The Ten: Private listings in the spotlight — and the courtroom 

Editor's note: In a year of epic mergers — and industry division — a handful of people and themes have emerged as defining forces. Real Estate News has selected the top newsmakers of 2025, based on their industry impact and influence. They are The Ten.

In an industry as large as residential real estate, there are bound to be internal disagreements over policies, practices and business models. But 2025 may be remembered as the year when debates turned to battles as some of the industry's most influential leaders threw down the gauntlet in the fight over private listings. 

Here's how it went down — and what's at stake for the future of real estate. 

Private listings gained momentum amid CCP debate

On March 25, the National Association of Realtors announced a long-awaited update to its Clear Cooperation Policy (CCP), a rule that first went into effect in 2020 and sought to limit pocket listings by requiring member agents to enter their listing into the MLS within a business day of publicly marketing a home. 

After months of deliberation — and intense debate from within the brokerage community about what was best for industry professionals and ultimately, for consumers — NAR introduced a companion policy that would allow agents to pre-market homes for a limited time.

But behind the scenes, some brokerages and tech companies were already moving ahead with their own plans.

Perhaps most notably, Compass — the nation's largest brokerage by sales volume — introduced its 3-phased marketing strategy in late 2024, an approach that encourages sellers to list their home as a Private Exclusive before going to the open market. The benefit to sellers, Compass has argued, is the opportunity to test the waters while avoiding "negative insights," such as days on market or price cuts. 

And the benefit to Compass? A growing cache of private inventory.

Industry divisions deepen

The war of words over private listings was well underway before the debate over Clear Cooperation concluded, but the arguments became even more passionate in 2025. 

Opponents argued that a race to gatekeep listings could negatively impact the integrity of housing data, introduce fair housing conflicts, lead to more double-ending of deals and fracture the country's real estate marketplace and spirit of cooperation, returning the industry to a "caste system of real estate." 

Leo Pareja, the CEO of eXp Realty, highlighted the moral, ethical and potential legal risks of private listings. At the same time, Pareja suggested that his company — and its 83,000 agents — would have an advantage should the industry move in a direction where inventory was used competitively. Anywhere CEO Ryan Schneider also argued against an industry-wide private listings push — but similarly noted that his company "could be the biggest beneficiary" in that scenario. 

In response, Compass has contended that its pre-marketing approach is pro-consumer and driven by sellers themselves, with executives arguing that homeowners want a choice in how they list their homes. Still, the strategy continues to be divisive not only within the industry at large, but within Compass' agent ranks as well.

Zillow's listing ban and the furor that followed

Of all the voices expressing opposition to private listings, Zillow's may be the loudest. The leading home search site has run interference in the media, produced reports on the disadvantages of off-market listings and even lobbied to codify a version of the CCP in state law in Illinois. 

And then in April, the company made its biggest move, announcing new listing standards for its websites that effectively barred listings that had been publicly marketed but not widely shared via MLS or IDX feeds. 

The intention, Zillow leaders argued, was to "create an even playing field" and preserve the MLS as "a cooperative where people can exchange listings."

The new listing standards quickly drew ire from CoStar CEO Andy Florance, whose company operates competing portal Homes.com. In an open letter to agents, Florance dragged Zillow and promised agents that their listings would still be shown on Homes.com. A month later, he upped the ante, offering to "boost" listings on Homes.com that had been barred from Zillow. 

Compass, meanwhile, viewed Zillow's move as a direct threat to its 3-phased strategy. Echoing claims made in its April lawsuit against Northwest MLS, Compass sued Zillow in June, alleging that the search giant was "abusing its monopoly power to ban homeowners and their agents" who marketed their homes elsewhere.

Moving toward a concentration of power?

If a company the size of Compass — which is poised to become exponentially larger following its planned acquisition of fellow brokerage giant Anywhere — were to drive an acceleration of private listings, what would that mean for the industry and the future of real estate?

The risk to smaller firms — and to the free and open market as a whole — could be significant, one consumer advocate has warned. Eventually, the residential brokerage industry could look like the commercial real estate business where only a handful of very large players dominate. 

"Once this starts, it's like World War I — you've got to line up and then all of a sudden, you've got six big brokers who are doing it," Stephen Brobeck, a senior fellow with the Consumer Policy Center, told Real Estate News in August. "I mean, who's going to go to a Realtor who has access to only a third of the market? That's where this could go, and it could go pretty quickly."

And once "power gets concentrated and institutionalized," Brobeck explained, it would be difficult to turn things back.