Biggest Stories Of 2025: Nar’s Clear Cooperation Policy Battle

From lawsuits to mergers and acquisitions at a scale never seen before in real estate and everything in between, 2025 was full of twists, turns and surprises for the housing industry. HousingWire is rewinding and breaking down the biggest storylines in the real estate industry from this past year.

The debate surrounding the National Association of Realtors’ (NAR) Clear Cooperation Policy (CCP) started simmering during the second half of 2024, but it really came to a boil in the spring of 2025. 

In late March, after much discussion among agents and brokers, NAR announced its  Multiple Listing Options of Sellers (MLOS) policy, which created delayed marketing exempt listings. Under this policy, while brokers must still input a listing into the MLS within 24 hours of public marketing, if they mark the listing as delayed it would be withheld from IDX feeds and not be syndicated to other websites. NAR left the details of the policy, including how long a listing could be “delayed” for up to each local MLS. 

This change, which some felt was significant and others called a “nothing burger,” added more fuel to the fire in the debate surrounding CCP and private listings. Proponents of CCP and widespread listing transparency, including Zillow and brokerages like eXp and NextHome, argue that private listing networks harm the vast majority of consumers because they shrink the pool of potential buyers on listings and they limit homebuyer choice. Additionally, they argue that keeping listings private could result in fair housing issues and potential breaches of fiduciary duty. Due to its feelings about CCP, Zillow launched its listing access standards policy, which bans listings from its site that are publicly marketed for more than one business day prior to being available for display on Zillow, in early April and it began enforcing it in late June. Redfin, which had already been acquired by Rocket, announced a similar policy just days after Zillow’s announcement, but has since abandoned it. 

On the other side of the CCP debate is most notably, Compass, which began touting its “three-phase marketing plan,” in early 2025. As part of this marketing strategy, Compass agents advertise listings on the brokerage’s private listing network before publishing them on the MLS. The brokerage has claimed that CCP, despite allowing for true office exclusives that can be shared one-on-one to other brokers, even those at other firms, limits a seller’s marketing choices. These views have put Compass in direct conflict with Zillow, which it sued in mid-June over its listing policy, and MLSs like Northwest MLS (NWMLS) in Washington state. 

Like with Zillow, Compass’s conflict with NWMLS escalated into a lawsuit, as NWMLS’s listing policy does not allow for office exclusives because as a non-Realtor affiliated MLS, NWMLS does not have to abide by NAR’s MLS policies. In the lawsuit, Compass claims that NWMLS “is a monopolist and a combination of competing real estate brokers.”

NWMLS has filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, however, a tentative trial date in the lawsuit has been set for early June 2026. 

But while Compass has been the most vocal about the usage of private listing networks, it is not the only brokerage with an exclusive listing platform. Companies like Douglas Elliman, Howard Hanna, and Anywhere brands including Sotheby’s, Corcoran and Coldwell Banker, among others have also launched private listing networks, but claimed that the move was to be prepared in case the industry moved away from the MLS system. 

With Compass’s lawsuits still pending, and more brokerages and even teams launching private listing platforms, this is clearly another narrative we’ll be following into 2026. 

This is part three of a seven-part series.