I started my real estate career in Bellingham, Washington in 1999, when housing inventory lived in a printed listing book published twice a month. It was out of date by the time it reached my desk. I spent my days driving neighborhoods looking for new For Sale signs, calling agents at competing brokerages, and trading haves, wants and coming soons. The quality of my network mattered because the network was where the information lived.
Some brokerages leaned hard into keeping that information inside their own walls, where an in-house buyer could mean both sides of the transaction stayed there too. A buyer with a well-connected agent heard about homes another buyer never knew existed. I was good at working that system, but I knew it wasn’t particularly fair.
Over the next 25 years, the industry built its way out of it, and the market became less dependent on knowing the right agent.
That history is why I oppose the private listing strategy now being fought over in federal court. On October 5, California Regional MLS (CRMLS) asked a judge to declare its cooperation rules lawful after Compass threatened an antitrust suit over fines for publicly marketing listings kept off the MLS. I recognize the market Compass is building because I have worked in it.
Unavailable information hurts buyers and agents
We used to make what we called “sign calls.” I’d be touring a neighborhood with a buyer in my car and see a new For Sale sign going into a yard, but the property wasn’t in the MLS book. I didn’t have a cell phone, so I’d head back to the office and call the listing agent. Often, I was told the home was already pending, sometimes hours after my buyer and I had watched the sign go in. It had gone under contract with a buyer from inside the listing brokerage before the broader market ever had a chance to see it.
To my buyer, it looked as though I wasn’t connected enough or wasn’t doing my job. The reality was that the information had never been made available to me.
The difference today is why it happens. Twenty-five years ago, the printed book couldn’t keep up with the market. Today, we can broadcast a new listing across an entire market almost instantly. If a buyer and their agent cannot see a home that is actively being marketed, it is no longer because the technology cannot get the information to them.
It’s because someone has chosen not to.
Compass frames this as seller choice, and sellers should have meaningful choices about how their homes are marketed. Clear Cooperation has already evolved to allow more flexibility. But seller choice and private brokerage access are not the same thing.
The distinction between seller choice and private brokerage access matters more at scale
Compass has publicly set a goal of 30% market share in its top 30 markets. A private network at a small brokerage has limited reach. At that scale, buyers may choose a brokerage not for its agents or service, but because it is the only way to gain equal access to the homes they want.
Once control of inventory becomes the competitive advantage, the inventory itself becomes leverage over both the consumer and the professionals competing to represent them.
Sellers pay a price too. Every day a home spends in a private phase is a day the public record never sees, distorting days on market for every buyer, appraiser, and lender. Giving up broad exposure should be an informed decision, not a brokerage’s default.
The effects will not fall evenly. In a Zillow survey published in January 2025, 74% of Hispanic sellers and 73% of Black sellers said their agent recommended a private listing network, compared with 24 percent of white sellers. Zillow also estimated that off-MLS homes in communities of color sold for 3.2% less than similar MLS-listed homes in 2023 and 2024, compared with 1.2% in majority-white neighborhoods. The survey covered agents across the industry, not any one brokerage.
Zillow has its own interests, and those findings deserve independent scrutiny. But if some sellers are being advised to accept limited exposure at dramatically different rates, and paying more for it, that is a fair housing question. Our profession should want the answer before this scales.
The MLS system isn’t perfect, but the principle beneath it matters more than any one MLS: access to housing information should not depend on which brokerage controls the listing. Competitive advantage should not come from controlling access to the housing market itself.
I still have my old listing book on a shelf near my desk. In 2025, Compass launched a Private Exclusives Book of its own, describing it as a way to reimagine the spirit of the original MLS books. I find that comparison remarkable, but probably not for the reason Compass intended.
We did not spend 25 years making housing information easier to access so the real estate industry could rebuild the listing book behind a corporate wall.
Erinn Nobel is Co-Founder and President of ENRG Realty and has worked in residential real estate since 1999 as an agent, managing broker, designated broker, brokerage executive and founder.
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of HousingWire’s editorial department and its owners.
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