Nicole Friedman

And as part of this, there was a huge legal settlement and the rules were changed for how real estate agents got paid.

And a lot of the biggest brokerages, including Compass, had to pay large legal settlements in order to settle these lawsuits against them.

Robert Refkin came out in 2024 being very critical of NAR.

And he essentially said, this is a liability.

And so he started to criticize these other NAR rules that were aimed at limiting private listings.

And he said, NAR needs to get rid of those rules too.

And also, by the way, I don't think these rules are any good because I think that my private listing strategy is positive.

And so he was very critical of these NAR rules about private listings.

And it kind of started this huge debate.

NAR had been lobbied by Compass, which had lobbied it to get rid of the rule, and by Zillow, which had lobbied it to strengthen the rule.

And it was trying to strike a balance that maybe addressed some of the concerns with the rule without getting rid of it entirely.

So this is a threat to Compass because sellers know Zillow.

Everybody knows Zillow.

And so if you go to a seller and you say, hey, I want to be a real estate agent.

I want to list your home.

You know, here's this really cool strategy we have at Compass, the three-phase marketing strategy.

And here's why I think it could be a good fit for you.

And oh, by the way, your home won't appear on Zillow.

The seller is going to say, what?

A lot of sellers, they use Zillow too.