Compass’ Lawsuit Against NWMLS Details Battle Over Private Listings

When Wile E. Coyote chases the Road Runner, he often gets tantalizingly close — only to run into a mountain painted to look like a tunnel.

This was the dynamic Compass laid out in its April 25 lawsuit against Northwest Multiple Listing Service, which the brokerage accused of violating antitrust laws in its bid to stymie Compass’ competitive entry into the market.

The 39-page complaint details the brokerage’s allegations against the Seattle-based listing service, which thus far had been confined to social media and public statements. At several points, NWMLS allegedly pulls the rug out from under Compass.

“By adopting, enforcing, and changing rules to prohibit consumers in the Seattle area from the freedom to choose to sell their home by office exclusives — a choice all other homeowners in the United States have — NWMLS has restrained competition, reduced consumers’ choices, and tortiously interfered with Compass, its real estate brokers, and Seattle area consumers,” the complaint reads.

The timeline of events

Compass claims the dispute began when the brokerage met with NWMLS president and CEO Justin Haag on July 15, 2024, to discuss the listing service rule that prohibits the use of office exclusives. After receiving no response for seven months, Compass says it heard from Haag on Feb. 28, 2025, that the Bylaws and Rules Committee “overwhelmingly” recommended against changing the MLS rules, which the board in turn supported.

Compass claims Haag in the email asked it to refrain from “promoting these programs,” referring to private exclusives and Compass One, the recently-launched consumer app.

Less than a month later, Compass began offering homeowners open listing agreements, which were not accepted by NWMLS as part of the rules governing the listing service. The open listings were Compass’ first attempt to circumvent the MLS rules by avoiding submitting to the MLS altogether.

The next day, NWMLS informed Compass that it had received complaints about its continued use of private exclusives, to which Compass replied that these listings were exempt from the listing service rules because they wouldn’t be accepted by the MLS, according to the lawsuit.

One week later, Haag wrote to Compass that the rule prohibiting open agreements had been revised and would apply to all new listings beginning March 29, 2025, according to the complaint.

During the one week they were allowed, Compass claims 36 percent of its new listings used open listing agreements. The lawsuit also revealed that in the first three months of the year, over 19,000 — 48 percent — of its new listings started using the company’s three-phased marketing strategy, which entails listings moving from private exclusives to “Coming Soon” status, and finally to publicly listed on the MLS

Compass again tried to find a loophole and began offering listing agreements in which the seller agreed to avoid a “Compensation Offer” to any potential buyer agent — another listing type prohibited by the MLS.

On April 15, NWMLS shut off Compass’ access to its data feed, blocking Compass’s website and those of its real estate brokers from receiving home listings data, including any updates to existing listings, the complaint alleges.

The data feed shut off prompted Compass to stand down — until this lawsuit — and all sellers that had agreed to avoid a “Compensation Offer” in their listing were forced to either publicly list their home on the MLS or cancel their agreements, as many had only agreed to list with Compass as a private exclusive, according to the complaint.

Compass claims that the data feed shutoff led to “confusion and Compass real estate brokers diminishing credibility with their clients.” The firm has lost multiple listings and had several brokers leave the firm, with three citing the dispute with NWMLS for their exits.

“NWMLS’s actions against Compass were intended to, and did, have a chilling effect on Compass’s business—both with consumers and with its own brokers,” the complaint states.

As a result of the data feed switch, one Compass representative on the MLS’s board of directors resigned in protest.

Brewing tensions

The lawsuit adds context to Compass CEO Robert Reffkin’s Instagram posts, which began to feature homes listed as private exclusives in late March — right around the time that negotiations between Compass and NWMLS were apparently at their most heated, according to the complaint.

The threat of a lawsuit has also been brewing for the past month. In late March, a Compass-backed website launched claiming that homeowners that sold their homes in Washington state may be “owed significant compensation.”

The site did not identify who was involved in its launch, but claimed that “homeowners who are clients of Compass and sold homes in Washington State — representing nearly $100 million in residential sales — believe they were damaged by the current rules and practices of NWMLS.”

No lawsuit from Compass clients has yet been filed.

NWMLS did not respond to a request for comment, but in a March 28 statement claimed, “restricting the visibility of available homes to a select, exclusive group of buyers and brokers is fundamentally unfair and perpetuates inequities that have long plagued the housing system.”

“Proponents of hiding listings masquerade their self-dealing as offering ‘seller choice,’” the statement added. “They argue that sellers somehow benefit from not making their listing available to all potential buyers. They don’t.”