There is a serious effort underway by Compass, the country’s largest real estate brokerage, that threatens transparency and access for everyone involved in the home-search process. They call it a Private Listing Network, insisting that limiting exposure of a home to a small internal audience will help fuel demand. In reality, this is a gimmick that will help shield inventory and information from buyers searching the open market at the expense of efficiency and transparency. Compass’s argument has long been that the MLS shouldn’t dictate rules because they are not the government. Well, now the government has entered the chat: Five states–Wisconsin, Washington, Illinois, Connecticut and Hawaii–are now pushing back on this dubious practice to protect a fair market structure in an increasingly fragmented real estate market.
Homebuyers, let’s say you find the home of your dreams online and you want to put an offer in. Questions you may ask the agent selling the home: How long has it been for sale? Have there been any offers? Did you change the price? You are entitled to full disclosure. Why? Because you are about to invest your life savings into a home and no one should be able to gamble with your money.
In a huge middle finger to buyers, sellers and agents everywhere, Compass has decided that they will blur the standards of transparency through a three-phrase marketing program to sell homes. Phase 1: The home stays internal, marketed only to other Compass agents and buyers who work with those agents. They will allow others to view these listings by physically entering a Compass office to look at a book, but in 2026 who has time for this? Phase 2: The home is marketed as a “Coming Soon” without showing days on market or price history, even though the house has been technically for sale before a small, select audience. They are hoping buyers won’t be savvy enough to understand this, and won’t ask basic questions and get answers. Phase 3: Finally, after who knows how long, the home hits the open market where the rest of us get to see the full public offering leaving behind a trail of shadow inventory that wasn’t sold during the first two phases.
Compass wants to manufacture a market in the name of “seller choice” that purports to be in your best interest. But the truth is clear: This model benefits only Compass. They are so committed to trying to outrun Zillow they will sacrifice the agent, consumer and the industry as a whole.
Days on market reveal truth, so why on earth would a company cover that up and use it as a pitch when it clearly hurts buyers and skews what they would be willing to offer? You simply can’t scotch tape together a sub-market and try and exclaim it is good for everyone. It’s a bald-faced lie.
Whether you are marketing a home to 10 agents or 10,000, the days on market metric exists. Homebuyers, I urge all of you to ask the basic questions like how long the home has been for sale because if you are told any less than the absolute truth, that sounds like misrepresentation. It’s a lawsuit waiting to happen and that’s one thing this industry cannot afford.
Exclusion is what kept so many minorities out of pursuing their dream of buying a home; that’s why Fair Housing laws now exist. If Compass can now work within its own opaque private listing web, no one will know who they are letting in or out of seeing homes. No wonder more than a dozen lawmakers are now pressing the Department of Justice as to why the Compass acquisition of Anywhere Real Estate happened so quickly.
One day, the very homesellers Compass urges to utilize this delayed marketing ploy, where days on market and price corrections are not disclosed publicly, will become homebuyers. Will they too be left in the dark for the sake of building up Compass’s exclusive secret private listing network? This strategy works to grow listings inventory, but not much else.
Progress sometimes takes a step back to get better, but what Compass is peddling is a football field away from transparency. Buyers and sellers, ask questions, demand the truth and never settle for what may sound like a new way of doing business disguised as a shortcut to put company and profits over people.
To hear more from Bess Freedman visit https://www.bhsusa.com/bhs-leadership/bessfreedman.
