05 July 2025

Pass the Popcorn

It appears that the real estate website Zillow is ruffling some feathers by blocking exclusive home listings.

An increasing number of real estate agents are not putting some units on the Multiple Listing Service (MLS), largely because this allows them not to split the sales commissions with other entities.

Real estate agents engaging in this practice are suing Zillow. 

The interesting thing here is how changes in the real estate industry, most notably recent court rulings against collusion on commissions, have led to realtors looking for new ways to make money:

Real estate brokerages increasing look to be in decline.

Pretty much every potential homebuyer looks for houses on the internet, scouring listings for the right facade and envisioning their couch in glossy photos of empty living rooms. A lot of the time, that digital touring pays off: The National Association of Realtors recently found that about half of purchasers end up finding the winning property online. For many house hunters, the never-ending cyberquest for that dream home includes a stop (or many) at Zillow.

If you count yourself among the 221 million monthly visitors who scan Zillow or one of its affiliated portals, like Trulia, you probably won't notice any change in your home-scrolling habit on June 30. But it's an important date for the biggest name in home search. Behind the scenes, Zillow is using its vast machinery to fight a battle that could determine where you find your next house — and whether it even appears on Zillow at all.

Starting Monday, Zillow will be banning home listings that have been marketed publicly by a real estate agent — which includes everything from planting a for-sale sign in the front yard to posting on Facebook — without being shared in the local databases that feed home listings to the rest of the real estate industry, including Zillow and other search websites, within one business day. The move is part of a broader fight over "exclusive inventory" or "hidden homes" — basically, properties advertised in some places but not others. In an attempt to seize more control over their listings, agents at some real estate brokerages have been advertising homes in internal databases or posting them only on their own websites, out of reach of the search portals.

While the fight has been going on for a few years, things have recently turned especially ugly. Compass, the largest real estate brokerage in the US by sales volume, sued Zillow in federal court last week over the new blacklist, and industry execs have spent months trading barbs via social media, speeches, and email blasts that reached thousands of agents across the country.

I'm inclined to think that all of this fighting amongst themselves is a good thing.

It means that all of the players in the real estate market are much focused on lobbying legislators to give them freebies.  

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