Nicole Friedman

Yeah.

He is really passionate about this approach and this strategy, and he really believes that this is a positive thing for home sellers, for homeowners.

And he really called out the National Association of Realtors and Zillow.

And he said, NAR, this huge organization, one of the biggest lobbying groups in the country, and Zillow, that these two groups are trying to prevent us from implementing this strategy and that we need to fight back.

A jury decided that the system that had been in place for decades about how real estate agents got paid was a violation of antitrust rules.

Interesting.

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.