Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, sent a letter Thursday to Compass CEO Robert Reffkin and Midwest Real Estate Data CEO Rebecca Jensen warning that their nationwide private-listings partnership risks creating a “two-tiered housing market” and “increases risks of civil rights violations,” according to a copy of the letter obtained by Realtor.com.
The letter escalates what has become a rare bipartisan flashpoint in Washington: whether keeping home listings off the open multiple listing service undermines fair housing law and price transparency. It lands three days after a separate deadline set by a House Judiciary subcommittee for the same two executives to respond to its own inquiry passed without public comment from either company.
“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,” Warren wrote, according to Realtor.com. “I am concerned that this move will increase industry consolidation and harm consumers by driving up housing costs and worsening inequalities in the housing market.”
What the partnership does
Compass, the largest residential brokerage in the country by transaction volume, has built its growth strategy around “Private Exclusives” — listings marketed first to the company’s own agents and clients before, or instead of, being posted to the open MLS. In April, Compass and MRED, the multiple listing service that covers the Chicago area, announced a deal to distribute those private listings nationwide through MRED’s database, extending a service that had historically operated only regionally.
In the nine-page letter, Warren asked the companies to detail how they evaluated fair housing and antitrust risk before signing the deal and how they intend to “mitigate the potential harms.” She specifically flagged the Fair Housing Act, arguing that the private, members-only nature of the listings “may perpetuate housing discrimination through residential steering … also making potential discrimination harder to detect.” She also warned that hiding data such as days-on-market and price-change history — information MLS listings typically disclose but private listings often omit — “could destabilize the broader housing market” because mortgage appraisals rely on complete listing histories.
Warren’s letter also referenced Compass’s acquisition of rival brokerage Anywhere Real Estate, noting that while the deal cleared federal antitrust review, it remains under investigation by the New York Attorney General’s office. She argued the MRED partnership “threatens to intensify Compass’s market control and reduce market transparency, leading to potential violations of antitrust laws and increased housing costs.”
MRED said in a statement to Realtor.com that it “looked forward to dialogue” with Warren. Compass declined to comment.
Bipartisan scrutiny builds
Warren’s letter follows a House Judiciary subcommittee inquiry led by Rep. Scott Fitzgerald (R-Wis.), who gave Reffkin and Jensen until 10 a.m. Aug. 5 to respond to a request for a briefing on the MRED deal. That deadline passed without public comment from Fitzgerald’s office or the subcommittee’s ranking Democrat. Fitzgerald’s earlier letter raised a related concern: that private-listing networks could “incentivize brokers to push sellers into private listings” and encourage dual-agency deals that limit independent buyer representation.
Reffkin addressed the controversy directly on Compass’s second-quarter earnings call Tuesday, defending the strategy and going on the offensive against the MLS system itself. “The untold secret in real estate is that the MLS is controlled by a collection of our competitors that tell us how we can and cannot compete,” he said, calling the traditional one-MLS-per-market structure a “monopoly” and arguing that “multiple listing services should have to compete for our business, just as brokerages have to compete for agents.” He said website sessions from Chicago, where Compass has the most “Coming Soon” listings, were up 111% year over year.
The dispute has already spilled into litigation: after MRED and Compass launched the network, Zillow said it would stop displaying certain private listings if they were later added to the open MLS. MRED responded by cutting off Zillow’s data access, and Zillow sued both companies alleging antitrust violations; Compass and MRED are contesting the suit. Separately, the Consumer Federation of America and the Urban League published a report in April critical of private, or “pocket,” listings, and the CFA has asked the Department of Justice to investigate the MRED deal. Washington state and Connecticut have both enacted restrictions on private listings this year, and a similar bill has passed the New York legislature and awaits the governor’s signature.
What it means
Warren’s letter is a request for information, not a finding of wrongdoing, and Compass and MRED have not been charged with any violation. But the combination of a Senate Banking Committee letter, a House Judiciary Committee inquiry and an active federal lawsuit within weeks of each other signals that private listings have moved from an industry debate into an active regulatory and legal risk for Compass’s core growth strategy. Research cited in Warren’s letter, including a 2025 Bright MLS study finding that private listings take longer to sell and offer no price advantage to sellers, is being used by critics to argue the practice serves brokerages more than consumers — a claim Compass disputes.
What to watch: whether Fitzgerald’s subcommittee schedules a hearing now that its response deadline has passed, whether New York’s governor signs the state’s pending restriction, and how Compass frames its MLS objections if a congressional hearing materializes.
