When the American Real Estate Association introduced our Clear Collaboration proposal last year, we weren’t just proposing a policy tweak. We were starting a national conversation about breaking from the dogmas and legacy systems that have long constrained our industry.
The response told us we hit a nerve. Thirty-thousand agents have now joined ARA, and the debate over seller choice versus platform control has moved from the margins to the mainstream.
Now comes the Compass-Rocket-Redfin partnership, a deal that champions the very principles we’ve been advocating: expanded seller choice on where, when, and how their home is listed while sharing that information with real estate professionals rather than keeping it siloed.
2 shifts are happening here
The reaction to the deal has been predictable. Enthusiasm from some; outrage from others. One industry veteran called it “war.” But what most of the commentary missed were two fundamental shifts happening beneath the surface.
First, this deal reaffirms that agents have fiduciary responsibilities to our sellers, not to MLSs or portals. At its core, this debate is about a simple question: Who decides how a home is marketed?
Sellers want more choices, not fewer. They want control over their own transaction, not a one-size-fits-all pipeline dictated by others. The Compass-Redfin partnership is a vote for seller choice over platform control.
If this deal was so bad for sellers, why haven’t sellers risen up to object? The simple fact is, they haven’t. Instead, the objections have been cloistered to those whose control over the industry is at risk.
Second, the Compass-Redfin relationship accelerates a vital transformation in how we determine the right price for a home.
For decades, price discovery in real estate has been a purely quantitative exercise. We pull comparable sales, analyze days on market, study absorption rates, and make educated guesses about where the market sits today. Then we launch a listing at a price we hope is right and wait to see what happens.
If we got it wrong? The damage is done.
The Compass-Redfin partnership enables price discovery to become both a quantitative and qualitative exercise. Before formally going to market, sellers can gauge real buyer interest and reaction to pricing in real time. Not theoretical interest based on comps from three months ago. Actual feedback from actual buyers who are actively shopping.
Think about how other industries approach product launches:
- Tech companies don’t release a new product at full price without beta testing.
- Streaming services soft-launch content in select markets before going wide.
- Fashion brands preview collections to gauge demand before committing to production volumes.
These industries understand that real-world feedback is more valuable than internal projections. Why should real estate be different?
Under the current system, a seller who launches at $700,000 receives feedback that the market values the home at $550,000, and adjusts accordingly, is penalized. That price reduction lives on the listing forever, signaling to every subsequent buyer that something must be wrong. The seller who got the same feedback through a coming-soon phase and then launched at $550,000 from day one receives a much different reaction from the market.
What the data says
The data supports this. Compass has found that listings using phased marketing ultimately achieve higher sales prices. That’s not because sellers are hiding information from buyers. It’s because they’re entering the market with better information themselves.
For these reasons, the Compass-Rocket-Redfin alliance is fully aligned with Clear Collaboration. Compass will submit Coming Soon listings to any MLS that accepts them without forcing syndication (Bright, MRED, SFAR, TheMLS, Unlock, HAR, and others).
The legacy institutions of real estate have operated on the assumption that they know better than consumers. NAR’s Clear Cooperation Policy, whatever its original intentions, tells homeowners they cannot publicly market their own property without immediate MLS submission and syndication to portals. Once a seller signs with an agent, any public marketing of that property, including a simple Instagram post, triggers the one-business-day MLS submission requirement.
Who exactly does that policy protect? Is it really about transparency, or is it about protecting the MLS and Zillow’s listing supply chain?
I’ve been in this industry for two decades. I’ve watched it resist change at every turn. I remember the day Facebook was banned at the first brokerage where I worked. Management saw it as a distraction, the digital equivalent of Solitaire or Minesweeper, eating into productivity.
It took someone in marketing to point out what should have been obvious. This wasn’t a time-waster; it was a sales tool.
What I’ve learned is that the agents and brokerages who thrive aren’t the ones clinging to the old ways. They’re the ones who recognize that our obligation is to our clients, not to institutional inertia.
Change is uncomfortable. Change threatens existing power structures. Change requires adaptation. But in a profession built around helping people make the biggest financial decisions of their lives, our discomfort cannot be the priority.
The Compass-Redfin deal represents movement toward a more flexible, consumer-centric model, where data serves sellers and buyers rather than the institutions that have long claimed to speak for them.
At ARA, we’ll continue pushing for Clear Collaboration. We’ll continue advocating for policies that empower consumers. And we’ll continue welcoming innovation, even when it challenges comfortable assumptions.
Real estate’s future belongs to those willing to embrace it.
Jason Haber is an associate broker at Compass in New York and co-founder of the American Real Estate Association.
