Compass’ fight over listing rules has landed in New York City.
Earlier this week, top agents with brands under the Compass International Holdings umbrella confirmed to The Real Deal that executives with the firm advised them to remove their listings from StreetEasy this month. Agents were urged to instead upload their listings to the Real Estate Board of New York’s Residential Listing Service as Participant’s Only listings, making them visible to brokers at other firms but not directly to consumers.
Leaders issued the recommendation during a series of meetings held in late July, which included roughly 400 top agents across the residential brokerage conglomerate’s subsidiaries, such as Compass, Corcoran and Sotheby’s International.
Some brokers in attendance (and Compass in a subsequent statement) downplayed the suggestion, arguing executives hadn’t targeted StreetEasy specifically but rather presented the option as part of a broader strategy to refresh stale listings ahead of the fall market. But others told TRD they interpreted the advice as the latest move in the residential giant’s larger battle against listing portals such as Zillow, StreetEasy’s parent company.
Regardless of the firm’s intent in issuing the advice, New York City is a unique battleground for the listing debate as the data ecosystem functions differently than in other parts of the country. For one, the city doesn’t have a reigning multiple listing service, but rather an RLS operated by REBNY, the region’s leading trade group.
The RLS has its own set of rules governing when and how agents must upload listings in order to maintain access, including the Participant’s Only setting. For sellers who don’t want their properties marketed publicly, the service allows them to sign “opt out forms,” so agents can quietly shop their homes without having to input them.
In 2023, the RLS also updated its rules to allow for “Coming Soon” listings, which means brokers can add properties to the service under the status for 14 days before marking the listings as officially active.
The RLS’s relationship with StreetEasy also differs from the way most MLSes work with Zillow because it doesn’t directly syndicate listings to the platform. Instead, agents who want to display their listings on StreetEasy must upload them themselves — a step most take given the site’s position as the city’s leading consumer-facing listing platform.
However, StreetEasy has also faced its fair share of criticism from New York City agents in the past. It’s incurred backlash over fees associated with bypassing its Premier Agent feature, a lead-generation program similar to Zillow’s Premier Agent and Zillow Preferred.
In 2020, years before the listing fight reached its fever pitch, Brown Harris Stevens CEO Bess Freedman — a vocal opponent of Compass’ private listings push — pushed back against StreetEasy’s then-new rule requiring agents to upload for-sale listings to the site within 24 hours of marketing, characterizing its move as “strong-arm tactics,” which she called “reprehensible.”
Two years later, REBNY launched its own consumer-facing listing portal developed with CoStar Group, called CitySnap, which it hoped would provide agents an alternative to StreetEasy.
But the Zillow-owned platform still remains the market leader in New York City, and Compass’ natural opponent to becoming the city’s dominant listing portal leader.
In case you missed it…
Mayor Zohran Mamdani extended the deadline for homeowners to file an exemption to New York City’s new tax on second homes following backlash over its chaotic rollout.
The city initially gave owners who received pied-à-terre tax notices until Aug. 21 to prove that their properties were their primary residences. The process which drew criticism from many longtime residents who claimed they were wrongly flagged for the levy, including one who told TRD last week that he expected the administration would have to push the deadline due to the number of exemptions.
Last weekend, Mamdani announced that the city would allow owners another month to submit their exemption applications, with the new deadline now Sept. 18. Three homeowners filed a lawsuit on Friday challenging the implementation of the tax, which they argued conflicted with state law by burdening residents with the task of proving they are not subject to the surcharge.
NYC Deal of the Week
The most expensive sale to hit city records this week was for a condo at the Kuschner Companies’ Puck Building, which traded off-market for $42 million. The deal for the 5,000-square-foot apartment at 295 Lafayette Street works out to roughly $8,500 per square foot.
Unit 9C last sold for $28.5 million in 2016 and appears to have previously rented for $85,000 a month. The identities of both the buyer and the seller involved in the latest deal are shielded by shell companies.
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