Compass exists an antitrust suit against NWMLS about its CCP
“In any other state, and with all other MLs, homeowners have the freedom to choose to make their home pre-market before it becomes public,” says a press release from Compass. “Outside Washington, homeowners can choose to mention their house as a private exclusive compass or compass 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 agents.”
“Nearly 100% of the residential real estate transactions by Seattle Area Real Estate Brokers are mentioned on NWMLS and NWMLS does not have meaningful competitors,” the complaint adds. “NWMLS also has a direct interest in limiting the competition between Seattle Area Real Estate Brokers, because it is owned and is controlled by competing real estate agents, including the greatest traditional real estate agents in the Seattle area.”
According to the court case, NWMLS “successfully presented a meaningful threat to himself and the owner brokers by adopting a series of rules and forcing them to force everyone to buy or sell a house in the Seattle area using a real estate professional profession to do this via his platform.”
“Unless stopped, NWMLs will continue to feed with competitive lighting and unlawful behavior that homeowners, compass and compass brokers have in the vicinity of Seattle will be and will harm homeowners of your choice, competition, strong reasons to use a compass broker and potential financial and non-events that are brought to that.
Compass claims that IT ‘Innovative offers’ are competitors in the Seattle area, including ‘Windermere and other traditional real estate agents who own and control NWMLs’, agreed to accept rules and forcing those exclusive offers for the office exclusive obstacle.
“Next, NWMLs and his fellow samplers eliminated another of his own long-term rules, which only used compass to enable compass house owners to use Exclusives office,” the complaint says.
The complaint claims that Compass Early in mid -July 2024 NWMLS to change rule 2 to allow exclusive office exclusions.
“After seven months asking for a change of rule and the formally tried to participate in the regular process of NWMLS rules, on 28 February 2025, NWMLS eventually responded and simply refused,” the complaint says.
According to Compass, after NWMLS refused to change rule 2, it only decided to offer its three-phase marketing strategy to sellers who sign a “non-exclusive list agreement” because that type of list agreement is not accepted by NWMLs under line 4 and is therefore not subject to the rules. The company then claims that a week later NWMLS “responded by bypassing its traditional regulation procedure to change the decades-long-distance rule 4, and require those property stated with a non-exclusive agreement to now also be submitted to NWMLs and subject to all NWMLS rules.”
Compass then claims that it looked at NWMLS Rule 6, according to which “property would not be accepted by NWMLS if the home seller reserved the discretion to pay a committee to the buyer’s real estate agent.”
The company says that this option then offered its sellers in the Seattle area, but within a few days NWMLS claimed that Compass was not in accordance with NWMLS rules and its IDX feed would close without ‘warning or appropriate process’. According to the complaint, this step of NWML’s “has” all compass customers, compass and its brokers and homeowners forcing them to choose between their property in public on the market before they were ready or not listed at all. “
“Dientengevolge behouden al deze concurrentieve en onrechtmatige daden de marktmacht van NWML’s en blokkeren concurrentie tegen de traditionele vastgoedmakelaars die NWML’s bezitten en controleren, en ze ontnemen huiseigenaren in het gebied van Seattle van de vrijheid, keuze en voordelen die privé -exclusieve kompassen hebben,” stelt de klacht, “stelt de klacht,” stelt de klacht, “stelt de klacht,” stelt de klacht, “States the complaint,” states the complaint, “states the complaint,” states the complaint, “states the complaint,” states the complaint, “states the complaint,” states the complaint, “states the complaint,” states the complaint, “states the complaint,” the complaint states, “the complaint states,” the complaint states.
Compass claims that NWMLS harms consumers through this alleged anti -competitive and unlawful behavior by selling their freedom and bringing their property to the market, removing competition, reducing innovation for consumers and the alleged monopoly of NWMLS is.
Compass demands a jury rights saying and requires compensation and a permanent order that NWMLs and everyone connected to it, from “to be executed, to extend, renew or try to enter into, to perform, extend, extend or tried to go to or have another combination or conspiracy in this.
The TIFF between Compass and NWMLs started to escalate earlier this spring when a tit for TAT between Compass CEO Robert Reffkin and NWMLS CEO Justin Haag started with an Instagram post of Reffkin that specifically called NWMLS and his CCP.
Haag, in communication with NWMLS employees, said that brokerage companies in the state of Washington, as members of NWMLS, have agreed to share all ownership notifications with the entire real estate community and the public for more than 40 years.
At the end of March, a website called Washington HomeOwner Rights and supported by Compass, looking for NWMLS Home Sellers for a potential Class Action right case. The site is looking for homesellers who have been “damaged” through the policy of NWMLS and who have experienced a price fall or considerable days on the market.
NWMLS has not returned a request for comments.
