Amid a deepening housing affordability crisis across the U.S., two Democratic U.S. senators are calling on Andrew Ferguson, chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, to investigate what they call anticompetitive and deceptive practices within the real estate industry.
“We urge you to now investigate anticompetitive and deceptive practices in the home-buying market, using every enforcement tool available to restore competition to the entire online real estate marketplace,” Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey and Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts wrote in the letter. “Today, too many people are locked out of the American dream of homeownership.”
The letter, written on Thursday by the Democratic ranking members of two Senate committees on banking and antitrust issues, points to the fact that the national median home price has reached an all-time high of approximately $434,900, with median monthly mortgage payments of $2,199, consuming nearly 25 percent of median monthly income.
The three practices they say warrant FTC investigation are below:
- Undisclosed commission-sharing arrangements. Online listings often feature a “contact agent” button that can route prospective buyers to platform-affiliated agents who have agreed to remit a share of their commission back to the platform, without disclosing the arrangement to buyers.
- Steering to affiliated mortgage lenders. Platform-affiliated agents are frequently required to direct buyers to affiliated mortgage lenders that charge higher rates and impose worse loan terms, again without disclosure.
- Anticompetitive use of private listings. Dominant brokerage firms are increasingly marketing homes only to a select group of buyers rather than the public, artificially restricting the available housing stock to the benefit of the brokerage’s own agents and to the detriment of buyers, sellers, and competing firms.
Thursday’s letter doesn’t call out any real estate companies by name, though Zillow, Compass and Redfin are all mentioned in the footnotes.
In December 2025, Warren had sent a letter to the Department of Justice and FTC urging them to “closely scrutinize” what was then a proposed merger between Compass and Anywhere Real Estate.
Last August, Warren also sent a letter to Compass CEO Robert Reffkin and MRED CEO Rebecca Jensen requesting information about the partnership between the two entities.
On Aug. 24, 2026, the FTC required Redfin to reenter the online rental market after Zillow paid the company to shut down its internet rental listing service. A press release on Booker’s site called those FTC actions “a step forward for renters” and urged the Commission to now “apply the same scrutiny to the home-buying market, using every enforcement tool available to restore competition across the online real estate marketplace.”
The full text of the senators’ most recent letter is here.
