Two senior Senate Democrats are asking the Federal Trade Commission to open an investigation into how online real estate platforms and large brokerages make money from homebuyers, pointing to undisclosed agent referral fees, captive mortgage lending and private listings as practices that may be raising the cost of buying a home.
In a letter dated Oct. 15, 2026, Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on antitrust, competition policy and consumer rights, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, the ranking member of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, wrote to FTC Chair Andrew N. Ferguson urging the agency to “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.” Booker’s office announced the letter the same day.
From rentals to home buying
The senators frame the request as the next step after the commission’s case over online rental listings. The letter notes that on Aug. 24 the FTC filed a stipulated order in its suit against Zillow and Redfin that requires Redfin to reenter the online rental market after, in the senators’ words, “Zillow paid it to shut down its internet listing service.” RealtyWire covered that resolution when Zillow and Redfin settled the FTC case on the morning the trial was set to begin.
“The FTC has taken actions to combat anticompetitive conduct harming renters,” the letter says. “The Commission must now extend this enforcement focus to the home-buying market.”
The three practices the senators want examined
The letter singles out three practices it says warrant investigation.
Referral fees behind the “contact agent” button. Listings on online platforms often carry a button that prospective buyers click to reach the property’s listing agent. According to the letter, that button “may route buyers to platform-affiliated agents who have agreed to remit a percentage of their commission to the platform,” and neither platforms nor agents disclose the arrangement, “leaving buyers unaware that they are agreeing to pay inflated prices to cover the platform’s revenue cut.”
Steering to affiliated lenders. The senators write that platform-affiliated agents “are frequently required to route buyers to platform-affiliated mortgage lenders who charge higher rates and impose worse loan terms,” again without disclosure of referral fees. To show what is at stake, the letter cites a June 2025 LendingTree study finding that borrowers who shopped around for a mortgage saved an average of $80,000 over the life of the loan.
Private listings. The third practice targets brokerages rather than portals. The letter says “dominant real estate brokerage firms are increasingly using private listings” that market homes to a select group of buyers “whose agents pay to play” instead of the public. That, the senators argue, restricts the visible housing stock, may leave sellers with less competition for their properties, and encourages agents to keep deals inside a single brokerage “rather than seeking the best deal for their client.”
The body of the letter does not name the companies behind each practice. Its footnotes, however, point to reporting and litigation involving Zillow’s Premier Agent and Flex programs and its in-house lender, Zillow Home Loans, as well as the 2025 lawsuit Compass filed against Zillow and press coverage of Compass’s strategy of marketing homes privately. Private listings have been one of the most contested issues in residential brokerage this year; RealtyWire has reported on Compass’s “See It First” program and on a separate agents’ antitrust suit against Zillow that a judge allowed to proceed.
The affordability case
The senators tie the request to affordability. The letter cites a national median home price of about $440,600, which it describes as the highest ever, drawing on the National Association of Realtors’ existing-home sales report for June. It says the median monthly mortgage payment of $2,199 equals close to 25% of median monthly income, citing NAR’s second-quarter affordability index, and that the median age of first-time buyers has reached an all-time high of 40, citing NAR’s 2025 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers.
“Younger and first-time homebuyers are most harmed by these practices,” the senators write. “They are making the largest financial transaction of their lives without knowing the full picture.” The letter argues that because many of these costs are rolled into the loan, they can “compound into tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars over the life of the mortgage.”
Booker’s announcement places the letter alongside his other housing work, including the Transit-Oriented Housing Development Act he introduced last month and his cosponsorship of the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, which his office describes as having become law earlier this year.
What a letter can and cannot do
The letter is a request, not a referral with legal force. It sets no deadline for a response, and as ranking members, Booker and Warren sit in the Senate minority and cannot direct the commission’s enforcement agenda. Whether the FTC under Ferguson takes up the home-buying side of the market is an open question.
On our reading, the more immediate significance for the industry is that the practices it describes are business models already under scrutiny in private litigation and in the fight over listing rules. Federal disclosure law for settlement-service referral fees falls largely to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, not the FTC, and the letter asks the commission to use its competition and consumer-protection authority instead. For brokerages and agents who rely on portal referral programs or affiliated lending, the letter adds political pressure to questions that have so far been fought mainly in court. More coverage of brokerage business models is in RealtyWire’s Agents & Brokerages section.
