Compass International Holdings has instructed its agents to remove listings from StreetEasy and instead upload them to the Real Estate Board of New York’s Residential Listing Service, marking them as “Participant Only.” This move, communicated ahead of Labor Day, allows member agents to view the listings but keeps them hidden from the general public.
Corcoran CEO Pam Liebman defended the strategy during a recent town hall, stating that it serves clients in sensitive situations, such as divorces or celebrity sales. She emphasized that while such cases are a small share of the market, it is crucial for agents to exercise discretion in marketing and unacceptable for StreetEasy to penalize them for advertising elsewhere.
Data from RealPlus shows that as of October 2, there were over 260 “Participant Only” listings in the system. About a quarter of these were for homes asking less than $1 million, and more than half were for homes under $3 million. Among the listings are a $570,000 one-bedroom condo in Bushwick and a $630,000 studio on the Upper West Side, alongside ultra-luxury properties like $40 million penthouses and $27 million townhouses.
Douglas Elliman’s Frances Katzen noted in her newsletter, the Katzen Report, that private real estate is becoming more common. “What was once the exception is becoming the norm,” she wrote. “Put all those numbers together, and it becomes difficult to dismiss private real estate as merely the world of whisper listings and ultra-high-net-worth sellers.”
Most of the 260 listings—about 86 percent—were represented by agents under the Compass umbrella, with only six of the 70 under $1 million listings attached to agents from other brokerages. It remains unclear whether these listings were specifically pulled from StreetEasy at Compass’s behest, as many were listed before the push intensified, some as early as April 2025.
However, the data indicates a growing trend of marketing listings outside consumer-facing websites in New York. A Marketproof report from August found that “Participant Only” listings tripled in July, rising from 47 to 144, with another 153 added in the first 12 days of August. The report also highlighted that a third of the homes uploaded to the RLS asked under $1 million, while a quarter were priced over $5 million.
Adding listings to the RLS but not platforms like StreetEasy does not make them private, as brokers from various companies can view them if they are REBNY members. However, buyers cannot find them without hiring an agent, raising questions about transparency in the market.
In other news, Manhattan’s luxury market faces an inventory problem. Listings for condos and co-ops in the top 10 percent of the market dropped 14 percent in the third quarter compared to last year, according to Jonathan Miller’s quarterly report for The Real Deal. The decline was partly due to a nearly 40 percent drop in new development inventory. Miller noted that the lack of inventory was likely not connected to Compass’s push to pull listings from StreetEasy, as supply was falling even before then, and he used data from RealPlus, not StreetEasy.
American Eagle Outfitters CEO Jay Schottenstein sold his condo at the Giorgio Armani Residences for $23 million, less than two years after purchasing it for under $22 million. The deal was the most expensive logged in city records this week. The apartment is on the ninth floor of 760 Madison Avenue and is one of 10 units at the building developed by SL Green. The 4,500-square-foot pad has five bedrooms, four full bathrooms, and views of Central Park.
Jake Indursky contributed reporting.
