The other shoe has finally dropped. After weeks of back and forth online, Compass filed an federal antitrust lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Seattle against Northwest MLS (NWMLS) over NWMLS’s Clear Cooperation Policy (CCP) on Friday.
NWMLS is a broker-owned MLS, rather than owned by the Realtor association, meaning that it is not subject to the National Association of Realtors’ (NAR) rules. As such, unlike NAR’s CCP which allows for office exclusives, NWMLS’s does not, leading to Compass claiming that it has the “most restrictive homeowner marketing rules in the country.”
“In every other state, and with every other MLS, homeowners have the freedom to choose to pre-market their home before it goes public,” a press release from Compass states. “Outside of Washington, homeowners can choose to list their home as a Compass Private Exclusive or Compass Coming Soon and receive the benefits of pre-marketing.”
In the complaint, Compass claims that NWMLS “is a monopolist and a combination of competing real estate brokers.”
“Nearly 100% of the residential real estate transactions by Seattle area real estate brokers are listed on NWMLS, and NWMLS has no meaningful competitors,” the complaint adds. “NWMLS also has a direct interest in limiting competition among Seattle area real estate brokers, as it is owned and controlled by competing real estate brokerages, including the largest traditional real estate brokerages in the Seattle area.”
According to the suit NWMLS has “successfully prevented any meaningful threat to itself and its owner brokerages by adopting and enforcing a series of rules designed to force anyone wishing to buy or sell a home in the Seattle area with the help of a real estate professional to do so through its platform.”
“Unless stopped, NWMLS will continue engaging in anticompetitive and tortious conduct that has, is, and will harm homeowners, Compass, and Compass brokers in the Seattle area by depriving homeowners of choice, competition, strong reasons to use a Compass broker, and potential pecuniary and non-pecuniary benefits brought by Compass’s innovative products and services,” the complaint states.
Compass claims that threatened by it “innovative offerings,” its competitors in the Seattle area, including “Windermere and other traditional real estate brokerages who own and control NWMLS,” agreed to adopt and enforce rules that prevent office exclusive listings.
“Then, NWMLS and its co-conspirators eliminated another of its own long-standing rules, which only Compass was using to allow Compass homeowners to use office exclusives,” the complaint states.
The complaint alleges that in mid-July 2024, Compass asked NWMLS to modify Rule 2 to allow for office exclusives.
“After seven months of asking for a rule change and trying to formally engage in NWMLS’ rule change governance process, on February 28, 2025, NWMLS finally responded and simply refused,” the complaint states.
According to Compass, after NWMLS refused to change Rule 2, it decided to only offer its three-phase marketing strategy to sellers who sign a “non-exclusive listing agreement,” as that type of listing agreement is not accepted by NWMLS under Rule 4 and therefore not subject to its rules. The firm than claims that a week later NWMLS “responded by bypassing its traditional rule-making procedure to change the decades-longstanding Rule 4, and requiring properties listed with a non-exclusive agreement to now also be submitted to NWMLS and subject to all NWMLS rules.”
Compass then claims it looked to NWMLS Rule 6, according to which “properties would not be accepted by NWMLS if the home seller reserved the discretion whether to pay a commission to the buyer’s real estate broker.”
The company says it then offered this option to its sellers in the Seattle area, but within days NWMLS claimed that Compass was not in compliance with NWMLS rules and shut off its IDX feed with no “warning or due process.” According to the complaint this move by NWMLS harmed “all Compass clients, Compass and its brokers, and homeowners by forcing them to choose between marketing their properties publicly before they were ready or not listing them at all.”
“As a result, all of these anticompetitive and tortious acts maintain the market power of NWMLS and block competition against the traditional real estate brokerages that own and control NWMLS, and they deprive homeowners in the Seattle area of the freedom, choice, and benefits that Compass Private Exclusives provided,” the complaint states.
Compass claims that through this alleged anticompetitive and tortious conduct, NWMLS is harming consumers by taking away their freedom to sell and market their property as they choose, quashing competition, decreasing the innovation available to consumers and further entrenching NWMLS’s alleged monopoly.
Compass is demanding a jury trial and asking for damages and a permanent injunction baring NWMLS and anyone associated with it from “from engaging in, carrying out, renewing or attempting to engage in, the combination and conspiracy alleged herein, or any other combination or conspiracy having a similar purpose or effect in violation of” the Sherman Antitrust Act.
The tiff between Compass and NWMLS began escalating earlier this spring when a tit for tat between Compass CEO Robert Reffkin and NWMLS CEO Justin Haag started with an Instagram post by Reffkin that specifically called out NWMLS and its CCP.
Haag, in communication with NWMLS employees, said that real estate brokerage firms in Washington state, as members of NWMLS, have agreed to share all property listings with the entire brokerage community and the public for more than 40 years.
In late March, a website called Washington Homeowner Rights and backed by Compass, surfaced soliciting NWMLS home sellers for a potential class action lawsuit. The site is looking for homesellers who have been “harmed” by NWMLS’ policies and who have experienced a price drop or significant days on market.
NWMLS has not returned a request for comment.
