What’s REALLY Going on with Compass, Zillow, NAR, and the MLS

There’s been a lot of chatter recently in the real estate world about Compass, the National Association of Realtors (NAR), MLS systems and rules, Zillow, and the Clear Cooperation Policy (CCP). If you’ve been online in any real estate circles the past few months, you’ve probably heard strong opinions flying in every direction.

I’ve made a few comments on some discussion forum threads here and there, but I’ve yet to put all my thoughts about this kerfuffle in one place, so here we go.

FYI, this commentary is my solely my own; while I am a Compass agent, nothing whatsoever that I’m writing here should be viewed as an official Compass position, policy, strategy, or statement.

The core of the debate is about the marketing of listings outside of the Multiple Listing Service (MLS). For a long time, Compass has had what it calls Compass Private Exclusives, which are listings that Compass circulates only internally to its own agents and buyers, withholding them from the MLS. Compass has been aggressively marketing the concept of Compass Private Exclusives, and has more recently been promoting it as the first phase of the Compass Three Phase Marketing Strategy.

It’s the second phase that seems to draw the most criticism, “Compass Coming Soon,” where these “off-market” listings would be publicly marketed, beyond the confines of the Compass agent and buyer network — but not “actively” marketed on the MLS systems.

In most parts of the country, this is (or at least, has been) verböten due to the strictures of NAR’s Clear Cooperation Policy (CCP).

Why can’t we all just get along?

A Few Words about the Clear Cooperation Policy

The Clear Cooperation Policy (CCP), adopted by NAR in 2020, requires that if a property is being publicly marketed, it must be listed on the MLS within one business day. The idea is simple: create fairness and transparency. If a home is being advertised to the public, it should be available to every buyer and every agent.

In theory, this makes a lot of sense. I’m a big believer that the law of supply and demand drives prices. If you shield a property from the market, there will be less demand, because fewer know that the home is even for sale. The argument that CCP is therefore pro-seller AND pro-buyer (by allowing buyers to see “all” listings) is, at least in this way, compelling.

But what if a seller, for whatever reason, wants to sign an exclusive listing agreement with a REALTOR® who is an MLS member, doesn’t want the home marketed on the MLS? What if their privacy is more important to them than getting the absolute highest price possible?

The answer from the pro-CCP crowd is: “too bad.” Or, they say, a seller can just sign a non-exclusive listing agreement (in other words, hire a REALTOR® on terms that will reduce the REALTOR®’s incentive to work hard on their behalf).

The pro-CCP contingent’s argument comes down to this: a seller’s freedom to market the home as they (and their REALTOR®) see fit must be sacrificed for the greater good. Oh, and of course, the CCP protects these foolish sellers from themselves, and from rapacious REALTOR®s who are trying to push them into selling for cheap, off-market, and where the REALTOR® will double-end the deal to boot.

I get it, but to me, it’s just not the compelling argument.

Enter Compass and the Three-Phase Strategy

Compass introduced its three-phase marketing approach sometime in 2024: Compass Private Exclusives (completely off-market listings shared within Compass), Compass Coming Soon (MLS status that’s visible to brokers but not the public), and then, finally, full-on MLS syndication to sites like Zillow and Redfin.

Now, here’s where the noise and gaslighting really get going.

Plenty of people claim Compass is trying to discard the Clear Cooperation Policy entirely so they can keep listings off the MLS, market them publicly so the listing agent can find the buyer themself and therefore double-end more transactions and earn more commission.

But I don’t think that’s what’s really going on, and the numbers we have available bear that out.

Compass has consistently said that nearly 94% of its listings do hit the MLS — which aligns with what most brokerages are doing across the country. Yes, many Compass listings may start off as a Private Exclusive, and then move to or start as a Compass Coming Soon, but almost all listings do eventually make their way onto the MLS where they will be publicly and broadly marketed.

So if 94% of Compass listings are sold on the MLS, why bother with Phase 1 (Private Exclusives) and Phase 2 (Compass Coming Soon) at all?

Compass’s 3-phase marketing strategy is intended to build demand before a home hits the MLS, since after all, most listings ultimately go public.

Phase 1, Private Exclusive, shares the home only within the Compass Agent Network — ideal for sellers who value privacy or want to test the waters without going fully public.

Phase 2, Coming Soon, allows the home to be marketed to the public on Compass.com and through agent outreach without starting the “days on market” clock, giving sellers a chance to gather early interest and feedback.

These early phases aren’t about forgoing the MLS — they’re about creating momentum before a public launch. They are about dialing in the presentation and marketing, and allowing for a period of price discovery before going Active on the MLS.

Even if 94% of homes end up selling on the MLS, the Private Exclusive and Coming Soon phases allow sellers to test pricing, adjust strategy, and potentially attract serious buyers ahead of the competition, setting the stage for a stronger debut when the home finally goes live.

It’ll be hard for you to convince me there’s absolutely no value in that.

Not All Sellers Want the Same Thing

But what about the 6% who do sell off market? And what about the 10% percent or more who would prefer to sell off market, if they could actually find a buyer willing to offer an acceptable price and terms that way?

It’s a fact that not every seller wants the absolute highest possible price. That might sound crazy to some people, but it’s true. Numerous studies have shown that about 10% of sellers prioritize privacy or convenience over price.

Should those people be forced to go on the MLS just because the policy says so? I don’t think they should. For me, it comes down to personal liberty. That may sound quaint, but really — who is NAR, Zillow, and the MLS to tell me how I and my REALTOR® need to market and sell my house?

Sellers should — actually, in a free market, they must — be able to choose to sell their homes any way they see fit (so long as they observe all fair housing laws in letter and spirit). To me, it does not sound too hollow when Compass says that they are fighting for Seller Choice, because they are.

Granted, that doesn’t explain why they’re fighting for Seller Choice, but I will explore what I believe motivates Compass further below.

Selling Off Market Doesn’t (Always) Mean Selling for Less

I feel I would be remiss if I didn’t also point out that selling a home off market does not always mean getting less money for it. This may seem as though it would break the fundamental law of supply and demand, but I don’t think it does, not quite, anyway.

With Compass Private Exclusives, agents are told to encourage their sellers to set an “aspirational price.” This is part and parcel of the Private Exclusive value proposition. It’s somewhat about price discovery; it’s pitched as a way to test the markets without sharing information with the public (such as days on market and price reductions) that may not be to the seller’s benefit.

If a seller should actually receive that aspirational price — or a price close to it, or that makes them happy enough — why should they not take it?

A bird in hand is worth two in the bush, after all.

And the reason why not, of course, is that there may be many more than just two birds in that bush, and the seller could be leaving tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars on the table by not exposing the listing to the full market.

But ask any fairly productive REALTOR® of long service if they haven’t heard of someone who received a great offer on their property as they were getting it ready for market, but turned it down…only to fail to receive equal or better offers once they went on market?

I don’t know how many times I’ve heard stories like that, you probably have too. But these stories are all the proof I need to know that it’s possible — albeit, perhaps, unlikely — for a seller to make as good as or better money selling privately, off-MLS.

Yet with a Compass Private Exclusive, most buyers know the nature of the opportunity they are looking at. The seller is paying for and being represented by a REALTOR® and that seller is therefore, probably, looking for the most money they can get for the property, and will therefore, probably, be bringing the property to the MLS…unless some other buyer steps up and makes an offer they can’t refuse before then. And it’s within that context that a buyer is operating, knowing they will have to make a strong, solid offer to entice the owner into selling to them pre-MLS.

Which is exactly how it’s always worked. Compass isn’t doing anything radically different here; just radically better.

Compass Serves a Different Kind of Client

So who are these 10% of homeowners who, surveys show, are not as concerned with getting the absolute highest price, as they are with maintaining their privacy?

The answer is, these are Compass clients. Because what kind of people are more interested in privacy than the highest sale price possible? The answer is, predominantly wealthy people.

Compass clients tend to be wealthier than average. In fact, Compass does have a much higher average sale price versus the industry overall. The average Compass transaction reportedly was “about” $1,000,000 in 2024, versus the average American home sale price of $403,700. It’s therefore reasonable to assume that at least 10% of Compass sellers would be interested in selling quietly off-market. And given that Compass has a roughly 2.5x higher sale price than average, it would not be much of a stretch to say that as many as 25% of all Compass clients might actually prefer to sell this way, even knowing it might cost them.

It’s a fact: Compass works with a lot of high-net-worth clients who may have interests that are not best served by listing their home actively on the MLS and major portals like Zillow. Interests such as Privacy. Control. Discretion. Security. These things matter, especially to those living in the luxury segment. And just because they’re rich doesn’t mean their fundamental right to market their home as they see fit shouldn’t be respected.

The Compass Agent Network For The Win

The real secret sauce in the Compass value proposition is the quality of its agent network. If Compass agents do have a ~ 2.5x higher transaction price than the industry average, this is obviously a high quality network to be connected with.

Many are not aware that Compass is a single, publicly traded corporation — Compass is the same organization, everywhere. No offices or regions are owned by franchisees, unlike most large brokerage brands you’ve heard of. All of Compass is moving in the same direction. This keeps the culture cohesive and engenders agent-to-agent connections that add value to both the agent’s career and to their clients’ experience as well.

In 2024, [Compass was the largest U.S. Brokerage by dollar volume](http://Compass is the #1 Brokerage, Again - in 2025 sebfrey.com https://sebfrey.com › compass-is-the-1-brokerage-again), for the fourth year running. They presently have an agent count of over 33,000 spread over 35 states (and Washington, DC). For those markets that Compass serves, its well-connected and large network of upper-tier agents offer a unique resource for Compass clients.

These agents — and their clients — are connected through the exclusive and wholly proprietary $1.5 billion Compass digital platform. Buyers and sellers — working through Compass agents — are increasingly able to find each other via connections discovered on the Compass platform. In many of America’s most-expensive markets, Compass is the dominant player today, with tens of thousands of agents and their clients using Compass tools such as Compass Collections to help buy and sell property.

This means that owners who want to sell off market can have their home be easily seen by every buyer on the Compass platform who is looking for that kind of property. This happens automatically; Private Exclusive listings show up to a registered user (client) on the Compass platform, on parity with any regular MLS listing, making it a very different animal than a traditional “pocket listing.”

Pocket Listings vs. Compass Private Exclusives

The pocket listing of old is one that has typically stayed in one agent’s pocket. Yes, it technically belongs to the brokerage, and the agent may have announced it at an office meeting, or otherwise communicated the pocket listing to other agents in his brokerage. But that’s usually as far as it went — and as far as it still goes with most brokerages today. It was, and is, very uncommon for brokerages to maintain agent-and-client-searchable databases of these off-market (or perhaps pre-market) opportunities.

The truth is, just about every brokerage does pocket listings. There is usually a period of time between when a listing is signed and the time that it goes up “active” on the MLS. That’s because any experienced agent is going to want a signed listing agreement before they begin the often considerable and very time consuming work of helping the seller get the property read for market.

Technically, every listing is a “pocket listing” during that time between when the listing is signed, and the first day the home goes “active” on the MLS. And if, during that time, the seller is OK with the REALTOR® doing some pre-marketing of their home, maybe something simple like putting a for sale sign in the yard — they are prohibited from doing so by the Clear Cooperation Policy, unless the home is listed on the MLS at least as a “coming soon.”

And that is probably the main reason that most brokerages don’t do much with their listings during this time that the home is being prepped or market. Their own same-brokerage network is usually pretty small, so there aren’t a lot of agents they could tell, and they had no way to make that pocket listing readily discoverable by their colleagues.

What’s different with Compass is that it has built an actual system for it. A large, well-functioning system used by many thousands of agents, homeowners, and buyers, day in and day out. It amounts to something of a private marketplace that actually works, supported by a nationwide network of top-tier agents all working on the same platform, with the same standards and tools.

And I think that’s making some big players in the industry a little nervous.

The Real Story? It’s About Differentiation

I recently read something that helped put the whole debate into perspective. It’s something that I’ve been aware of since the moment Compass rolled out the Three Phase Marketing Strategy, which somehow has been almost entirely missed by every talking head and thread comment I’ve seen on the subject.

Here is what 1000watt Consulting wrote in a recent weekly “Dose” newsletter:

When you’re one of 1.5 million agents competing for just four million home sales, it’s time to be creating difference.

To be asking, “Is there a different way to sell a home that will help me stand out?”

We think Compass’ relentless push to market homes off-MLS is ill-advised…but they have one thing right: They came up with an answer to the question above. The resulting “Three-Phase Marketing Plan” is problematic, but it does represent a differentiated story a Compass agent can share in a listing presentation.

What’s been missed by just about everyone is that the Compass Three Phase Marketing Strategy is not about double-ending deals. It never has been. It’s about creating and controlling inventory, period.

Compass is a national brand competing in a crowded market. By offering Private Exclusives and Coming Soon options, Compass is giving sellers more choice and showing that we have something no one else does: a unique way to market your home that aligns with your personal needs and interests. This makes Compass different from — and better than — all other brokerages.

Ironically, every other brokerage can and has done this, since as long as the real estate industry has been around. The difference is that nobody does it as well — or as credibly — as Compass can, thanks to the size and quality of its agent and buyer network, and its $1.5 billion digital platform.

And I think that’s what really has other industry players upset: Compass really can offer a genuine alternative to selling through traditional resale channels (i.e. the MLS).

Those other players don’t want that kind of competition.

Compass Isn’t Breaking Any Rules — It’s Leading the Conversation

Let’s be clear: Compass is operating within the rules. As a Compass REALTOR® in the trenches, I can honestly say that I have never heard anyone in Compass leadership suggest that any Compass agent break or even bend any MLS rules or regulations — or of course ever violate the REALTOR® Code of Ethics or any state or federal laws. At Compass, so far as I can tell, everything is done strictly by the book.

But that doesn’t mean that Compass won’t try to write a new chapter in that book. Notably, Compass has helped push NAR to modify the Clear Cooperation Policy to allow what’s now being called Delayed Marketing Exempt Listings. In this model, each individual MLS (there are about 500 of them nationwide) can choose how long a listing can be marketed before it needs to be fully active on the MLS.

In my market, this isn’t new. We’ve had a “Coming Soon” status that allows listings to be shared with other brokers but not with the general public. A Coming Soon listing is visible inside the MLS, but it’s not on Zillow or Redfin or Realtor.com. Not all MLS systems today offer this — apparently, a great majority do not — but this change to CCP would potentially make public off-MLS marketing a much more commonplace practice.

That last part is really important — because this is where Zillow’s model in particular starts to feel threatened.

Why Zillow & Co are Fighting This So Hard

Zillow makes its money selling leads to agents. If fewer listings appear on Zillow — because they’re in Coming Soon status or marketed internally before hitting the MLS — then Zillow is missing out on potential revenue.

So now Zillow has said they won’t display any listing that has been publicly marketed without being active on the MLS. That’s their attempt to put pressure on brokers and agents to abandon Coming Soon or off-market strategies. Some folks are applauding this move as a stand for transparency, but it’s really about the money (of course).

But it’s not just Zillow who is fighting this: Redfin has said that it will match Zillow’s policy and suppress such listings. And the Northwest MLS — a huge MLS system in Washington State — has now said the same thing. They will be banning all such listings from their systems.

It’s important to note that they are doing this even though this is not a violation of the updated MLS / NAR rules. Even if brokerages like Compass are fully in compliance, these platforms are colluding to cajole sellers into avoiding any public marketing of a listing unless it is also in the MLS.

But control of listings — and the eyeballs, clicks, advertising dollars, and **hefty referral fees they bring — are truly what’s at issue here. It’s not really about consumer choice, transparency, or pricing dynamics. For Zillow, Redfin, and the MLS systems, it’s about maintaining control of the primary channel that is used to market and sell homes in the United States. **Because that’s how they make their money.

Compass Make Me Sell: The Quiet Fourth Phase Nobody’s Talking About

There’s one tool Compass offers that barely gets any attention in the media — **Compass Make Me Sell** — but I think it has the potential to quietly reshape how homes get sold in the coming years. While everyone’s busy arguing over the Clear Cooperation Policy and public vs. private marketing strategies, almost no one is talking about Compass Make Me Sell. And that’s a miss, because it might just be the biggest innovation in real estate right now.

Here’s how it works: Make Me Sell is a feature that allows homeowners to signal, privately and quietly, that they might be open to selling — if the price and terms are right. The listing is not on the MLS, not on Zillow, not on public real estate sites. It’s only visible within the Compass Agent Network. That means it can only be seen by Compass agents who have buyers searching for a home like yours. There’s no pressure, no staging, no weekend open houses — just a soft signal to the market saying, “Here’s my number. Make me sell.”

What makes this so powerful — and something no other brokerage can replicate — is the size and strength of the Compass Agent Network. Because all Compass agents operate on the same platform, share internal tools, and communicate across markets in a way that just doesn’t happen elsewhere. So when a buyer’s agent within Compass is looking for an off-market match, Make Me Sell listings become a live, real-time source of possibilities. It’s like having a shadow inventory of high-quality, quietly available homes that only Compass agents know about.

In a way, Make Me Sell might be thought of as the fourth phase of the Compass marketing strategy — before Private Exclusive. It sits further upstream, allowing Compass to engage potential sellers who aren’t ready to commit to any kind of public sale, while also offering buyers a path to finding off-market opportunities that aren’t on anyone’s radar.

It’s ideal for sellers who are curious, but not urgent. And in a world where timing, privacy, and flexibility matter more than ever, this might end up being the single most important differentiator in how we connect buyers and sellers in the next decade. And it’s all coming together today on the Compass platform.

Final Thoughts

I’m not here to say that off-market is often the right or even smart choice. I frankly discourage my clients from accepting pre-market offers, because I know that if they get one offer pre-market, there’s probably more and better offers out there. There’d have to be, statistically speaking.

But that doesn’t mean sellers shouldn’t have that option. And it definitely doesn’t mean Compass is doing something shady or self-serving. Compass is simply — and very strategically — offering a new way to think about marketing a home — and for a certain segment of the market, it makes a lot of sense.

The bigger picture here isn’t about double-ending deals or gaming the system. I could say that it’s about innovation, competition, and giving sellers the power to choose what works best for them. And it is about that, to a degree. But Compass is a for-profit, publicly traded company, and they need to do whatever they can — legally and ethically, of course — to drive shareholder value.

And that means driving the value of its agents, and the value proposition they bring to their clients. That means differentiation. That means having credible value-added marketing options that nobody else has. That’s really what I believe is driving the Compass strategy — and from where I’m sitting, it looks like they are doing an excellent job with it.

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Seb Frey is a top Silicon Valley REALTOR® helping people get rich in real estate. Check out his YouTube Channel, SebFreyTV.