Mississippi broker warns private listings could revive housing barriers

Dr. Zakk Varughese, a Mississippi broker and Gulf Coast Association of REALTISTS leader, is pressing the industry to treat private-listing fights as a fair-housing issue, not just a competition dispute. His new analysis calls for five safeguards as Compass, MLSs and major brokerages battle over how homes can be marketed and shared.

Why it matters: - The private-listing fight could shape which buyers see which homes first, and that can affect access to opportunity in the housing market. - Varughese argues the debate risks rebuilding old barriers if information stays concentrated inside closed brokerage networks. - The issue matters beyond pricing and seller choice because it can influence who gets a fair shot at inventory.

What happened: - Dr. Zakk Varughese, a Mississippi real estate broker and founder and chairman of the board of the Gulf Coast Association of REALTISTS, published an analysis on the organization’s website. - The analysis is titled “The Return of the Private Listing: Are We Creating a New Era of Housing Segregation?” - The piece comes as Compass clashes with multiple listing service rules that penalize agents who publicly market homes without submitting them to the MLS. - By late October, at least nine MLS organizations representing roughly 272,000 subscribers had publicly rejected Compass’s demands, according to Inman. - RE/MAX and eXp Realty have announced broad, non-exclusive distribution of pre-market listings.

The details: - Varughese says the industry has focused on competition and seller choice while giving less attention to fair-housing consequences. - He argues that a buyer at one brokerage may see homes that a buyer at another brokerage never learns exist. - The analysis extends an argument from Varughese’s book, “Breaking Barriers: Confronting Racism in American Real Estate,” published in July 2026. - The book argues that information can determine who sees inventory first, who gets reliable market data, who can market listings broadly, who appears credible to cooperating brokers and who gains access to shared listing infrastructure. - The book also argues that a profession can be legally open while still being structurally uneven. - Varughese traces the concern to the era when local real estate boards controlled MLS access and excluded Black brokers. - The book says organized real estate did not merely exist alongside discriminatory housing systems, but became one of the institutions through which those systems operated. - The National Association of Real Estate Brokers was founded in 1947 in response. - NAREB president Ashley Thomas III told Inman in June that “transparency is fair housing” and that discrimination may not be the intention of private networks, “but it is the outcome.” - The analysis cites a November 2025 Zillow study of more than 40,000 Chicago-area listings. - That study found homes in majority-white neighborhoods were 2.2 times as likely to appear in the regional MLS private listing network as homes in majority-non-white neighborhoods, after controlling for price, home type, location and broker activity. - The study put the figures at 7.9 percent versus 3.4 percent. - Varughese notes that Midwest Real Estate Data disputed the interpretation and that Zillow is a commercial participant in the fight. - Varughese draws a line between unequal access and unlawful discrimination. - Brokerage affiliation is not a protected characteristic under the Fair Housing Act. - No named brokerage has been judicially found to have violated fair-housing law through private-listing practices. - The harder problem, the book argues, is that some barriers exist inside closed professional circles where people may be invited in or quietly warned away. - One example in the book describes a new licensee realizing that no rule excluded him from an opportunity, but he was not part of the conversation where the opportunity began to move. - Varughese says a private listing network is that conversation, formalized and scaled. - He says private listings are not inherently discriminatory and sellers deserve real choices. - He also says sellers do not deserve a signature line that passes for informed consent.

Between the lines: - The fight is not only about how listings move; it is also about who controls the flow of market information. - Varughese is trying to reframe private listings as a civil-rights and market-structure issue, not just an operational one. - The inclusion of a Zillow study matters because it gives the debate a data point, even though the findings remain contested. - The article also highlights tension between seller autonomy and the risk of opaque distribution systems.

What’s next: - Varughese is urging five safeguards: objective access standards, seller consent that discloses brokerage incentives, independent fair-housing studies, protected participation for independent brokerages, and shared accountability among regulators, MLSs and brokerages. - The book’s standard is that information should serve consumers rather than institutional advantage. - The broader dispute among Compass, MLSs and rival brokerages is likely to keep testing how much private distribution the industry will allow. - Varughese argues the key test will be whether consumers can access opportunities without needing to know the right broker first.

The bottom line: - Private listings may be framed as choice and competition, but Varughese says they also deserve a fair-housing test before they become the new normal.