Compass Sues CRMLS, The Nation's Second Largest MLS

Compass has filed an antitrust lawsuit against California Regional Multiple Listing Service (CRMLS), the nation’s second-largest MLS, over alleged anticompetitive rules that fine and punish agents for publicly marketing homes as lawfully instructed by their clients.

Compass alleges that CRMLS issues fines of up to $2,500 any time a real estate agent follows their client’s lawful instructions to publicly market their property outside of CRMLS, and in some cases, they may face suspension or expulsion if they do not comply with CRMLS's rules. Compass says it is paying any fines levied against any agent affiliated with its company-owned brokerages (Coldwell Banker Realty, Compass, Sotheby’s International Realty) by CRMLS.

Compass wrote that, "Every single member of CRMLS’s Board of Directors is a direct competitor of Compass and its agents, and they are dictating how Compass and its agents can and cannot compete, and how homeowners can and cannot market their own home."

Compass's case highlights findings from a study by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) into residential real estate that found that MLSs must give brokers, agents and homeowners true alternatives to the MLS, alleging that until 2019 CRMLS had a policy that did not restrict how listings were publicly marketed, while recent policy changes have "harmed brokers and agents, including Compass agents and homeowners."

Meanwhile, Compass says it has been blocked from winning clients and receiving commissions that would come from its competitive right to offer innovative marketing strategies.

The brokerage is seeking damages in excess of $500 million.

"Homeowners should be free to choose how to sell their own homes without having a competition-killing real estate industry organization tell them how to do it", said Compass.

CRMLS has no valid justifications for its illegal conduct. [Until 2019] CRMLS allowed agents and their clients to market pre-and off-MLS without fines.

Under federal and state law, brokers and agents are entitled to offer, and consumers are entitled to choose from, more than the limited options that the actions of CRMLS’s combination of competitors have forced upon the industry.

Real estate agents should be able to compete fiercely to be hired by clients, and real estate brokers should be able to compete to attract agents to their firms, without their competitors banding together to restrict how they compete. In dozens of cities across the country, homeowners and agents are free to do that. This much-needed competition and choice are blocked in approximately twenty-two California counties because of rules set and enforced by CRMLS.

Homeowners want a choice. Under the CRMLS rules, once a homeowner markets the home anywhere on the internet, posts the home anywhere on social media, holds a single open house, provides the listing to an agent outside of their company, or publicly markets the home in any way CRMLS defines as “public marketing,” the listing must be given to CRMLS and its co-conspirators within one business day, and the agent and homeowner must follow hundreds of CRMLS restrictions—even if the homeowner gave the agent a lawful marketing instruction that conflicts with the CRMLS rules. 

If a real estate agent follows the client’s lawful instruction to publicly market a home outside of CRMLS, the agent then faces fines of up to $2,500 per violation, suspension, or expulsion from the very MLS they need to do business.

Compass brings this lawsuit to stop these illegal rules. [CRMLS is using] control of a home listing database that real estate agents in much of California cannot work without. Instead of fixing its anticompetitive rules, CRMLS has escalated enforcement against Compass: by CRMLS’s own count, roughly a quarter of the CRMLS fines for public marketing in 2026 involve Compass listings.

MLSs serving more than 350,000 brokers and agents in at least 12 states do not fine or punish pre- or off-MLS public marketing, and in these markets, the issues CRMLS claims will result from pre- or off-MLS public marketing have not transpired.

CRMLS does not care about homeowners; it is a members-only database that homeowners are unable to access and that fines agents just for following their client’s lawful public marketing instructions. CRMLS’s agent members, including its Board members, compete directly with one another and with Compass’ agents for homeowners, and CRMLS Rules block competition from brokers and agents who want to offer innovative, pro-competitive, and pro-consumer public marketing options.

CRMLS forces Compass and its agents to give their valuable home listing data to CRMLS, which CRMLS then sells to real estate portals and other companies that earn hundreds of millions of dollars displaying Compass listings, paying Compass nothing. Compass seeks treble damages, to the full extent allowed by the law, for every dollar of harm CRMLS and its co-conspirators caused Compass. Compass paid over $175 million to defend and settle lawsuits resulting from MLS policies it could not avoid because rules like CRMLS’s foreclosed the option for Compass’ agents to publicly market a home without giving it to CRMLS, thus forcing them to follow CRMLS’s policies.

Because CRMLS stops Compass from avoiding CRMLS’s rules and because CRMLS sells Compass’ data to companies that use it against Compass and its agents, Compass has lost (a) millions of dollars in commissions from the diversion of buyer inquiries away from Compass’ listing agents, (b) millions of dollars in lost commissions from agents who were recruited away using data the MLS sold to Compass’ competitors, and (c) millions of dollars of lost ancillary revenue (such as mortgage, title, and escrow). All of these harms, and any others caused by CRMLS’s illegal rules, must be paid back in triplicate, CRMLS’s ill-gotten gains from agents must be disgorged, and the illegal rules must be enjoined.