BrightMLS, one of the nation’s largest multiple listing services, announced on Wednesday that it is joining a growing slate of other MLSs in expanding its services nationwide.
MRED, the MLS that has historically served Chicagoland, and Realtracs in Nashville were the first two to announce that they would accept subscribers from anywhere in the country. As was the case with those multiple listing services, BrightMLS has struck a partnership with Compass, BrightMLS CEO Brian Donnellan wrote Wednesday in Real Estate News.
Brian Donnellan
“Compass has committed to making its nationwide data available to our subscribers through our system,” Donnellan wrote. “In addition, Compass has agreed to subsidize new Bright subscriptions for its agents under Compass International Holdings in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, or elsewhere in the country so they can take advantage of Bright’s capabilities across regions.”
In the op-ed, Donnellan also said the MLS was changing its rules to provide more flexibility in how listings are displayed.
MRED and Realtracs also changed their rules as part of their expansion plans, and in ways that potentially threaten Zillow’s access to listings in those markets. And the expansion trend among MLSs comes amid an ongoing battle between Zillow, the nation’s largest real estate search portal, and Compass, the largest brokerage, over when, where and how listings are marketed.
That battle intensified this week when Zillow sued Compass and MRED in federal court over what the portal said was a conspiracy to threaten the portal’s access to listings if it enforced its policy around pre-marketed listings.
In Bright’s case, its ruleset was updated on Sunday, though the MLS didn’t respond to questions from Inman about what specific changes were made and how they might apply to Zillow and other portals, as well as listing agents.
Instead, a BrightMLS spokesperson said in a statement that “we recently clarified our IDX rules to ensure that no listings are excluded based on who listed the property. No changes were made to our definition of objective criteria.”
“The job of an MLS is to give brokers room to compete on strategy, not to force everyone into a single playbook or push them to build workarounds outside the MLS,” Donnellan wrote. “Brokers and sellers need a marketplace where listings are entered on time, complete and accurate, and then distributed exactly as they choose, with nothing added that they did not authorize.”
Compass CEO Robert Reffkin has historically criticized what he calls “negative insights” that he believes harm listings, such as days on market and price history.
Donnellan wrote that Bright was committed to even enforcement of its flexible rules, including “fines and suspensions for those who break the rules.”
“Selective entry into the MLS is just as damaging as selective display to the public, and we treat both with the same seriousness. Even-handedness is the point,” he wrote. “Our rules are written to support a consistent, transparent marketplace, and they are enforced the same way for every participant in that marketplace — large brokerage or small, national franchise or independent, platform or portal.”
Bright’s updated rules limit portals’ ability to block listings based on the broker, agent or brokerage. If a listing is limited, the portal must include a disclosure that says the listing has been excluded from display, according to the rules.
The partnership with Compass follows past statements by the brokerage and Reffkin about Bright.
Robert Reffkin
On stage at Inman Connect New York earlier this year, Reffkin floated the idea of a national MLS and specifically called out Donnellan as a potential CEO.
More MLSs to partner with Compass?
There are signals that more MLSs may follow suit this spring.
In a lawsuit filed on Tuesday, Zillow alleged that Compass has encouraged large MLSs to expand and partner with the megabrokerage.
Zillow also alleged that on Monday, Caitlin McCrory, Compass’ head of industry relations, emailed the CEO of HiveMLS asking it to prevent the rise of off-MLS listing databases, such as Zillow and its Zillow Preview listings.
On May 5, Zillow announced a partnership where it would share pre-marketed listings with Realtor.com starting this summer. Such a partnership amounted to an off-MLS database with listings being shared off the MLS and, therefore, violates MLS rules, the email suggested.
If it began enforcing said policy by May 20, the alleged email said, Compass would prevent listings from being added to any third-party portal other than the MLS in Hive’s territory in the Southeast U.S.
HiveMLS didn’t respond to a request for comment about the alleged email or offer from Compass, and whether it plans to partner with the megabrokerage.
Threat to listing feeds
The alleged partnership offer follows an alleged push by Reffkin to have more MLSs enforce rules against Zillow.
In its lawsuit, Zillow said that Reffkin emailed at least eight MLSs in October 2025 and urged them to terminate Zillow’s data feeds because of the portal’s Listing Access Standards.
Such a move would eliminate Zillow’s access to the listings that serve as the lifeblood of the company.
Last week, Compass informed Zillow that on May 8, it terminated its direct listing feeds with Zillow for all of the brokerages under its umbrella. However, Zillow still maintains direct listing feeds with the MLSs, and no listings are missing from the portal as a result of that termination.
Direct broker listing feeds are considered a backup to the MLS listing feeds, but the spread of MLSs going nationwide and updating their rules poses a new threat to that source of listings.
However, MRED’s technology provider, MLS Grid, informed Zillow earlier this month that the portal had blocked listings in Florida, Georgia and California in violation of the MLS’s updated rules. MLS Grid gave Zillow until May 19 to respond.
As part of its lawsuit, Zillow has asked the court to stop MRED from enforcing its new rules and to prevent MRED from cutting off its access to listings in Chicagoland.
Zillow has maintained that its Listing Access Standards are pro-consumer.
“Defendants conspired to threaten to cut off Zillow’s and any other competitors’ access to all listings — a critical input for competition in the industry — in a naked effort to coerce their competitors to abandon pro-transparency policies,” Zillow’s complaint states.