For generations, hard work, a steady job, and playing by the rules helped American families get ahead. Today, too many young Americans with college degrees and full-time jobs are discovering that even those basic milestones may not be enough to buy a home.
While housing costs continue to rise, inventory remains tight, and a quiet change in how homes are marketed threatens to make the problem worse. Some of the country’s largest real-estate players are increasingly steering homes away from public websites and into private networks, giving select agents and buyers an early look while everyone else sees only a portion of the market.
Members of Congress are right to scrutinize Compass, the nation’s largest real-estate brokerage, and its growing reliance on private listings.
Private listings networks, especially the “Private Exclusive” model promoted by Compass, risk creating a two-tiered housing market: one for well-connected insiders and another for everyone else. Families searching Zillow, Realtor.com, or other public websites may believe they are seeing the available market when some homes are reserved for buyers and agents inside a private network.
During a housing shortage, access to information matters. A home hidden from the public market may technically be for sale but not available to every qualified buyer searching. Private listings just make it more difficult for buyers to search for homes.
Even local listing services, which consumers traditionally expect to distribute every home on the market, are participating in the private-network trend. As a result, homes can be walled off from public view unless a buyer’s agent belongs to the right network. In Chicago, for example, MRED, the region’s dominant multiple listing service, recently partnered with Compass to expand private-listing options, raising concerns that the arrangement could favor Compass and its network.
This raises a fundamental question: If a dominant brokerage and a dominant local listing service work together to control how homes are presented, who protects the buyer outside their private network? This issue is now before Congress.
In July, Republican Rep. Scott Fitzgerald (WI-5) chairman of the House Judiciary Committee’s antitrust subcommittee, sent letters to Compass CEO Robert Reffkin and MRED CEO Rebecca Jensen requesting a briefing on their business practices.
Fitzgerald wanted to determine whether the deal between Compass and MRED may be anticompetitive. MRED has responded that it will cooperate with the request. This probe should provide the committee with documents, answers, and a clear explanation of whether this arrangement benefits consumers or merely strengthens the market position of already-powerful companies.
The concern extends well beyond Chicago. In Manhattan, where Compass has enormous market share, agents have reportedly been encouraged to remove listings from public sites such as StreetEasy and route them through industry-only channels. Public inventory declines, but agents with access to the private system can continue seeing the homes.
While this does not prove an antitrust violation, it presents exactly the kind of conduct antitrust authorities should scrutinize. When a dominant company can influence not only the sale of a product but who has access to product availability, the possibility of exclusion and market manipulation is impossible to ignore.
At a moment when America desperately needs housing, why would we allow the homes already for sale to become harder to find?
Watchdogs have raised similar transparency and competition concerns through a New York investigation and a federal lawsuit in Chicago. These proceedings must determine the facts, but the underlying principle is simple. A fair housing market depends upon buyers receiving broad and equal access to information.
Further, the Trump administration has consistently demonstrated that dominant companies are not entitled to rewrite markets for their own benefit. The Department of Justice prevailed in its monopoly case against Google. Federal officials have challenged alleged anticompetitive conduct involving Live Nation, Zillow, and Redfin. Real estate deserves the same scrutiny because, for most families, a home is their largest investment and the foundation of generational wealth.
Congress does not need to invent an entirely new regulatory regime. The DOJ, Federal Trade Commission, and state regulators already possess substantial authority to investigate collusion, exclusionary conduct, and abuses of market power. They should use it carefully, aggressively, and based on the evidence.
Rep. Fitzgerald has started asking the right questions. The American housing market should reward families ready to make the strongest offer, not insiders with access to a hidden door. Homeownership should be determined by opportunity and competition, not connections and exclusion.
Mehek Cooke (@MehekCooke) is an attorney and RNC surrogate. She previously served in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Ohio, where she worked on federal cases involving corruption, terrorism, drug trafficking, asset forfeiture, and money laundering. She was a surrogate for the Trump for President campaign.