Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, sent a letter to Compass CEO Robert Reffkin and Midwest Real Estate Data CEO Rebecca Jensen seeking information about their partnership, saying it “increases risks of civil rights violations,” according to Realtor.com.
In the nine-page letter, Warren wrote, in part: “Your partnership threatens to create a two-tiered housing market where insiders pay for exclusive access to housing inventory and market data, while everyone else is shut out. I am concerned that this move will increase industry consolidation and harm consumers by driving up housing costs and worsening inequalities in the housing market.
“I am particularly concerned that the non-public, exclusive nature of private listings may perpetuate housing discrimination through residential steering that is prohibited under the FHAct and other civil rights laws, also making potential discrimination harder to detect.”
Warren is requesting that Reffkin and Jensen provide details of the partnership and how they might have analyzed any fair housing or antitrust concerns. She reportedly argued that the private listings “have the potential to obscure key data typically used to negotiate home prices, like the number of days on the market or price change history.”
In turn, she said hiding that data could “destabilize the broader market.”
Just last month, the Subcommittee on the Administrative State, Regulatory Reform and Antitrust began looking into the relationship between Compass and MRED and the impact its private listing network could have on buyers and sellers. Both Jensen and Reffkin were summoned by the committee to provide briefings by Aug. 5.
In early July, the Consumer Federation of America, along with housing, consumer and civil rights advocacy organizations, urged the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission to investigate what it called the “potential unlawfulness of Compass’ recent deals,” arguing it could threaten to reduce transparency, “entrench” market domination and limit fair access to housing opportunities.