Housing Notes: Private Listings Meet Their First Real Competitor
What is Open Real Estate?
Here is the press release: Leading Real Estate Firms Partner to Form Open Real Estate, a National Property Data-Sharing Initiative
The founding members outlined a collective commitment to protecting seller choice, expanding buyer opportunity, and promoting an open, competitive housing marketplace, stating, “We believe that access, information and transparency should be a benefit, not a barrier to anyone looking to purchase a home. Buyers deserve fair and comprehensive access to available housing information. It’s equally important that sellers have an honest understanding of how their homes are being marketed, who they are reaching, and the opportunities they may gain or sacrifice when deciding how best to market their home for sale. A healthy market is one where sellers can make truly informed decisions, buyers have access to the broadest possible inventory, and success is determined by those who create the most value—not those who control the most information.
This is a clear response to Compass’ bad behavior around private listings. The largest real estate brokerage in the U.S., Compass is disrupting the homebuying ecosystem by hiding information from consumers; independent firms outside of Compass stepped in to improve consumer services and preserve transparency. Compass operates as a monopoly in many major markets because it tapped a Trump-aligned attorney to bypass the anticipated FTC review, which was expected to take more than a year. In fact, an Anywhere shareholder is now suing them for that unethical move.
Compass has been flooding the zone daily with promotions of its private listing architecture to crush competitors. Why the rush? They have about two years to get past the point of no return before regulators rein in their monopolistic tendencies. Because private listings take longer to market and generally sell for less than publicly shared listings, they need to push the private-listing narrative to capture commissions on both sides of a sale at scale and boost their weak stock price.
Open Real Estate, a group of major independent real estate brokerage firms, was formed to do two things. It provides broad, standardized listing data and syndication to MLS systems, and it shows greater market power than Compass. It is clearly a marketing clapback, but with substance.
Dishonest Messaging: Compass can’t collaborate
Open RE gives independent real estate brokerages a place to compete, so I am willing to bet that within a few weeks, Compass will start attacking Open RE because it clearly threatens their overt messaging about full market control. Reffkin can’t push collaboration because it threatens the private listing system he promotes, which hides key information from consumers and misrepresents the benefits of private listings. Add transparency, and private listings at scale are dead on arrival.
To all real estate industry journalists
Any real estate industry journalist should ask Compass’s CEO the same question in every interview:
Why hasn’t Compass joined Open Real Estate, even though they congratulated them on the launch?
Final thoughts
Open Real Estate is still a plan, not a working platform, and its details are still being worked out. Even so, it has already changed the debate. For the first time, a group of major independent brokerages has put a free, open alternative to private listings on the table and invited everyone, including Compass, to join. That makes Compass’s choice clear. If private listings really serve consumers, they should hold up when the data is shared openly. If they only work when information stays hidden, that tells you who they actually benefit. Until Reffkin explains why Compass applauded the launch but stayed out, his congratulations sound less like support and more like a company bracing for competition.
Popcorn is ready.
The Actual Final Thought – You’re so close!
