Sen. Warren Warns Compass Private Listings Deal Could Fuel Housing Discrimination

Senator Elizabeth Warren is demanding answers from the country's largest residential real estate brokerage — and the pressure is coming from both sides of the aisle.

Warren (D-MA), the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, sent a nine-page letter Thursday to Compass CEO Robert Reffkin and Midwest Real Estate Data CEO Rebecca Jensen, warning that their partnership to build a national private listings network 'increases risks of civil rights violations' and could lock ordinary homebuyers out of the market, according to Realtor.com, which obtained the letter exclusively.

Your partnership threatens to create a two-tiered housing market where insiders pay for exclusive access to housing inventory and market data, while everyone else is shut out.— Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Ranking Member, Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs

At the center of the dispute is an April deal in which Compass and MRED — the multiple listing service that has historically served only the Chicago area — agreed to distribute Compass's so-called Private Exclusives listings nationwide through MRED's database. Private Exclusives are homes marketed primarily within Compass's own agent network before they appear on public-facing platforms like Zillow. Compass frames the model as giving sellers privacy and control; critics argue it withholds inventory and price-history data from buyers who aren't plugged into the network.

Warren's letter zeroes in on a specific legal threat: residential steering, the illegal practice of directing homebuyers toward or away from neighborhoods based on race or other protected characteristics. Because private listings are largely invisible to agents outside the Compass network, Warren argues that the arrangement could enable discrimination that is also harder to detect — a direct concern under the Fair Housing Act of 1968.

I am particularly concerned that the non-public, exclusive nature of private listings may perpetuate housing discrimination through residential steering that is prohibited under the FHAct and other civil rights laws, also making potential discrimination harder to detect.— Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Ranking Member, Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs

The accountability pressure on Compass has been building for months. In July, Rep. Scott Fitzgerald (R-WI), chair of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on antitrust, sent a similar letter to the two companies warning the partnership may 'incentivize brokers to push sellers into private listings,' according to Realtor.com. Warren's letter makes the scrutiny explicitly bipartisan — a rare alignment in the current Congress.

The stakes extend beyond the MRED deal. Compass completed its $1.6 billion acquisition of rival Anywhere Real Estate in January, combining the two largest brokerages in the country by deal volume, according to The Real Deal. That merger cleared federal antitrust review under the Trump administration with limited scrutiny — Warren's letter alleges the administration 'rubber stamped' it — but the New York State Attorney General's Office is now investigating Compass for potential antitrust violations, Realtor.com confirmed in June.

Warren also raised a data-transparency concern that reaches into the mortgage market: private listings typically lack the days-on-market figures and price-change histories that MLS rules require, information that appraisers and lenders rely on to value homes accurately.

Hiding this data could destabilize the broader housing market.— Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Ranking Member, Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs

Compass has not been passive. On a Tuesday earnings call, Reffkin defended the MRED partnership by casting traditional MLSes as monopolies that should have to compete for brokerage business, according to Realtor.com. The company declined to comment on Warren's letter. MRED, for its part, said it 'looked forward to dialogue' with the senator and called issues of fair housing and data quality 'critical to any MLS.'

The fight over private listings has already spilled into the courts. MRED drew particular attention by implementing a rule that threatened to cut off Zillow's data feed after Zillow announced it would ban private listings from its platform. Zillow responded by suing both Compass and MRED, alleging the companies conspired to harm competition, according to The Real Deal. Meanwhile, Washington state and Connecticut have already signed legislation restricting private listings this year, and the New York State Assembly has passed a similar bill that has not yet reached the governor.

Warren's letter sets a deadline of August 21 for Compass and MRED to respond to her questions about how they analyzed fair housing and antitrust risks — and what safeguards, if any, they plan to put in place.

Compass reported nearly 300,000 agents nationally between its brokerage and franchise operations in its most recent earnings call, according to The Real Deal. That scale is central to Warren's concern: a private network that large can shape what a significant share of American homebuyers ever get to see.

Why it matters — If private listings become the norm at scale, millions of homebuyers — particularly those without access to elite broker networks — could be shut out of inventory, pay higher prices, and have fewer legal protections against discrimination in what is already the least affordable housing market in a generation.

Reported by realtor.com, therealdeal.com, chicagobusiness.com