Well, as expected, Compass has followed through on its threat to sue California Regional Multiple Listing Service (CRMLS). On October 16, 2026, Compass filed a 49-page federal antitrust lawsuit in California, accusing CRMLS of unlawfully restricting competition by requiring publicly marketed properties to be submitted to the MLS. Compass is seeking substantial damages, potentially tripled under federal antitrust law, and a court order preventing CRMLS from enforcing the rules it is challenging. This comes just 11 days after CRMLS beat Compass to the courthouse by filing its own federal lawsuit in New York.
As I reported in my October 6 article, CRMLS Sues Compass First in Battle Over Private Listings and MLS Cooperation, CRMLS wasn’t willing to simply wait around for Compass to make good on its threats. CRMLS asked a federal court to declare its cooperation rules lawful and prevent Compass from pursuing the threatened antitrust claims. Now we have lawsuits on both sides, and what started as a dispute over private listings has become a legal fight that could have implications for MLS organizations throughout the country, including MARIS here in St. Louis.
What I find most troubling about Compass’s position is that it seems to want the benefits of MLS cooperation without necessarily providing the same cooperation in return. The MLS works because competing brokers agree to share their listings, making them available to other brokers and their buyers. Compass wants to continue benefiting from that shared inventory while having the ability to publicly market some of its own listings outside the MLS. Compass argues this gives sellers more choices, but I think there’s a legitimate question about whether it also gives large brokerages an advantage over smaller competitors and the buyers they represent.
Compass makes some attention-getting claims in its lawsuit, including that homes marketed through its phased marketing program sold for 4.6% more, spent 34% fewer days on the MLS and experienced 29% fewer price reductions than homes placed directly into the MLS. However, those are Compass’s own figures, and they don’t establish that its marketing approach caused those results. More importantly, even if a particular marketing strategy benefits some sellers, that doesn’t automatically mean an MLS rule requiring cooperation when a property is publicly marketed violates antitrust law.
Another interesting part of Compass’s complaint is its argument that CRMLS is controlled by competing brokers who are using the MLS to restrict competition. Of course MLS organizations are governed by real estate professionals, and those professionals often compete with one another. That’s been the nature of the cooperative MLS model for decades. The legal question is whether the rules they adopt unlawfully restrict competition, not simply whether competing brokers serve on the board. CRMLS maintains that its rules are intended to preserve the cooperation and transparency that make the MLS valuable to consumers.
Here’s why this matters to St. Louis homeowners and buyers. Imagine you’re looking for a home in St. Louis and working with an agent you trust. You find a property being publicly advertised by another brokerage, but that property isn’t available through the MLS your agent uses. Compass says buyers and agents outside its brokerage can still request information and access its listings, but that doesn’t necessarily provide the same level of visibility or convenience as having those listings available through the cooperative MLS system. It also raises the question of why buyers should have to take additional steps to learn about a publicly marketed home simply because they’ve chosen to work with a different brokerage.
I have no problem with a homeowner deciding to keep a property private. There are legitimate reasons for doing that, and sellers should have that choice. But when a brokerage starts publicly advertising a property, I believe that’s a different situation entirely. At that point, it seems reasonable to expect a brokerage participating in the MLS cooperative to share that listing with the other brokers who contribute their own listings to the same system. After all, cooperation is supposed to work both ways.
Here in St. Louis, MARIS provides that cooperative marketplace, allowing brokers of all sizes to compete for buyers and sellers while sharing access to property listings. Having been in this business for more than 45 years, I’ve seen firsthand how important that cooperation is, particularly for independent brokerages and their clients. If the industry moves toward a system where the largest brokerage companies can build their own inventories of publicly marketed properties outside the MLS while still accessing everyone else’s listings, I have a hard time seeing how that improves competition or benefits buyers.
Ultimately, I believe CRMLS is defending an important principle here. Real estate brokers should compete based on the quality of their service, knowledge, expertise and the value they provide consumers, not on their ability to control access to homes for sale. Compass certainly has the right to challenge rules it believes violate antitrust law, and the courts will decide those legal questions. However, I think CRMLS has a strong argument that requiring brokers to cooperate when they publicly market listings is fundamentally different from preventing competition.
We’ll have to see how the courts handle these competing lawsuits, but the stakes are significant. A ruling against CRMLS could have consequences for MLS cooperation rules across the country, while a ruling in its favor could strengthen the ability of MLS organizations to require participating brokers to share publicly marketed listings. Either way, this is a legal battle that deserves the attention of St. Louis homeowners, buyers and real estate professionals, because the outcome could help shape how homes are marketed and sold for years to come.
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