The new Manhattan rental Compass lawsuit should scare everyone

Two renters in Manhattan filed a proposed federal class action against Compass on August 21, claiming they paid roughly $880 a month over the median asking rent because inventory was pulled off StreetEasy and routed agent to agent instead of shown to the public. Read that sentence again and notice who is not in it. No agent is named. Not yet. Let me be careful about what I’m actually saying, because it is not what most people expect. I am not arguing that private listings should be outlawed. Some homeowners have real reasons to limit who sees their home. My argument is narrower and much harder to wriggle out of. The moment you recommend a limited launch without telling the seller what the research says it’s likely to cost them, you’ve stopped being an advisor and become a liability. There is a fix. It fits on one page, and it takes about four minutes to explain at the kitchen table. Know what you are supposed to be disclosing An agent cannot disclose a risk they never learned. So, let me put the numbers in one place, because most agents have only been handed the half of the research their company paid for. Zillow looked at more than 15 million sales from 2023 through 2025 and found...