When real estate listing scarcity becomes the strategy, who benefits?

I started my real estate career in Bellingham, Washington in 1999, when housing inventory lived in a printed listing book published twice a month. It was out of date by the time it reached my desk. I spent my days driving neighborhoods looking for new For Sale signs, calling agents at competing brokerages, and trading haves, wants and coming soons. The quality of my network mattered because the network was where the information lived. Some brokerages leaned hard into keeping that information inside their own walls, where an in-house buyer could mean both sides of the transaction stayed there too. A buyer with a well-connected agent heard about homes another buyer never knew existed. I was good at working that system, but I knew it wasn’t particularly fair. Over the next 25 years, the industry built its way out of it, and the market became less dependent on knowing the right agent. That history is why I oppose the private listing strategy now being fought over in federal court. On October 5, California Regional MLS (CRMLS) asked a judge to declare its cooperation rules lawful after Compass threatened an antitrust suit over fines for publicly marketing listings kept off the MLS. I re...