The Northwest Multiple Listing Service (NWMLS) released a statement supporting the National Association of REALTORS’® (NAR) Clear Cooperation Policy, which the group recently tweaked following criticism from some corners of the industry.

“Recently, some brokerage firms have advocated for MLS rules that facilitate hiding property listings from consumers, and lobbied the real estate industry to accommodate those exclusionary practices,” NWMLS said. “Those efforts are not for the benefit of sellers or buyers, but are instead designed to benefit those brokerage firms by entrenching them as the gatekeepers of property listings.”

NWMLS’s statement, penned by President and CEO Justin Haag, comes just days after NAR’s recent decision to keep its Clear Cooperation Policy, but introduce a new listing option that allows sellers to delay broader marketing of their properties.

Clear Cooperation critics — including Compass CEO Robert Reffkin — have argued that Clear Cooperation, which requires homes to be listed on an MLS within a day of being put on the market, can drive down the value of a property by showing how long it has been for sale and its history of price cuts.

“Proponents of hiding listings masquerade their self-dealing as offering ‘seller choice,’” wrote Haag. “They argue that sellers somehow benefit from not making their listing available to all potential buyers. They don’t.”

Similar to Windermere Real Estate Co-Founder OB Jacobi’s statement made last week, Haag’s message seems to directly reference Reffkin, a proponent of Compass-exclusive listings.

Haag elaborated further on his criticisms of brokerage-exclusive listings:

“Restricting the visibility of available homes to a select, exclusive group of buyers and brokers is fundamentally unfair and perpetuates inequalities that have long plagued the housing system. Policies that further enable the proliferation of exclusionary practices … will lead to the dismantling of the real estate marketplace for the exclusive benefit of those brokerage firms that choose to exploit them. The discriminatory effect and disparate impact that results from restricting access to listings to an exclusive group of buyers and brokers is just that — discrimination.”