We are all exhausted by the real estate industry news, mainly related to data, mergers, firm market share and tech. But there is something no one is talking about: how all of this affects the real estate agent as a consumer caught in the fray, trying to make a living for her family and future.
The merged holding company Compass International Holdings and the country’s biggest listings aggregator, Zillow, are at war with one another over data. Whoever controls access to the inventory controls the market because buyers, sellers and agents all need that information to achieve their goals.
This week the war reached the people it should never touch: sellers who simply asked for privacy. A divorcing seller in Brooklyn did not want her neighbors or extended family to know she was selling. She opted out of the MLS despite its broader market exposure.
The listing was shared under an option called “participants only,” so every cooperating broker in the city could see the home and bring a buyer, but it stayed off the public portals. Above all, this option allows for privacy without the opacity and dual agency concerns surrounding private listings that are hidden when one brokerage or portal keeps them inside of their own ecosystem.
The database where that happens is called the RLS, New York’s version of the MLS, and the Real Estate Board of New York runs it. StreetEasy just announced it will no longer honor that choice. If a listing is on the RLS in any form, StreetEasy’s rules now say it must appear on StreetEasy, too.
The legal and ethical implications
That announcement infuriated me as much as the Compass-Anywhere merger, followed by the Rocket-Redfin agreement, worried me. I spent six years practicing antitrust and commercial litigation before I switched careers and then spent 17 years as a real estate agent. That combination has left me uniquely situated to think about what these things mean when you put them together.
I learned this business at Corcoran, hired in 2008 right as Lehman fell and the market crashed. Like now, there was true macro-uncertainty, and I know what it does to brokers and clients: It makes everyone feel the ground shaking underneath them.
I went to Compass during its venture-capital years, not for the money, though the higher split didn’t hurt. The motto then was “collaboration without ego,” and I applauded it. When they said they wanted to bring fresh, agent-first energy to the business, I thought they meant it. They may really have.
I also beta-tested Compass’s technology for eight years as an agent. After the merger, it became hard for me to miss that the business increasingly felt like it was happening to agents rather than for them: private exclusives narrowing their sellers’ market exposure, referral systems capturing the leads their listings generated and their daily work feeding a data asset whose value flows to shareholders.
The agent is not only a supplier of services to her brokerage. She is a purchaser of services from it. She is, in the plain economic sense, a consumer of brokerage services. And the market where she does that buying is consolidating fast.
The antitrust case for agents
The law seems like it could have tools for this. My antitrust practice is decades old and rusty, so consider this a suggestion, not an opinion letter. Ask the basic questions:
- What does the agent buy? From whom?
- What are her alternatives?
- What happens to those alternatives when her suppliers merge?
The Compass-Anywhere merger closed Jan. 9. One company now holds Coldwell Banker, Century 21, Better Homes and Gardens, ERA, Corcoran, Sotheby’s International Realty and the Compass network. Compass had already signed a multi-year agreement with Rocket and Redfin.
That’s the vertical: search, brokerage and financing, one connected ecosystem, touching data and revenue at every stage of the transaction.
Then came the announcement that Midwest Real Estate Data, the Chicago-area MLS, would open its Private Listing Network nationally, with Compass supplying its private exclusive and coming-soon inventory.
The question isn’t whether Compass is technically part of an MLS now. The question is whether a privately subsidized, inventory-anchored listing network serves the market’s consumers — sellers, buyers and agents — or captures them.
And then, StreetEasy
REBNY built the RLS opt-out for sellers exactly like the one in Brooklyn I described above and for the estate sale, the safety concern, the public figure who cannot have an address on a consumer portal. The opt-out belongs to the seller.
Forcing a choice between full public exposure and no broker cooperation strips sellers of a right they already hold and puts agents exactly where they should never be: between a client’s reasonable request for discretion and a platform’s demand for inventory.
We are flying through rough weather right now. High interest rates, macro-uncertainty, commission compression, consolidation, platforms at war over data and no federal referee. And that is precisely the moment you want the professional next to you to be supported, trained and genuinely working for you. Not for a data pipeline and not for a synergy target.
So who is going to look out for these agents?
You can, actually. As an agent you are part of a local community in which looking out for one another and taking care of yourself within the broader marketplace is one of the most critical parts of the job.
Know the value of the business you’ve built, the relationships you’ve cultivated and the expertise you bring to every transaction. Your inventory knowledge, your neighborhood knowledge, your relationships with other agents and your understanding of your clients cannot be replicated by an app or a corporate marketing strategy.
I found my own house by calling a broker who had lived in the neighborhood for decades. He knew the inventory, he knew the people and when the unicorn fixer-upper came along that worked for my family — and would have worked for almost no one else — he called me. That’s the business. That’s the service. That’s the value of a great agent.
I know what a listing means to the person who took it. It is hard work that requires an enormous level of care for your clients. I know what it costs to build a business inside someone else’s infrastructure. I’ve lived both. And I know that agents aren’t interchangeable pieces of a technology platform. The relationships, judgment and local expertise you build over years are the business.
Let’s stop allowing portals and brokerage bottom lines to treat agents like an afterthought. It’s time to start recognizing and protecting real estate agents and their role in finding and selling homes for people’s families and futures.
Agents should be empowered to use their voices in the future of this industry. They aren’t a line item. They are the whole business.
Maggie Ross currently serves as the Senior Managing Director of Brown Harris Stevens Brooklyn. Get connected on LinkedIn.
