The Private Listing v Portal Drama Has Me Hooked.

Most people think the battle between Compass and Zillow is about private listings. They’re wrong.

The real battle is about who has first opportunity. And neither company has been concerned first with the consumer.

I’ve been warning about this exact scenario since NAR’s Clear Cooperation Policy launched. Now we’re seeing the inevitable collapse of a strategy built on policy loopholes and data manipulation.

The Three-Phase Deception?

Has Compass been selling sellers on “gaming the system” since at least COVID? Their pitch sounds sophisticated: a three-phase marketing strategy.

Phase one: List internally without public exposure. Phase two: Share via company website. Phase three: Go to MLS and other public portals.

They call it “choice.” But the only choice sellers have is to risk leaving money on the table.

Here’s what’s really happening. Historically, Sellers would rarely opt for private listings except in specific situations: sick resident, tenant occupied, not 100% sure they want to sell. In this new incarnation, the idea being sold is that you’re “testing your price” without accumulating days on market.

Simply by admission that they’re trying to escape the days on market, to which all other brokerages and sellers are subject, we all have to acknowledge there may be no way to prove if a higher number could have been achieved on the open market. This raises serious ethical and fiduciary concerns.

The removal of inventory from MLS creates a bigger problem. The agent community relies on recent sales data, including list price versus market price and days on market, to establish pricing for new listings and backup for appraisals. As it is, there is a new trend of taking almost all interior photos down, dramatically reducing our ability to evaluate past sales for comparison accuracy. Death by a thousand paper cuts.

By screwing the competition out of good data, they can promote their own data accuracy, since they have access to both. It’s a long play in that way.

NAR’s Fatal Loophole

NAR’s Clear Cooperation Policy has a mandate for MLS entry. But it contains a clause that has allowed Compass and other big brokerages to exploit the system.

The loophole allows “office exclusive” listings that can be shared within their office. For large brokerages, “office” means “brokerage by state.”

Large firms gain an inherent advantage over boutiques. If the only way to compete is joining a firm that has bullied the general public out of actual choice, the consumer loses.

That would leave the consumer with little choice…like heading back to the big box days where only 4 major real estate firms dominated the majority of the national real estate pie (and most of them were owned by one company).

At a meeting I organized with NAR to discuss this exact issue, they were clear they couldn’t eliminate the loophole due to antitrust concerns. NAR’s policy essentially created a safe harbor for large brokerages to aggregate private inventory.

Private listing networks become recruitment tools. Should these networks take actual listings off the open market, buyers would naturally seek access. This makes agents more incentivized to join bigger brokerages with bigger private networks.

NAR’s own policies created a handicap for smaller firms.

Zillow’s Checkmate Move

Then Zillow implemented the private exclusives ban.

If any listing appears on the private exclusive network of any brokerage, it’s not allowed on Zillow. Period.

This is why Compass has been scrambling. They’ve played with an advantage due to NAR’s lopsided and poorly conceived policy. Now that Zillow has finally checked them, they’re spinning.

Lawsuits and PR campaigns reveal their anxiety. Compass filed suit, claiming antitrust violations. Zillow’s response was swift and brutal: “Compass cannot turn antitrust law on its head and compel Zillow to do business on Compass’s preferred terms.” The July 17 court filing makes clear that Zillow sees this lawsuit as focused on protecting Compass, not consumers. Zillow is not required to change its listing standards simply because they conflict with another company’s business model.

The numbers tell the story. 80% of home searchers go to Zillow, making it the undisputed traffic leader. Compass operates approximately 6,000 private exclusives that will be banned from the platform.

Zillow is forcing brokerages to choose between their private listing strategy and the largest listing portal. For agents who built their business around Compass’s three-phased approach, this creates an impossible decision.

The penalty structure is devastating. If a seller wants their listing back on Zillow after being banned, they have to terminate their agent and brokerage entirely.

The Regulatory Vacuum

The people doing the most thinking about this seem to be industry leaders. But it demonstrates how weak NAR has become. In fact, just a few weeks ago, Compass publicly declared it would not adhere to Clear Cooperation Policy, in full defiance of NAR.

We’re watching the industry’s traditional regulatory body lose control to tech platforms that can enforce their own rules more effectively.

I’ve been warning about this policy’s flaws since its inception. I’ve spoken out vocally and been criticized for doing so. But without a clear vision for how the future looks regarding broker/portal hybrids, NAR gets trapped in its own bureaucratic gridlock.

They’re unable to make changes that protect all agents. This leads us into lawsuits and diminishes public reputation for our profession.

35% of all Compass listings were marketed as private exclusives as of mid-February 2025. This represents a core business strategy built around information control.

The data war is fierce. Zillow’s research shows homes sold off-MLS fetch about $5,000 less. Compass claims its pre-marketed listings achieve 2.9% higher final close prices. Both can’t be right.

The Inevitable Consolidation

This battle reveals something deeper about where real estate is heading.

When regulatory bodies can’t adapt fast enough, private platforms fill the vacuum. Zillow just demonstrated they have more power to shape industry behavior than NAR does.

The consumer loses when choice becomes an illusion. Compass sold “choice” while systematically removing inventory from open markets. Zillow promises transparency while controlling the primary discovery mechanism.

Neither approach puts consumers first.

I predict consumers will demand real choice. The more they understand how they’re caught between competing corporate interests, the more likely they are to seek alternatives that actually serve them. They will grow tired of being treated as assets in someone else’s business model.It’s like two jealous men fighting over a woman they just met.

We’re watching the real estate industry consolidate in real time.Not through mergers and acquisitions, though that is happening too, but through data control and platform dominance.

The firms that survive will be those that can navigate between these competing power centers. The ones that can’t will be absorbed or eliminated.

This was always the endgame. NAR’s regulatory weakness made it inevitable.

The checkmate was years in the making. I just never thought it would come from Zillow.

THE CLEAN CLOSE with Courtney Poulos