DISCLAIMER: GoldInvestors.news is not a registered investment, legal or tax advisor or broker/dealer. All investment/financial opinions expressed by GoldInvestors.news are from the personal research and experience of the owner of the site and are intended as educational material. Although best efforts are made to ensure that all information is accurate and up to date, occasionally unintended errors and misprints may occur.

Some of the biggest names in residential real estate are joining the fight over who controls access to property listings. Their new venture aims to counter the growing use of private listings in certain housing markets.

AGNT, which owns eXp Realty and NextHome, is working with HomeServices of America, Keller Williams and Real REMAX Group. The four major brokerages are creating a largely open and shared listing database, or API, for brokers nationwide.

The founders are inviting other brokerages to participate. Any brokerage that joins must submit a new listing within one business day, although the system includes an option for certain properties to remain private.

Called Open Real Estate, the platform is intended to address what its founders describe as an increasingly fragmented residential listing market. It takes particular aim at private listings, which are favored by brokerage giant Compass.

Compass is currently involved in more than half a dozen lawsuits with state and local Multiple Listing Services. Those disputes involve listing rules and antitrust claims, placing access to residential property information at the center of a widening legal fight.

AGNT CEO Leo Pareja said the platform is designed to provide consumers with a dependable and comprehensive picture of the housing market.

“We want to ensure that for the American consumer, there’s a complete data set that is capital T truth, that’s reliable as to what is happening in the marketplace,” Pareja said. “So whether it’s MLSs fragmenting, pocket listings, walled gardens, whatever, the goal is to ensure that there’s a complete data set for the American consumer, so buyers and sellers have the most amount of accurate information.”

Brokerages will be able to join without an initial charge or fees. Pareja said the four founding companies will finance the required infrastructure and technology, while Brown Harris Stevens, Lamacchia Realty, Samson Properties and Windermere are listed as initial participants.

Jonathan Miller, a longtime housing market analyst and director of markets at housing data and analytics company StreetMatrix, described the move as a direct response to Compass.

“It’s clearly a clap back to Compass, firstly,” Miller said. “And it’s absolutely better because Compass is literally hiding listings from competitors by design.”

Compass CEO Robert Reffkin posted a congratulatory message on X shortly after the announcement. He said Compass is “excited that there will be a national real estate listing service that will return the power back to the creator of the listing — the homeowner and their trusted agent. This is good news for all agents and their clients, and we look forward to helping build the next chapter of listing services.”

Reffkin declined to comment further when asked. Pareja responded that Compass is invited to participate, saying, “We saw that, and we’re grateful for his appreciation, and he’s very much invited. We’d love to have him participate.”

Open Real Estate includes a feature called “participant view,” which allows certain exclusive properties to remain visible only to agents associated with participating brokerages. Those properties cannot be publicly marketed by anyone, including the listing agent or listing brokerage.

Pareja said participant view would be used sparingly, primarily for high profile or celebrity home sellers seeking privacy. The feature gives the platform a limited private listing option even as its founders challenge broader market fragmentation.

Reffkin’s response arrived as New York’s OneKey MLS joined the California Regional Multiple Listing Service’s federal lawsuit against Compass. The organizations want a court to establish that rules protecting shared and public listing marketing are lawful and promote competition.

OneKey joined the case after rejecting Compass demands to dismantle local cooperation policies. OneKey MLS CEO Richard Haggerty said the dispute concerns how homes for sale are shared, how buyers receive information and how a fair and equal housing market is protected.

Separately, six regional MLS organizations representing more than 120,000 real estate professionals nationwide filed a joint federal lawsuit against Compass last month. That case also seeks to preserve rules promoting access to listings through publicly shared databases.

Pareja stressed that Open Real Estate is not intended to replace existing MLS organizations or become a national MLS. “We are going to work with MLSs. We’re going to work alongside them. We’re not usurping. We’re not replacing,” he said.

DISCLAIMER: GoldInvestors.news is not a registered investment, legal or tax advisor or broker/dealer. All investment/financial opinions expressed by GoldInvestors.news are from the personal research and experience of the owner of the site and are intended as educational material. Although best efforts are made to ensure that all information is accurate and up to date, occasionally unintended errors and misprints may occur.