In the listing wars, consumers are a proxy for the real customer 

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The views expressed in this column are solely those of the author.

After 16 months, the legal battle between Compass and NWMLS has ended the way most industry wars end: with a settlement both sides are calling a win for consumers. The headline result is NWMLS's new "First Look" status, which gives sellers up to 21 days to market their home — including showings, open houses, receiving and even accepting offers — with no public display of days on market or price history.

My take: First Look listings are essentially Private Exclusives with an MLS number attached. A seller can choose to distribute the listing to the portals, but I can't see why they would. No matter what the status type may imply, you only get once chance to enter the broadest market. A fully syndicated First Look that later goes active is an exercise straight from the Redundancy Department of Redundancy. 

A coup for listing agents 

Jokes aside, it's worth asking: Who wins here?

Agents, clearly. NWMLS members see the full First Look inventory — including the DOM and price history hidden from all public view — which beats calling Compass to ask for access to their Private Exclusives. Listing agents win most of all, as limited exposure routes more buyer inquiries to them, generating a windfall of leads and a greater shot at double-ending the deal through dual agency (which remains legal in Washington). 

Listing agents have an incentive to encourage their clients to utilize First Look, and while those sellers get an opportunity to test price without public penalty, the benefits of doing so can't be verified: If a seller receives an acceptable offer during the First Look period, they'll never know how they might have fared if they'd gone active with full market exposure via IDX syndication.

And buyers? At least for unrepresented and not-yet-represented buyers, they are actively disadvantaged. NWMLS has sanctioned listings that members can see but the public cannot fully access without enlisting an NWMLS agent. That's Gatekeeping 101.

Agents win big, sellers win conditionally, and buyers bear the clearest cost. 

That outcome shouldn't surprise anyone. None of the institutions in this fight are paid directly by the consumer, so why would we expect the settlement to serve them?

Agents are the customer

Start with Compass. I've had long conversations with CEO Robert Reffkin and President Rory Golod, and they have been refreshingly candid about their business model: Your customer is whoever pays you, and the agent pays Compass. The commission may originate with the consumer, but the agent decides which brokerage it flows through — which is why Compass competes for agents, not consumers. Reffkin put it directly to CNN earlier this year: "The secret to Compass's success is knowing that the real estate agent is the client." 

When Compass' stock moves, investors are pricing in agent transaction volume, not consumer sentiment. It doesn't make Compass indifferent to buyers and sellers, but it places them downstream of the primary customer — the agent.

Reffkin's sharpest critique of the MLS flows from the same logic. Compass' public case against NWMLS was built on defending seller choice by fighting mandatory rules that forced timed entry, DOM and price history on sellers who never wanted them. But at a deeper level, Reffkin frames NWMLS' failure as taking agents' money while forgetting that agents are its customers. And he's candid that seller choice isn't a buyer-protection argument, it's advocacy for the seller whose listings his agents compete to win. Why champion sellers at buyers' expense? Because listings are the lifeblood of any real estate brokerage. 

Now, widen the aperture. NWMLS is broker-owned and broker-funded. No consumer pays it a dime. Compass is paid by agents who could leave and pay other brokerages. But it's bigger than just these two parties. Zillow? It makes money selling leads to agents. NAR runs on agent dues, not the donations of homeowners. 

The point is, every institution in the listing wars has the agent as its paying customer, yet every one of them wields consumer language as a weapon against the others. And there's a pattern here: Each champions the consumer its business model monetizes. Compass fights for sellers to help its agents win more listings. Zillow fights for buyers, using transparency and equal access as a moral argument, to generate more leads for buyer agent customers. NWMLS claimed to fight for both, but when push came to shove, it settled for its brokers.

Is anyone actually putting consumers first?

No consumer sat at the negotiating table where First Look was conceived. Two organizations funded by agents defined the "pro-consumer" outcome, and the result suppresses the public display of the very market history NWMLS spent 16 months calling essential to protecting buyers.

Now, I can hear Reffkin and others sincerely defending their belief that serving agents is serving consumers, because agents represent consumers. That may be true. 

But the sentiment only holds if consumers can see clearly enough to reward good agents and fire bad ones. Transparency is what enables that choice — which is why it's perpetually up for negotiation, and why it keeps losing.

Strip away the PR copy and one fact remains: MLSs, portals and associations owe the consumer nothing at all. The legal duty to the consumer lies solely in the agency relationship, and every brokerage is balancing the tension between upholding its obligations to buyers and sellers and helping its agents capture more revenue from those same individuals. The agency relationship is the only consumer protection actually built into the system — and it's held together by nothing more than the agent's moral compass.

This settlement just made it easier to hide which way the needle points.

Nick Aufenkamp is a real estate broker in Vancouver, Washington, and the founder of The Tartan Team. He and his agents take a client-first approach, offering a tiered model rather than a one-size-fits-all service and fee structure.

His popular Substack, Realtor Gone Rogue, explores topics including real estate incentives, consumer advocacy and alternative service models.