On Thursday morning, real estate professionals in Washington state woke up having to comply with a new law requiring them to publicly market their residential real estate listings to all consumers, unless the seller can show doing so would negatively impact their health or safety.
The statute, formerly known as Senate Bill 6091, was signed into law in mid-March by Washington Governor Bob Furgeson. The law amends a section to the state’s real estate brokerage law that requires for-sale properties to be marketed broadly to the general public.
“A broker may not market the sale or lease of residential real estate to a limited or exclusive group of prospective buyers or brokers, or any combination thereof, unless the real estate is concurrently marketed to the general public and all other brokers, except as reasonably necessary to protect the health or safety of the owner or occupant,” the new law states.
While there is generally a flurry of activity any time a new law or regulation goes into effect, Adam Cothes, the leader of the Seattle-based Adam Home Team, brokered by eXp Realty, is not really expecting the law to change much for him or his business.
“My brokerage has done a lot of meetings and trainings on this, but from my perspective this really feels more like background noise because it isn’t really a change from anything that we are already doing,” Cothes said.
Just a ‘speed bump’
According to Cothes, this is due to his business being within the jurisdiction of Northwest MLS (NWMLS), which, as a non-Realtor affiliated MLS, does not have to adhere to the National Association of Realtors’ (NAR) Clear Cooperation Policy. This means that NWMLS’s listing policy requires mandatory listing submission with no carve-out for office exclusive properties.
While all listings must be submitted to NWMLS, Cothes said the MLS’s rules allow sellers to remove the address and withhold their name from any public advertising of the property, if they choose.
“Becuase of NWMLS, this is how we have been operating for years, so it feels like more of a speed bump,” Cothes said.
Although Cothes may see the law as a “speed bump” NWMLS CEO Justin Haag told HousingWire that in preparation for the law’s implementation, the MLS has focused on forms updates and member education. But like Cothes, he said the new law is not a change for NWMLS.
“Members already comply with the law through longstanding NWMLS rules that promote an open, fair, transparent and comprehensive marketplace,” Haag said. “Northwest MLS has long championed market transparency, with members sharing all listings with all brokers and all consumers. SB 6091, which promotes competition and fairness in access to housing, codifies that standard, ensuring that when a home is marketed for sale, it is available to all buyers and all brokers.”
While her business does not fall within NWMLS’s service area, Kim Hagel-Barkley, who runs The Barkley Group out of eXp Realty in Spokane, also does not believe this law will require much change on her part.
“I don’t see this law impacting my business at all. None of my business has been from private listings,” Hagel-Barkley wrote in an email. “I’m sure once in a while, a home would sell because it was mentioned that it would be coming on the market to a team member or someone else but that was definitely not the norm at all. I really don’t see this law having an impact on the consumers I serve at all.”
Pointing at Compass
Many real estate professionals in the state feel this law is targeted at Compass International Holdings and its three-phased marketing plan, in which a listing starts off as a Compass private exclusives before entering a coming soon status and eventually, in the case of over 90% of listings enrolled in this marketing plan, heading to the open market via the MLS.
However, as the law only requires public marketing and does not state a listing must be immediately shared in the MLS, Compass told HousingWire that its three-phased marketing plan complies with the law.
“Compass Private Exclusives and Compass Coming Soons are fully compliant with the new law,” a Compass spokesperson told HousingWire. “The new Washington law preserves homeowner choice. It affirms that homeowners in Washington can market their homes before listing them on the MLS or public portals.”
When a listing is a private exclusive, Compass said consumers and agents at other brokerages can access these listings by reaching out to a Compass agent or visiting a Compass office to look at a listing book. Additionally, all of Compass’s coming soon listings are available on Redfin.
Compass is currently in a legal battle with NWMLS regarding its listing policy. In a lawsuit filed in April 2025, the brokerage company claimed that NWMLS “is a monopolist and a combination of competing real estate brokers and that its policies are the “most restrictive homeowner marketing rules in the country.”
Windermere’s “transparency addendum”
Despite the law and Compass’s assertions that all consumers and agents can access the firm’s private exclusive listings, at least one brokerage is looking to ensure its buyers know that they might not be able to see all possible listings due to potential private listings.
On Thursday, Windermere Real Estate, a Seattle-based independent brokerage released an optional purchase addendum it created, which it said is aimed at increasing transparency for homebuyers amid the growth of private listing networks and off-market marketing strategies. The firm said the new “transparency addendum” is designed for use with standard residential purchase and sale agreements and is freely available to any licensed real estate agent or brokerage in the U.S.
Windermere said it developed the form in response to practices that can limit public visibility into a home’s listing and pricing history. According to the announcement, the form is meant to support buyer agents’ fiduciary duties by alerting buyers that publicly available information about days on market and price changes could be incomplete or inaccurate and by providing a structure for buyers to ask whether any relevant marketing or pricing history is being withheld.
Ob Jacobi on concerns about transparency
“Select real estate brokerages are increasingly promoting private listing networks and off-market marketing strategies,” OB Jacobi, the president of Windermere Real Estate, told HousingWire. “While these approaches are not new, their growing prevalence raises concerns because they can obscure important market history from buyers, including days on market, prior pricing activity and prior marketing exposure. Windermere believes this trend risks leaving buyers unaware that critical information is being withheld from them, so we developed this transparency addendum to provide an added layer of protection.”
Jacobi added that the company felt that in Washington, the form would fill any gap still left unprotected by the new law.
“Consumers have been clear: they expect transparency. Buyers want confidence they’re seeing the full range of homes available, and sellers want assurance their property is reaching the widest possible audience,” Jacobi said. “When transparency erodes, so does trust in the system. Washington’s new law provides that extra layer of protection that consumers expect and deserve so that they can make educated buying and selling decisions about one of the largest financial investments of their lives.”
It remains to be seen if the law will have a material impact on agents and consumers in Washington or if it will be just a “speed bump.” But either way, Cothes said he is glad that the practice of publicly marketing a property for all consumers to see has been codified.
“I am very much in favor of the law and support it. We all think it is very consumer friendly. Buyers generally have a better chance when inventory is broadly available instead of being limited to a small network,” Cothes said.