Private listings are not new. For years, agents and sellers have quietly tested the waters before going public, often in luxury markets where privacy mattered most. What is different now is the scale. Compass has turned the private listing from a boutique tactic into the opening act of a three-phase marketing system. Sellers begin inside Compass’s “Private Exclusives,” move into “Coming Soon,” and eventually hit the MLS and portals. This is not a side option. It is the playbook.

Mike DelPrete’s tracking shows how quickly Compass has grown this inventory. At one point this summer, Compass reported over 9,000 private exclusives nationally. That accounted for roughly a quarter to a third of all Compass listings. In some markets, nearly one in three homes was starting life inside Compass’s walled garden before it ever touched the MLS.

The Data: Scale Matters

To understand why this strategy is getting so much attention, you have to look at the numbers. Anywhere Real Estate — the parent company of Coldwell Banker, Century 21, Sotheby’s, ERA, Better Homes & Gardens, and Corcoran — is still the largest U.S. player. In 2024, its brands combined for 950,010 transaction sides, which translates into roughly 678,579 home sales when adjusted for double-ending. That represents 16.7% of all U.S. transactions.

Compass, with 228,785 sides, accounted for about 163,418 transactions, or 4% of the market. Add Compass and Anywhere together, and you’re looking at about 842,000 transactions, more than 21% of the U.S. total.

Now here’s where exclusives come in. Based on internal reporting and industry analysis, roughly 25% of Compass’s listings start as Private Exclusives. Taken across Compass and Anywhere together, that translates to around 210,000 transactions annually that begin life off the MLS and off portals like Zillow. That is about 5% of the entire U.S. housing market.

This number is important because headlines around agent counts can make it appear as if this merger allows the combined entity to “own” the market. While total transactions will be around 20%, when you apply the % of private listings to it, you can see it’s likely not enough to tip consumer behavior (yet). 

(Sources: RealTrends 1000, Mike DelPrete, Anywhere 2024 10K)

The Zillow Question: How Many Listings Are Enough to Tip the Market?

The fight between Compass and Zillow is not just legal or reputational. It is about consumer habit. For two decades, Zillow has trained buyers to start their home search on its portal, promising a “complete” marketplace. But what happens if it no longer feels “complete”?

If consumers begin to notice that a meaningful slice of inventory is missing, they may start elsewhere. At what number does that perception shift? Ten percent? Twenty? Thirty? No one knows for sure; however, my guess is when one in four are no longer available (that’s around 25%).  As we know, real estate is a local business (even if everyone is racing to aggregate it). As such, some markets will see a much higher percentage of private exclusives that aren’t on Zillow – specifically large urban markets like San Francisco or New York City.

Compass’s Strategic Options

Compass has three main levers:

1. Inventory Control: Continue to expand the share of listings that start inside its walls, especially in mid-market price points where the model is newer. Continue on an acquisition spree. Also, look at expanded partnership deals with #2 and #3 portals (like Homes.com).
2. Agent Alignment: Train its 1099 agents to consistently pitch sellers on the three-phase plan, making private exclusives a default first step rather than an optional detour. This must be an all-out push to convince agents this is good for their clients and for them regardless of market conditions or the seller’s price point.
3. Narrative and Legal Pressure: Keep challenging Zillow in court and in public opinion, arguing that exclusives are pro-seller choice and that portals are unfair gatekeepers. (Trying to avoid the note that buyers are sellers and sellers are buyers). They want to create an expensive & time intensive headache for Zillow any way they can. And, own the public narrative.

The bet is clear: if Compass can control the “first showing,” it controls the leverage and creates a moat around its platform.

Zillow’s Strategic Options

For Zillow, this is an existential fight. Its entire consumer value proposition is “all the listings, all in one place.” If exclusives become normalized and spread beyond Compass, that promise breaks. Zillow has three ways to respond:

1. Policy and Enforcement: Work with MLSs and regulators to tighten definitions of what must be submitted and when. Or, more importantly, push regulators to examine “competitiveness” in markets where Anywhere + Compass result in more than half being associated with “the same company” and making a case for divestiture.
2. Consumer Messaging: Double down on advertising its completeness, and go hard in positioning what Compass is doing as “not good for the consumer.” They need to make the consumer “feel” the pain of a lack of transparency (even though a transaction only occurs every 10-12 years). 
3. Product Evolution: Explore new ways to integrate with brokerages or surface exclusives, so consumers don’t feel like they are missing out by starting on Zillow. Or, better yet, align themselves with specific competing brokerages to Compass (like the cloud-based brokerages of eXp and REAL). 

What It Means for Agents and Consumers

For sellers, the private phase offers control, less stigma around days-on-market, and a sense of exclusivity. But they risk missing exposure in those crucial early days.

For buyers, the experience depends on which side of the wall they are on. Connected to Compass? You might see homes before the broader public. Outside that circle? You may be house-hunting in a market that feels artificially thin.

For agents, exclusives can be a powerful differentiator, but they also create tension. Convincing a seller that less exposure is in their best interest is no small task. And for non-Compass agents, the playing field feels tilted.

For the industry, the bigger question is trust. The MLS has long been the backbone of transparency. If more and more inventory lives off-MLS, the system itself is weakened. 

The Bottom Line

This is not just a story about Compass. It is a story about who controls the starting line of the housing search. Right now, Compass is testing whether owning the first phase of a listing’s life can tilt power away from portals and back toward brokerages. Zillow is fighting to defend the ground it has owned for two decades. Agents and consumers are caught in the middle.

The outcome will shape not only where buyers click first but also who holds power in the future of real estate.