Real estate · Industry brief

New York Attorney General Letitia James and the FTC secured a settlement ending an illegal agreement between Zillow Group and Redfin Corporation that eliminated competition in the multifamily rental advertising market. In February 2025, Zillow paid Redfin $100 million to shut down its apartment advertising business and transfer clients to Zillow, with Redfin agreeing to exclusively display Zillow listings for up to nine years. The enforcement action, filed in October 2025, challenged the anticompetitive arrangement as a violation of federal antitrust laws that harmed both renters and building managers through higher prices and reduced service quality. Under the settlement, Redfin must rebuild its independent apartment advertising business, eliminate exclusive listing arrangements with Zillow, and resume direct competition. The companies were also ordered to pay $2 million to the coalition of five state attorneys general and the FTC, with the settlement barring future anticompetitive agreements between them. Source: New York Attorney General press release, August 24, 2026.

Two New York City renters filed a lawsuit in August 2024 against Compass Inc., accusing the world's largest residential real estate broker of monopolizing New York's rental market and artificially inflating rents. The complaint alleges that Compass controls approximately 80% of rental unit listings in New York following its acquisitions of Anywhere Real Estate, Century21, Coldwell Banker, and Sotheby's International, and that the company directed agents to remove listings from StreetEasy to leverage its market power. The plaintiffs seek class-action status in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. The lawsuit coincides with Congressional enforcement scrutiny from both chambers. Rep. Scott Fitzgerald (R-WI) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) have demanded hearings and information regarding Compass's "Private Exclusives" listings strategy and its April 2024 partnership with Chicago-based MLS firm Midwest Real Estate Data (MRED) to distribute exclusive listings nationwide. Warren's August 21 deadline letter raised concerns that the Compass-MRED deal increases consolidation risks, drives up housing costs, and creates potential Fair Housing Act violations by creating a "two-tiered housing market" with exclusive access for insiders.

A wave of litigation is emerging against multifamily housing landlords under new municipal algorithmic rent-pricing regulations enacted in San Francisco, San Diego, Seattle, Philadelphia, Providence, and other jurisdictions. These ordinances, enacted following federal antitrust litigation against RealPage and Yardi, prohibit landlords from using revenue-management software that relies on nonpublic competitor data to set rents. Recent follow-on cases filed in 2026 include Gomez v. Greystar Management Services in San Francisco (up to $1,000 per violation per unit per month), Keller v. UDR in San Diego (similar penalties), Nicolas v. Essex Management and Romano v. UDR in Seattle (up to $7,500 per violation), and Liu v. Willow Bridge and Jahanbakhsh v. Greystar in Philadelphia (treble damages or $2,000 per violation), alongside a public enforcement action by Providence against Audubon Capital Partners. Municipal regulations now span at least 14 jurisdictions with varying prohibitions and penalty structures, ranging from $500 to $7,500 per violation, often with unit-month exposure creating substantial aggregate liability. Owners and managers face critical compliance challenges since some ordinances treat each affected unit and month as separate violations and apply retroactively to conduct predating the effective date. Property managers should immediately create ordinance-effective-date matrices for each property, test compliance against each jurisdiction's specific definitions rather than relying on federal antitrust settlements, document when prohibited functionality was disabled, and evaluate legal challenges to the ordinances' authority and retroactive application.

Two Harbors Investment Corp. (TWO) received final regulatory approval Friday for its merger with CrossCountry Mortgage (CCM), with the transaction expected to close before market open Tuesday, August 25. TWO shareholders had previously approved the acquisition on July 2 after a bidding battle with United Wholesale Mortgage's parent company; shareholders will receive $12 per share plus a prorated stub dividend of approximately 20 cents per share. The combined entity integrates CrossCountry's retail mortgage lending platform with TWO's mortgage servicing rights portfolio and RoundPoint's servicing platform to create a fully integrated mortgage company spanning origination through servicing. United Wholesale Mortgage filed a lawsuit on August 10 seeking over $500 million in damages, alleging Two Harbors improperly facilitated CCM's competing bid after agreeing to an all-stock deal with UWM in December valued at $1.3 billion; Two Harbors has called the lawsuit baseless and frivolous. Source: The Mortgage Point, citing Scotsman Guide reporting.