There are a hundred ways to lose money buying a house in Rhode Island right now. Bidding against three cash offers from Boston. Waiving an inspection on a 1920s roof. Paying $506,700 for a house that appraised for less.
Here's a newer one: never seeing the house at all.
That's the stake in a fight playing out in federal court in Chicago, and it comes down to a question that sounds technical and isn't — when a home goes up for sale, who gets to see it, and when? For roughly three decades the answer was simple. A listing went into the Multiple Listing Service, the MLS syndicated it everywhere, and a buyer scrolling Zillow at 11 p.m. saw the same inventory as an agent with an insider network. Universal access. Boring, and boring was the point.
Local sponsorAffordable photography lessons in Newport, Jamestown, or Your Town.E.L. Photo ArtThat system is being pulled apart, and the two companies pulling hardest are suing each other over it.
The mechanism, not the slogan
Compass, the country's largest brokerage by sales volume with more than 34,000 agents, launched what it calls its 3-Phased Marketing Strategy in November 2024. Phase one is a "Private Exclusive" — the home is marketed quietly to Compass agents and their buyers, and to nobody else. Phase two is "Coming Soon" on Compass.com. Only in phase three does the house hit the MLS and the public portals. Compass frames this as seller choice. "Our goal has always been to give homeowners more choice to decide when, where and how to market their homes," Chairman and CEO Robert Reffkin has said.
Zillow's answer was blunter. In April 2025 it declared that any home marketed as a private exclusive would be barred from its platform. Compass sued in June 2025, alleging Zillow was illegally boycotting its listings. After a four-day evidentiary hearing, Judge Jeannette A. Vargas of the Southern District of New York denied Compass's request for a preliminary injunction on February 6, finding Compass hadn't shown it was likely to win on any of its antitrust claims. Compass dropped the suit outright on March 18, after Zillow loosened the policy on "Coming Soon" listings — though not on Private Exclusives.
Then Zillow built its own version. Zillow Preview, launched March 17, lets brokerages show pre-market listings on Zillow and Trulia before they hit the MLS. More than 60 brokerages have joined, and Realtor.com agreed in May to carry those listings too. Zillow's pitch is that Preview listings are at least visible to everyone on the internet, unlike a Private Exclusive. On May 12, Zillow sued Compass and Midwest Real Estate Data, the Chicago-area MLS, alleging the two colluded to keep listings hidden. Those allegations are unproven; the case is pending.
So: one company keeps some homes off the public web entirely, and the other has built a product to show homes before they're publicly listed anywhere else. Both call it consumer choice.
What the data says
The most useful evidence here isn't from either company. Bright MLS, which covers the mid-Atlantic, found that office exclusive listings jumped to nearly 8% of new listings by February 2025, up from 2% to 4% before. Comparing similar homes in similar neighborhoods, it found no evidence that office exclusives sell for more than homes listed directly on the MLS. It also found they sell slower — standard listings typically go under contract within three weeks, office exclusives take about two weeks longer.
Read that again. Slower, and not for more money.
There's a second problem that rarely makes the marketing copy: appraisals. If a lender's appraiser can't see every comparable sale because some never entered the MLS, the comps get thinner. And MLS officials have warned that selective marketing channels, even without discriminatory intent, can produce a discriminatory effect depending on who's inside the channel.
Where Rhode Island sits
Providence landed in Zillow's top five hottest markets for 2026 — the company expects listings to move fast, price cuts to be rare, and prices to keep climbing. In May, 44.6% of Rhode Island homes sold above list price. This is precisely the kind of market where a two-week head start for insiders is worth real money.
Rhode Island does have a guardrail. State-Wide MLS adopted the National Association of Realtors' Clear Cooperation Policy on May 1, 2020 — the rule NAR wrote specifically because, in its words, leaving listings outside the broader marketplace excludes consumers. Under the MLS rules, an exclusive-right-to-sell listing on a residential property must be reported within 24 hours of the effective date or of a sign going up, and if a broker advertises the property, it has to be reported as either an MLS or non-MLS listing.
Other states are going further. Washington's new law, effective June 11, bars marketing a home to an exclusive group of buyers or brokers unless it's simultaneously marketed to the general public. It passed 49-0 in the Senate and 92-1 in the House. Compass says its Private Exclusives and Coming Soons are "fully compliant" with it; Washington's MLS reads the law differently, and the sponsor conceded the text is deliberately vague on what "public" means. Connecticut passed a public-listing bill first. New York has one moving.
Rhode Island has none. No bill, no case, no published figure on how many listings in this state are being marketed privately before they reach the MLS.
Which brings us back to the hundred ways to lose money on a house here. Ninety-nine of them, you can at least see coming.