MCAI Lex Vision: MindCast Testimony for WA House Consumer Protection and Business Committee Hearing on SSB 6091 (Real Estate/Exclusive Market)
Addressing Compass's Venue-Specific Rhetorical Framing
See follow up publication: The Compass Commission Consolidation Strategy and Real Estate Marketing Transparency
MindCast AI Feb 18 testimony for the WA House Consumer Protection and Business Committee hearing on SSB 6091 (Prohibiting real estate brokers from marketing residential properties to an exclusive group of prospective buyers or real estate brokers).
Full written testimony available at https://www.mindcast-ai.com/p/ssb6091-cross-forum-analysis
‘My name is Noel Le, head of MindCast AI
I analyzed the January SSB 6091 hearings. At the Senate, 162 Compass-affiliated individuals registered opposition. Only nine disclosed the affiliation. At the House, Compass sign-ins declined 67%, and brokers who registered to testify did not once committee questioning intensified. The pattern illustrates how Compass’ narrative pressure can exceed its substantive arguments.
Federal records reinforce this legislature’s premise on transparency. On February 6, a federal judge denied Compass’s motion for a preliminary injunction against Zillow’s listing transparency rules. The court found Compass failed to demonstrate that transparency rules cause competitive harm and that Compass’s perceived harm is self inflicted.
Compass advances inconsistent theories across venues. In investor communications, limited transparency is presented as a premium strategy that drives market share and revenue. In court against NWMLS and Zillow it becomes Compass’s competitive right. In the state legislature, its reframed as homeowner autonomy and privacy — an argument Compass has raised in no other forum.
Compass’s arguments cannot simultaneously describe the same economic mechanism. The limited transparency homeowner concerns Compass invokes here are operationally identical to what Compass markets to others as a profit strategy. Compass’s Managing Director presented the consumer narrative to the senate, but wouldn’t answer whether transparency impacts Compass’s business model.
The committee should see past Compass’s venue-specific rhetorical framing. Compass’s private exclusive model is designed to capture commissions from buyers and sellers — NOT to protect consumers. Washington consumers deserve policy grounded in structural market effects, not in arguments that shift with the forum.
Compass must service years of accumulated losses and acquisition debt. Private exclusives that capture double commissions are central to that strategy — not homeowner autonomy and privacy.
Compass’s remaining tactical play in this legislative session is introducing an opt-out amendment on the House floor to consume calendar time and stall the bill past the March 6 cutoff.’