Last Updated on June 21, 2026 by Elizabeth Nolan
Connecticut just became the third state in the country to pass a law restricting private listings and unlike the NAR policy debate or the Zillow-Compass platform war, this one isn’t optional guidance. It’s state law, with real penalties attached. (Inman has the full rundown if you want the industry-wide view.)
If you’ve been following the Clear Cooperation fight or the Zillow Preview rollout, this is the next layer: state legislatures stepping in where NAR policy and MLS rules left a gap. Here’s what’s passed, what’s pending, and what it actually means if you’re listing property in these states.
The Short Version
Public marketing of residential listings is becoming the legal default, not just the MLS default. Washington, Wisconsin, and Connecticut have all passed laws requiring that when a listing is marketed at all, it has to be marketed publicly not just to a private network or a select group of buyers unless the seller signs a specific opt-out disclosure. New York has passed similar legislation and it’s sitting on the governor’s desk. Illinois and Hawaii have bills moving through committee.
This is a different mechanism than Clear Cooperation (CCP) or Multiple Listing Options for Sellers (MLOS). CCP is a NAR policy that your MLS chooses to enforce. These are state statutes, enforced by state licensing boards, with fines and disciplinary action on the table for noncompliance.
What Connecticut’s Law Actually Does
Governor Ned Lamont signed SB 340 on May 27, 2026. It takes effect October 1, 2026.
The core requirement: if you’re representing a seller or landlord on a residential property with one to four units, you have to publicly market that listing on an MLS, a public-facing website, or another platform accessible to the general public at the same time or before any private marketing happens. That covers listing it on a private network, emailing it to more than one buyer at a time, posting it on social media, or putting up a sign.
The exception is the opt-out. If a seller wants to go private, they sign a standardized, state-created disclosure form acknowledging the tradeoffs which spells out reduced buyer visibility, the possibility of leaving money on the table, and the fact that other agents may never know the listing exists. The form language is blunt about the downside. There’s also a separate carve-out if public marketing would reasonably endanger the seller’s health or safety.
What to Watch For
- The bar for “public” is broad — and that’s a feature, not just a quirk. An MLS counts, but so does a public-facing website or listing portal. The law doesn’t lock you into MLS-only compliance.
- That breadth is also the law’s biggest open question. Nothing in the text requires a listing to be visible on every portal or broker’s feed. Just that it isn’t restricted to “a limited or exclusive group.” That’s a meaningfully lower bar than full MLS distribution, and it’s exactly the reading Compass has relied on elsewhere. Compass.com is technically a public-facing website anyone can browse without logging in. So its Private Exclusives and Coming Soons arguably satisfy a literal reading of the statute even though the strategy is built around keeping inventory inside Compass’s own network first. Whether that holds up is unresolved. It’s the central dispute in the Washington litigation between Compass and Northwest MLS right now, and Connecticut’s law uses similar language. Don’t assume “we posted it on our own brokerage site” is automatically safe just because it’s technically public; treat it as untested until a court or the state says otherwise.
- It applies to landlords too, not just sellers.
- Noncompliance has teeth: fines up to $5,000 and potential license suspension. (HousingWire’s coverage breaks down the penalty structure.)
- Michael Barbaro at SmartMLS publicly supported the bill while saying it doesn’t go far enough. That’s worth knowing if you’re wondering how your own MLS is likely to interpret enforcement.
Why This Matters More in New Canaan, Darien, Greenwich, and Westport Than Almost Anywhere Else
Reporters covering the Connecticut law keep landing on the same four towns when they ask where the impact will actually be felt. And it’s not a coincidence. Homes.com’s coverage of the new law specifically calls out Greenwich, New Canaan, Darien, and Westport as the towns most likely to feel it, since private, off-market, and word-of-mouth transactions have always been more common in this price tier than almost anywhere else in the state. High-net-worth sellers who want discretion, properties where the buyer pool is genuinely thin, situations where privacy is the point. That’s the exact use case the opt-out form exists for.
What changes after October 1 isn’t whether you can still do a private listing here. You can. What changes is that it now requires a documented, informed decision instead of an informal one. You’ll need the signed opt-out in the file, and the seller will have acknowledged in writing, in state-mandated language, that going private may mean a smaller buyer pool and a lower sale price. That’s a different conversation than “let’s keep this quiet for now,” and it’s one you’ll be having on the record.
How This Connects to Everything Else That’s Happened This Year
If you read my piece on what’s changed with private listings or the rundown of the Zillow-Compass platform war, you already know the shape of this fight: NAR loosened Clear Cooperation with MLOS in March 2025, Zillow and Compass went to war over what counts as fair access, and the portals split into camps.
State legislatures are a third front entirely, and they’re not waiting for the industry to sort itself out. The pattern across Washington, Wisconsin, Connecticut, and the pending bills is consistent: lawmakers aren’t banning private listings outright. They’re requiring disclosure and, in most cases, concurrent public marketing which is a meaningfully different fight than the one NAR and the portals are having over MLS rules and IDX feeds.
Worth noting: Compass has publicly argued these laws actually validate its approach — and the walled-garden ambiguity above is exactly why. If “public-facing website” is read literally, Compass.com qualifies since most of these laws don’t ban pre-marketing outright, they just require simultaneous public visibility or a signed opt-out. Whether that reading survives is still being litigated. Compass and Northwest MLS are fighting over exactly that question in Washington state court right now, with a trial date in June.
The State-by-State Map, As of Today
- Wisconsin — 2025 Wisconsin Act 69, passed December 2025. Requires public marketing within one business day unless the seller opts out. Takes effect January 1, 2027.
- Washington — SB 6091, signed into law in March, took effect June 11, 2026. The strictest version so far: no opt-out for convenience, only for health or safety. Compass and Northwest MLS are actively disputing what counts as compliant in court.
- Connecticut — SB 340, signed May 27, 2026. Effective October 1, 2026. Opt-out via signed disclosure.
- New York — S10274 / A10679-B, the Fair and Transparent Real Estate Listings Act, passed both chambers in June 2026; awaiting Governor Hochul’s signature.
- Illinois — HB 4964, in committee, modeled on the Wisconsin approach (one business day, opt-out available).
- Hawaii — HB 2559, pending in the House Consumer Protection & Commerce Committee. It requires written disclosure to the seller before marketing residential property as a private or off-market listing, with failure to disclose treated as grounds for license discipline. Trade coverage has grouped it with Washington’s stricter model rather than Wisconsin’s, though the bill is still moving through committee and could change.
This list will keep growing. Once three states pass functionally similar laws inside the same year, that’s a trend other state legislatures notice.
What to Actually Do Before October 1
You have time, but not unlimited time. Between now and when CT SB 340 takes effect:
Know the opt-out form before you need it. It’s part of the bill text. Read it now, not the week a seller asks about going private.
Build the conversation into your listing presentation. If a seller raises privacy or a quiet pre-market period, you’re no longer offering a casual option. You’re walking them through a disclosure that explicitly tells them they may get a lower price. Practice saying that out loud before you have to say it in front of a client.
Check in with your broker on documentation. Most brokerages will likely issue their own guidance and paperwork ahead of the effective date, but don’t assume that’s already the case. Ask.
Don’t confuse this with MLS-level Withhold or Delayed status. SmartMLS’s existing listing statuses and the new state law are two separate compliance layers that happen to overlap. A Withhold listing that’s properly submitted to SmartMLS is a different thing than the public-marketing requirement under SB 340. You may need to satisfy both.
The throughline across all of this — NAR policy, the portal wars, and now state law — is the same: the era of quietly shopping a listing with no paper trail is ending. What replaces it isn’t a ban. It’s documentation. Sellers who want privacy can still have it. They just can’t have it informally anymore, and neither can agents and brokerages.
This post reflects Connecticut SB 340 and related state legislation as of June 21, 2026. Several bills referenced here are still moving through their legislatures. Check current status before advising a client, and confirm requirements with your broker and MLS as the effective date approaches.
