each is a setting on the flipbook.

Step by step

1. Make the brochure. The property listing template in the Studio has a cover, key facts, photo and floor-plan boxes and a neighborhood page.
2. Publish it, then open Access in the Studio.
3. Set a password and an end date. Switch on asking for an email first.
4. Share the link with each buyer and give them the password by another route.
5. When the offer window closes, the link stops working on its end date. You can also remove the flipbook sooner.

Things worth knowing

• Do not use a readable link name for a private listing. Without one, the link is a long random string, which is much harder to guess.
• Turn off the PDF download if you want to. Readers can download a flipbook as a PDF unless you switch that off for the flipbook.
• A screenshot is always possible. Nothing on the web can stop it. These controls limit casual sharing, not a determined person.
• Keep the list. The emails collected are yours. Treat them the way you would any buyer's contact details.

When you are ready to go public

Change the settings: remove the password and end date, give it a link name people can say aloud, and print the QR code for the sign. The brochure and its link are the same, so anything you already sent keeps working.