Two Manhattan renters have sued Compass in federal court, alleging the brokerage illegally monopolized the New York City rental listings market by pulling its inventory off public listing sites this month and pushing renters to Compass’s own platform.
The proposed class action, Castaneda v. Compass, Inc., was filed Aug. 19 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York and assigned to Judge Margaret M. Garnett. The 33-page complaint is brought by Peter Castaneda and Haley Gelfand, both New York residents, and demands a jury trial.
Compass has not filed a response. The allegations are untested, and nothing in the complaint has been established as fact.
What the complaint alleges
The core claim is that Compass, having assembled a dominant position in New York rentals through acquisitions, then restricted where its listings could be seen.
The complaint alleges that “beginning in August of 2026, Defendant enacted a strategy to delist its rental unit listings from publicly available forums, including StreetEasy,” and that the purpose was to “distort the price of rental units,” to “reduce consumer choice and funnel consumers to itself,” and “to harm competition, including Zillow and others.”
According to the filing, Compass “controls over 80% of the rental unit listings available for renters in Manhattan based on 2025 data.” It describes StreetEasy, which Zillow owns, as having held “between a 70-80% market share” in the relevant market.
The plaintiffs trace the alleged position to a buying spree: “Beginning in December of 2024 and proceeding through January of 2026, with the acquisition of at least seven real estate firms, Defendant formed a monopoly.” A footnote points to Compass’s $1.6 billion acquisition of Anywhere Real Estate in January 2026, which brought Better Homes & Gardens, Century 21, Coldwell Banker, ERA, the Corcoran Group and Sotheby’s International Realty Affiliates under one roof.
The complaint further alleges that at a July 22 meeting at Extell’s Central Park Tower, Chief Executive Robert Reffkin and brokerage leaders instructed top New York agents to pull listings from StreetEasy starting in August, followed by an emailed “playbook” whose first instruction was to delist from StreetEasy and route listings through the Real Estate Board of New York’s Residential Listing Service under a “Participants Only” designation.
The named plaintiffs’ claimed injury
Castaneda and Gelfand each signed leases for one-bedroom apartments in downtown Manhattan at $5,270 a month — Gelfand on Aug. 3, Castaneda on Aug. 5 — with both tenancies beginning Aug. 10. Neither used an agent or paid a broker fee.
The complaint contrasts that rent with a July 2026 average asking rent of $4,390, and alleges that Compass’s daily website visitors rose 111% compared with 2025 while New York City rental inventory visible to renters fell 40% year over year as of Aug. 13. It cites asking-price increases of 3% in June and 6% in July against the same months of 2025.
Three legal claims
The suit pleads monopolization or attempted monopolization under Section 2 of the Sherman Act, seeking injunctive and equitable relief for the class; a claim under New York’s Donnelly Act for damages, including treble damages; and unjust enrichment, seeking disgorgement into a trust.
The proposed class covers “all persons in the New York City-metro area… who have leased non-rent stabilized, multifamily residential real estate units… from August 1, 2026 through the present.” The plaintiffs are represented by Blake Hunter Yagman of Yagman PLLC in Uniondale, N.Y.
What it means
The verified facts are that a complaint was filed, what it alleges, and who filed it. Everything about Compass’s conduct in this article is an allegation.
RealtyWire’s analysis is that this suit converts a policy fight into a private damages case. Compass’s private-listings strategy has drawn government attention for more than a year: a House Judiciary subcommittee summoned Compass and MRED executives over their private-listings partnership, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren later warned that the arrangement risked fair housing violations and market consolidation. Those were letters and hearings. This is a court with subpoena power and a treble-damages statute.
The scale question is what makes it consequential. Compass reported $4.3 billion in second-quarter revenue and record adjusted EBITDA as the Anywhere acquisition took effect. A company that size operating under an injunction governing where it may advertise listings would face a materially different business.
There is also an unusual wrinkle: the alleged victim of the exclusionary conduct, Zillow, is simultaneously defending its own antitrust trial brought by the Federal Trade Commission over rental advertising competition, which opens Monday in Virginia. Both cases turn on who controls renters’ access to listings.
What to watch
The first real test will be Compass’s response, likely a motion to dismiss arguing the plaintiffs cannot show antitrust injury from a brokerage choosing where to advertise its own inventory. That defense has force: a firm is generally free to decide where it markets.
The counterweight is the market-share allegation. Antitrust law treats a dominant firm’s unilateral conduct differently than a small competitor’s, and whether the 80% Manhattan figure holds up under scrutiny will shape the case more than any single email.
Worth noting: the class period begins Aug. 1, 2026, which is unusually recent for an antitrust class action and suggests plaintiffs are tying damages narrowly to the alleged delisting itself rather than the underlying acquisitions.
