Matt Levine [1] is a lawyer and he wrote [2] once that he doesn't think it's a violation of insider trading laws to transact in real estate with insider knowledge:
The insider trading laws apply only to securities markets — even insider trading in commodities markets is mostly okay 2 — and that probably is because of some background expectation of a level playing field in those markets. Nobody expects real estate to be fair; it is not exchange-traded and liquid and fungible; it is just obviously a market where some people know things that others don’t. Insider trading in operation is about theft, not about fairness, but the reason that the law concerns itself with the theft of one particular kind of information — or, rather, with one particular misuse of other people’s information — probably is about fairness.
The insider trading laws apply only to securities markets — even insider trading in commodities markets is mostly okay 2 — and that probably is because of some background expectation of a level playing field in those markets. Nobody expects real estate to be fair; it is not exchange-traded and liquid and fungible; it is just obviously a market where some people know things that others don’t. Insider trading in operation is about theft, not about fairness, but the reason that the law concerns itself with the theft of one particular kind of information — or, rather, with one particular misuse of other people’s information — probably is about fairness.
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/authors/ARbTQlRLRjE/matthe...
[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-10-22/front-...
Edit: I stand corrected, Matt Levine is a lawyer.